Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute talk from a two-week Vipassana retreat at Camp Cedar Glen in 1977, Joseph Goldstein shares reflections from a recent journey to Asia, beginning with a vivid scene at the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya where he witnessed the Dalai Lama teaching before a diverse gathering. He explores what spiritual transmission truly means, then offers three concrete practices for training the mind and shifting the quality of consciousness: the skillful use of moral precepts, illustrated through monasteries in Burma and Thailand and the story of the Buddha’s commitment to truthful speech; the practice of generosity in its four forms, from beggar’s giving to kingly giving; and meditation itself, emphasizing the development of concentration as a foundation for the deeper practice of insight. Throughout, he illustrates how these disciplines reshape the mind-spaces we inhabit, moving practitioners toward direct vision of impermanence, non-self, and liberation. Aimed at practitioners new to intensive practice, though suitable for all levels.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 CCG.mp3
UUID: e76da49e-0b43-462c-b807-d215db29d9d7
Teacher: Joseph Goldstein
Collection: Camp Cedar Glen (Joseph Goldstein)
Date: 1977 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~4,572
This recording of Joseph Goldstein was made at a two week Vipassana meditation retreat in Julian, California on April second nineteen seventy seven. I’m very pleased that this retreat is happening so close, so soon to our return from Asia Because I feel a lot of energy to share with you some of the stories and insights and inspirations that we had on that particular journey. We went from here to India, to Bodh Gaya, which is the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment. It’s a small Indian village with many temples from different Buddhist countries. And in the center of the village is a tremendously imposing main temple, large stupa.
It’s called the Mahabodhi temple. And in front of it is the fourth generation of the tree supposedly under which the Buddha sat and became enlightened. It’s a very inspiring, it’s a very awesome place. Two days after we arrived, the Dalai Lama came to Bodh Gaya for a visit for his own personal pilgrimage and also to give some teachings. It was on a full moon.
One morning the Dalai Lama was sitting in a very elaborately prepared throne, Tibetan silks, before the tree, the Bodhi tree, and behind the tree is this very beautiful temple. There were several hundred people sitting listening to the Dalai Lama. There were many Tibetans of all different kinds. There were lamas, monks. There were Tibetans dressed in western business suits, there were very poor Tibetans, there were people from the villages, wide variety.
There were a lot of westerners sitting there who were there listening even though the Dalai Lama was speaking in Tibetan and did not understand anything at all of the words. As I was sitting, experiencing that particular scene, my mind started to wonder exactly what was going on. Here’s a person like the Dalai Lama who certainly one of the most loving and compassionate and wisest beings at one of the great power spots on the planet. There were all these people sitting listening, some of whom understood what was going on, some of whom didn’t. What was happening?
Why was he doing that? What was the basis of that kind of transmission? It was a question perhaps not too dissimilar to one some of you might have been asking today in terms of why you came. Wondering, maybe you made the wrong decision. What’s going on?
What’s happening? What’s it all about? It became clear then in Bodh Gaya at that time that the basis for spiritual work for a transmission of some kind But it’s based on the experience of many people many, many thousands, hundreds of thousands of people throughout history who have learned that the mind has the potential to be trained in such a way so as to be able to explore and discover and create a vast range of different mind spaces. We create the world we live in. To learn how to use the mind in such a way so that we can investigate the different mind spaces that are possible, how we’re relating to the world.
What does mind space mean? Means the quality of relationship we have to things. How do we relate to possessions, to things we own? How do we relate to other people? How do we relate to our jobs, to our families, to situations?
The quality of the relationship is what these different mind spaces are all about. And there are ways to play with them, to explore and discover them. Some mind spaces are extremely expansive and light and freeing. And others are contracted and painful. We can play with them all.
The thrust of the teaching of the practice is to become conscious, to become awake so that we don’t get caught in painful mind spaces without understanding how it’s happening. We become free to make some choices. Mind is a dynamic energy field. It’s not some static entity with which we’re born and which remains the same throughout our lives. Rather we’re a process unfolding, a process of mind and physical body energy that can be played with, that can be developed, that can be trained.
