Ep. 261 – Gradual Cultivation in Buddhist Practice

Joseph Goldstein explores gradual cultivation, highlighting that even if we are suddenly awakened, we still must have an ongoing practice to work with hindrances and ingrained habits.

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This week on Insight Hour, Joseph Goldstein discusses:

• The areas of life where clinging shows up most
• How clinging to sensory pleasures is so embedded in our culture
• Lightening up for enlightenment and not taking ourselves so seriously
• How a sense of humor can benefit our practice
• Unhelpful attachment to view and opinion
• The unity of clarity and emptiness (self-existing wakefulness)
• The Buddhist meaning of unborn/unformed
• Uprooting of the view of self with the understanding that there is still more work to do
• Having an ongoing, gradual cultivation of skillful means

This episode was originally published on Dharmaseed and recorded at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, a non-profit organization founded by renowned meditation teachers Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg to integrate Buddhist study and practice.

“Very often, people can have genuine realization and have a really deep understanding, and then get attached to that as if everything is done. So very often these folks can get engaged in skillful behavior, thinking it’s all coming from their deep realization, it’s really coming from all the work that still needs to be done.” –Joseph Goldstein

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