Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - The Upside of Impermanence | Bonus Meditation with Joseph Goldstein

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

Take a moment to pay attention to the good things that are already here, and get in touch with the basic satisfaction of being alive. About Joseph Goldstein: Joseph is one of the most respected meditation teachers in the world -- a key architect of the rise of mindfulness in our modern society -- with a sense of humor to boot. In the 1970's, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) alongside Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Since its founding, thousands of people from around the world have come to IMS to learn mindfulness from leaders in the field. Joseph has been a teacher there since its founding and continues as the resident guiding teacher. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth? What really matters in the pursuit of a life well lived? These are the questions award-winning author, founder, and interviewer Jonathan Fields asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast. Every week, Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant,

Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life Project on your favorite podcast app. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad.

Where did memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer, on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Hey, hey, it's Friday, time for our bonus meditation. On the show this week, we've had two very different perspectives on the notion of time, how we experience it, how we think about it, how we use it. In today's meditation, we're going to take another angle on time. Joseph Goldstein, who I believe needs no introduction here, but I'll give him one anyway, one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society, long time meditation teacher. I work with him personally,

just an outstanding human being, one of the founding teachers on the 10% happier app as well. Joseph came up with this meditation, we'll be leading this meditation, and it really dwells on the upside of impermanence. Here we go now with Joseph. One of the paradoxical aspects of growing mindfulness and growing wisdom and growing understanding growing wisdom and growing understanding, is that we see the less we cling to, the less attached we are to that which is changing, and particularly to that which is pleasant. The less we are attached to them, the less we cling, actually the more we enjoy them.

And so rather than leading to a kind of grave acuity in all lives, when nothing gives us joy, the very awareness of the impermanence of all these experiences, actually can highlight or delight in them in the moment. As you begin the sitting, sit comfortably in a dignified posture with the back straight but not stiff, settle into your body, letting the eyes close gently, and simply sit and know your sitting. Feeling the body in the sitting posture. And you can settle back into an open, peaceful, choiceless awareness of whatever arises in

the body and mind moment after moment. It may be sensations in the body or sounds or thoughts. When the sensation is no longer predominant, again return to the whole body, sit and know you're sitting. At different times, you may hear different sounds. If the sound becomes predominant, in those moments, the sound itself becomes the object of mindfulness, letting the sound come and go in the field of your experience, without particularly thinking about what's making the sound, or creating know you're sitting. If at times you find yourself lost in emotion, it can be helpful to investigate, to reflect on the particular thought or image that might have triggered that emotion, so that you begin to see the more impersonal cause and effect relationship between thought and emotion.

And then returning to the awareness of the body sitting, to the awareness of your body breathing. Relaxed, alert. Letting all experiences arise and pass away in the open end of the meditation, you can slowly open your eyes, become aware of seeing as you reconnect with the world around you. This concludes our meditation and I look forward to practicing with you again. Thank you Joseph. We'll be back on Monday. We'll be chatting with a really interesting guy, brother Fap Young, who is a Buddhist monk and he's going to walk us through one of the foundational Buddhist lists, the Eightfold Path. We'll see you all on Monday for that. Hey, hey, prime members.

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