Some of the ways of training the mind to investigate these different mind spaces? Ways that have been talked about by many teachers and spiritual people in all traditions throughout human history. Most of them are so simple and so ordinary that for the most part we’ve forgotten the tremendous power inherent in them. An example, a few examples this evening of ways to train the mind, ways to work with the mind. One of the most powerful ways of creating different spaces in which we live is the skillful use of the moral precepts.
You find this in the Buddhist tradition of the five precepts, the Judeo Christian tradition of the ten commandments. Yet somehow in our minds, especially in the West, become somewhat inured to the use of the precepts. Tend to think of them as being restrictive or somewhat moralistic and not a very powerful force in our lives. This particular journey that we just returned from visited many monasteries in Burma and Thailand which showed the incredible power of the skillful use of moral discipline. We entered spaces that were created by the use of that skillful means that were so light and clear and spacious and simple and ordinary that it again reawakened an appreciation for how we can use, how we can play with the precepts in our lives as a skillful means.
When you act with greed or hatred or delusion, the karmic result of that act is pain and suffering, like planting the seeds of pain. When we act based on non greed or non greed, non hatred, love, non delusion or wisdom, the karmic seeds of that is happiness, peace, freedom. Working with the precepts in our lives is a way of protecting ourselves from unmindfully accumulating a lot of unwholesome karma. You know, we take the precept not to kill. A mosquito comes along about to swat it very mechanically.
If the precept is strong in our mind, even though the action may be started in a mechanical way, the force of having taken the precept will arouse mindfulness before the act is completed. You don’t have to do that. And so with all the precepts, they become a great protection for us. Not to do things, not to accumulate a lot of negative forces unknowingly out of ignorance. Use of the precept also works on the level of changing the quality of the mind space that we’re in changing the quality of the world that we live in.
When you don’t lie, you’re freed of a lot of fear of paranoia. The story that Munindraji, my teacher, told on this trip of the Buddha in his former lives. There are many stories in the Buddhist tradition, tales of the Bodhisattvas, all the lives of the Buddha in his previous incarnations in which he was working towards Buddhahood. It’s said that in the course of his many lifetimes of working towards enlightenment and freedom, he committed many bad acts killed and stole different acts of sexual misconduct, taking different kinds of intoxicants. But one precept which it said that he never broke was that of wrong speech.
That is, in his vow to become Buddha, he committed himself to the path of truth. And whatever deeds he did, whatever actions he committed, he always was willing to admit, to be honest about it, to be open, to be out front. That commitment to honesty, that commitment to the truth becomes an unshakable source of strength in one’s life. Commitment to one, one precept changes the entire way we relate to the world. When I was first beginning my practice, it was in the Peace Corps in Thailand.
I just made contact with the teachings and the precepts. And I was experimenting with right speech and what that meant. I made the resolution not to speak about any third person, not to gossip. If I had something to say to somebody, I would say it to them rather than about them to someone else. Just playing with the possibility of a different mind space, a different different way of relating to people.
What I found was that ninety percent of my speech was eliminated by that simple resolve not to gossip. We can play with the world. We can play with our minds to see for ourselves which kind of spaces are most fulfilling, most rewarding, are most helpful to others. Another precept as an indication of how it can be played with as a means for awakening, for greater consciousness. The precept not to kill, very straightforward not to take the life of other beings, to learn a certain measure of coexistence, that we share the planet with a lot of other beings, lot of other animals.
To have a certain reverence for life rather than destructive energy. There’s a story told about some students of Katagiri Roshi, I think in Minneapolis, famous Zen master. The students were having problems in the Zen Do, the meditation hall, with cockroaches. They didn’t know what to do exactly. The cockroaches were rather unpleasant.
People were stopping, coming to the zendo to sit. They went to the Roshi, the zen master, and said, we’d like to get rid of the cockroaches, but we’ve taken the precept not to kill. What should we do? A conflict. Katagiri Roshi sat there for a few minutes, would have weighed the problem, looked at the situation and he said, I’m not going to tell you.
It’s not that the precepts are to be used as some kind of black and white commandment. You know, that you follow blindly, I do this, I’m a good person, I’m pure. But the very great misunderstanding of the dynamic power of moral discipline It’s to use the precepts to become more conscious of each situation we find ourselves in. There is no easy answer what to do in the Zen Do, kill the cockroaches, not to kill them. And the point is not so much which action is finally taken, but rather that whatever action is taken is done with consciousness and done with compassion, Not done mechanically out of ignorance.
