Joseph Goldstein went to Thailand with the Peace Corps in 1965, met teachers of vipassana meditation in the Theravada tradition, and spent most of the next eight years in Asia
How Amazing!
Joseph Goldstein grew up in his family’s resort in the Catskill Mountains of New York and graduated from Columbia University, where he majored in philosophy. Courses in Spinoza and Eastern Religion sparked an interest in both metaphysics and spiritual inquiry. "I read the Bhagavad Gita, and the whole notion of non-attachment—of acting without attachment to the fruits of the action—just made sense to me." He went to Thailand with the Peace Corps in 1965, met teachers of vipassana meditation in the Theravada tradition, and spent most of the next eight years in Asia. In l975, he, along with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield, cofounded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), in Barre, Massachusetts, one of the first vipassana residential retreat centers in the country.
You’re part of a group of American teachers who invited the Burmese teacher U Pandita Sayadaw to Barre. How did he affect your practice?
U Pandita brought tremendous rigor to our practice. He’s a very demanding teacher, like a tough old Zen master. He wasn’t there to make us feel good or happy or comfortable. His teaching was all about liberation, walking the path to some level of completion. He’s a spiritual warrior and he expected all of us to be warriors as well.
In l984 we asked him to teach a three-month retreat at IMS and over the next eight or nine years I sat with him in Burma, Nepal, Australia, as well as in this country. That first year was especially tough. All the yogis (meditators) saw him for interviews six days a week and had to tell him how many hours we sat, how many hours we walked. We also had to describe very precisely what was happening in our meditation, without any interpretation, judgment, or assessment. That way of reporting demanded a great closeness of attention to what was actually going on. One of U Pandita’s great strengths was his ability to track our practice with amazing precision: He’d know day-to-day, moment-to-moment where we were.
We also had to be able to really surrender to him, to his style and his way. He was not at all interested in debating with us. From the Burmese point of view, one of the great virtues of a student is obedience. Now, that’s not a highly valued virtue in America— we’re not so big on obedience [laughs]. But to really work well with him took surrender and saying, "Okay, I’m not here to argue. I’m here to learn."
Do your students argue with you?
Sometimes. But I think I have a softer approach than U Pandita. I teach more in the style of Munindra, my first teacher. Munindraji was very gentle and open. He didn’t enforce a form, a discipline. But what I saw from working with him is that, even though it may take a little longer, if we are sincere in our efforts, self-discipline can come out of the practice itself, because it’s what we most want to be doing. In those early years with Munindra, for months at a time he would be away and I would just be meditating by myself—I was so enthusiastic and happy and grateful to have the opportunity to practice. The joy of this way of dharma practice is the inspiration now for developing the new Forest Refuge.
But what form is best really depends on the person and the time—for some the carrot, for some the stick. The Buddha talked about this. He gave an image of training a horse. For some horses, just the shadow of the whip is enough; for others a slight touch spurs them on; and others really need to be whacked, metaphorically speaking [laughs]. When I began practicing with U Pandita, I think it was time for that whack.