We went to one monastery in Thailand. It was one of Jack’s teachers. Forest monastery. Very beautiful place. The teacher, Ajahn Chah, fantastic.
He was sort of like a wise, stern, loving grandfather came across very much like a Zen master. Very present, very simple, very direct and straightforward. And yet the means that he was using in his teaching and in his monastery was that of the Vinaya or rules of discipline for monks. He was using those rules of discipline as a skillful means to get people enlightened, to get people free. When we went, there were a number of Western monks staying at the monastery.
And from what Jack had told us about his stay there, mostly Ajahn Chah didn’t give much to his monks in terms of teachings or instruction or feedback. You just do it and go back to your heart and sit and watch your own mind. Don’t bother me. When we came he was very, very open and very cordial. There was a group of about fifteen of us who had gone to visit.
And so the other western monks were there. They were sort of very eager to be with us in our discussions with Ajahn Chah because they were getting something special from him. We went there one time, there were a few of the Western monks and their robes weren’t on right. They weren’t proper for being with visitors. Ajahn Chah came in and took one look at how they were wearing their robes and very sternly told them to put them on right.
This is how you do it. This is how the monastery is run. This is the discipline. This is the way monks supposed to be. A certain kind of impeccability of discipline in order to be awake all the time.
And there was such power in the monastery, such power from that teacher with the use of the precepts. Again they’re not something to be followed blindly. They’re not commandments written out in the sky that we have to follow. It’s a way to create different spaces for ourselves in our lives and in the world to to see. You know just coming to this retreat, taking the precept of silence, it’s a whole different mind space than how we usually live our lives.
You’ll see, you’ll experience it. Maybe it’s helpful, it’s not helpful. You can play so many different ways with the use of discipline. The journey brought about an increased respect and appreciation for the use of discipline of moral precepts as a way of awakening. I’m glad to share that feeling that I have with you and for you to use it to see for yourself, to play in that way.
There’s another way of training the mind, Another sphere of activity which changes dramatically the way we relate to the world, the mind space we live in. And that sphere of activity is generosity, the practice of giving. Giving is the expression in action of non greed in the mind. When you give something you’re letting go. You’re not holding on, you’re not possessing, you’re not being attached.
You’re offering, you’re sharing. The whole spiritual path, in fact, is just that process of letting go on deeper and deeper levels. The practice of generosity facilitates that letting go in the mind. People who have cultivated it to a high extent create for themselves an exceedingly beautiful and soft mind space in which to live. There are different kinds of giving depending on how much we’ve cultivated in the past, on our own particular conditioning.
One kind of giving is called beggarly giving. It’s like being in an area of a drought There’s just a little sprinkle of rain. Every few weeks a few drops of rain come down. Very barren area. Regularly giving is when we have things we deliberate a lot about giving the very worst of what we have things that are left over, things that we don’t need.
Well, I’m not going to use that, maybe I’ll give it away. No, in a few years I might find a use for it, I’ll keep it. Back and forth and finally it’s given. A lot of reluctance, lot of consideration, and finally act of giving is done. It’s a few drops of water in the desert.
It’s the beginning. Next kind of giving is friendly giving where you give more spontaneously, more freely, more openly, the things that you use yourself. That’s like a nice gentle spring shower. Rain comes down and makes everything moist and wet fertile. Next kind of giving is called kingly giving, and that’s like a great thunderstorm.
Tremendous amount of water descending, nourishing the earth. Kingly giving is when we can give in a very open and spontaneous way the very best of what we have. That which we treasure most, we take delight in offering to someone else. I had a beautiful example of the spirit of kingly giving on the trip. We went to visit Munindraji’s teacher, Mahasi Sayadaw, who is one of the most famous monks and teachers in Burma.
We went to his center in Rangoon and he wasn’t there at the time. He was upcountry at his home monastery, the place that he was born. Where he goes maybe once a year or once every two years. And through an exceedingly fortunate set of circumstances, this was for a group of fifteen people, we were able to arrange plane reservations to Upper Burma and then rent a truck to go four or five hours out into the boondocks. Very small isolated village.
Come to his monastery there. Perhaps there were five or six hundred people all gathered to pay their respects to Mahasi. Very special event. Then this truckload of fifteen or sixteen Westerners come to a very small and remote village. It’s quite likely it was the first time many of those people had ever seen Westerners.
And here was a whole truckload of them very curious. It sort of disrupted Mahasi’s talk a little bit. They all came out to see what was going on. We were surrounded immediately by masses of people. They put us in the kitchen for a while, feed us.
They come in and say, Invite us to come into the main hall, Mahasi Sayadaw had finished his Dharma talk, for us to come in and introduce ourselves to explain what we were doing there, why we had come. It was a very unusual happening in the village. We all come into the front of this hall, get up, and we explain that we were meditation students in America, and we came to pay our respects to Mahasi Sayadaw. And of course they took great delight in the fact that people came from so far away to pay respects to somebody who was born in that very village. We told them about the meditation center we have in Massachusetts and how we were teaching the practice of Vipassana.
When we left, the people of the village gave a donation of twenty five kyats, which is about two or three dollars, for the center in Massachusetts. It was so extraordinary, you know. They should give us a donation. The spirit of giving and generosity is such a wonderful space to live in. And it can be developed.
It’s just like everything else. As you practice it more and more it becomes stronger in the mind. Kingly giving. Use of the moral precepts as a way of training, of exploring different spaces. The use of generosity as a skillful means to see, to find out what’s possible.
There’s another field of activity which in some ways is the most powerful for creating and understanding the wide range of mind spaces which are available. That’s the practice of meditation. There are two streams, two aspects to the practice. The first one is the development of concentration, of one pointedness. And both from our own practice and also from the repeated message that we got from most of the teachers we met on this trip.
The strong emphasis placed on really working to get one’s concentration together. Until the mind achieves some level of one pointedness, it is impossible to see how things are really happening. So developing that one pointedness of mind is an important basis for understanding. That’s what the first few days and much longer of course of one’s practice is about. Just developing that steadiness of mind.
You give the mind an object to stay on and you train it to be able to stay on it. In the beginning it’s very much like trying to ride a bucking bronco. It’s as if the breath or the abdomen is doing everything possible to throw the mind off. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes slow, sometimes you can’t feel it, sometimes it’s imperceptible. Where is it?
The mind goes off. It’s lost in thought, in fantasy. The mind itself is looking for every opportunity to leave. It gets bored, it gets restless, gets discouraged, what am I doing here? It’s much easier to be thrown by that bronco than to stay on it, as I’m sure most of you experience today.
And yet the training in the practice is to learn how to stay on it. Through all the changes, through all the ups and downs, through all the distractions that happen, through all the different mind states, through all the changes of the breath itself, the mind sticks to it. I’m not going to let go. Fixing the mind, making it one pointed on the object becomes a powerful way to develop that strength of concentration. It’s important to arouse the energy to do it.
And it’s difficult. But with repeated practice you find that after a while that bucking bronco doesn’t throw you quite so often. You get into the rhythm. You settle into a very easy way of paying attention. The mind very rhythmically stays on the breath arising, falling.
It’s no longer a struggle. It takes practice. It takes patience. It takes a certain amount of persistence and energy. The other aspect of meditation practice which uses concentration as the base is that of wisdom, of insight.
It’s really the heart of what we’re doing. Insight and wisdom come from the development of mindfulness. Mindfulness means noticing what’s happening in the moment. Noticing the quality, the process of things. What’s going on?
As the retreat progresses, we’re going to expand the field of awareness from a simple object of concentration to include every aspect of our experience. Energies in the body, sensations, thoughts, emotions, feelings, sights, sounds, tastes. Everything that we are becomes the field of awareness, the field of mindfulness. The quality of mindfulness, very important to understand, is given by an example. Somebody walking through a crowded marketplace carrying on their head a jug full of water filled to the brim.
Behind that person is a soldier with a big sword. If one drop of that water were to spill from the jug, the soldier had orders to cut the person’s head off. Imagine yourself in the middle of Los Angeles or New York or San Francisco. A lot of people moving quickly, pushing. There you are with a jug of water on your head, one drop spills and your head comes off.
How would you walk? How would you move? You’d be pretty mindful. You’d be paying attention. But not in a tense or tight way.
Because if you carried a lot of tension in that effort, the least bit of sudden movement or jostling, of course the water would spill. You would have to have a certain ease in your body that could flow with the movement around you. Very easy, very rhythmic, just like a dance. That’s the quality of the mindfulness that should be cultivated in the practice. Very attentive, very present, very easy, very soft, very flowing.
Now often in the beginning people look very grim about their practice. I’m gonna be mindful lifting, moving, placing. someone said something very appropriate and to the point this afternoon. You can have fun doing it. It’s not something to get uptight about or tense.
Settle in in a very easy, soft, gentle way, But be there. Be attentive. Be precise. Do it with a smile. That combines the element of settling back and relaxing and ease and rhythm.
The element of a very keen and attentive awareness. That’s the balance that has to be struck in the practice. Then what happens? It’s as if that kind of mindfulness is the magic performs a certain magic in the mind which reveals to the very depths of things what’s going on, who we are. What do you begin to see as the mindfulness develops?
You begin to see first of all that every part of your experience is changing. There’s not a single element of your mind or body or things outside which remain the same. Everything is in a constant state of change and flow and flux and transformation. And as you see that flow of impermanence on a more and more microscopic level both outside and within, the mind increasingly begins to let go. There’s nothing to hold onto.
There’s nothing to grasp because everything’s changing. You become one with the flow instead of obstructing it, trying to hold on. As mindfulness becomes stronger, you also begin to see the inherent insecurity of changing phenomena. There’s not anything at all which is going to be the cause of your lasting happiness precisely because nothing is lasting. You see that it’s not going to be in possessions and it’s not going to be with other people.
It’s not going to be your state, the body. It’s all changing. It’s all flowing. It’s all dissolving. You begin to see, as Alan Watts said, the wisdom of insecurity.
You begin to let go, not holding on to things or objects or situations as being necessary for your happiness. If it’s not, It’s the ability to let go and to flow with the changes. Lastly, what is seen through the magic of mindfulness is perhaps the jewel of the Buddhist teachings, the very essence of his enlightenment. And that is seeing with a very clear and direct vision that there’s no one behind this process of mind and body. The selfless nature of phenomena.
There’s no entity which can be called I, me, mine, ego, self. But rather that what we are is the changing process. Seeing this fundamental emptiness of self That’s an exceedingly liberating insight and it grows as the practice develops. These are just some of the ways, of the means of training the mind, of developing the capability of creating different spaces to explore. For each one of us to see for ourselves which kind of mind space, which kind of world brings the most peace and fulfillment, brings the most love and compassion?
Do you have any questions? Okay. Don’t hassle that particular concept because it’s the most subtle of the insights, right? And it’s not going to happen, a full understanding of it is not going to happen in one day or several days or two weeks or I don’t know how long. It’s a very gradual deepening of understanding into that particular concept.
But the way of understanding it that’s most available, at least on the intellectual level, is to relate it to the idea of the impermanence of all the elements. They are very interrelated. It’s because every aspect of our being is in constant change that no one could appropriately be called I or self. Because anything you call self, a moment later is gone. As you see the changes more and more clearly, the feeling of some solid entity behind it begins to dissolve.
There are times in the practice when you can observe with a very clear vision even consciousness, the knower, as a process of change. Sort of easy to see everything on the outside is changing. The body also, there’s a very deep tendency to be attached to the idea of the observer, the witness, the one who’s watching it all. That seems to provide the continuity. When your mind becomes silent enough and the mindfulness penetrating, you see that even the observer is a changing process.
Consciousness itself is arising and vanishing each moment. And that’s when you really lose your last place to take a stand. There are so many fantastic things to explore in ourselves, in our minds. It’s possible through the development of certain factors of mind, of concentration, of mindfulness, of wisdom. The whole dharma reveals itself.
Certain concepts are hard to grasp or feel uncomfortable, it’s not the concept which is important. You don’t have to believe anything and it’s probably better that you don’t. Just be with your own experience, see how things are happening. Let the understanding come from that rather than any set of beliefs or opinions.