Joseph Goldstein describes the steps along the Buddha’s path to awakening, helping us see the significance of the Buddha in our own lives.
This dharma talk from The Insight Meditation Society was originally published on Dharmaseed.
“In order to awaken to the hidden possibilities of life, we need to renounce, we need to be willing to give up our ordinary or conventional way of viewing things. Things are often not what they seem to be. If we stay just on the surface, we are often living in ignorance and illusion.” – Joseph Goldstein
In this episode, Joseph Goldstein lectures on:
- The sacred journey of the Buddha’s life
- The Buddha as a universal archetype for awakening
- Connecting the Buddha’s journey with our own journey
- Materialism and the wheel of becoming
- Discovering the real value in our lives
- Reflecting on the inevitability of death
- The uncertainty of the time of death
- What actually matters when we reach our end
- Our own calls to destiny
- Giving up a conventional way of viewing things
- Our own power over the way we are
- Confronting the forces of Mara
- Relative and absolute bodhicitta
“Now we each start our individual journey, our individual call to awakening, but as the practice unfolds, there’s a shift of understanding when we realize that we are not practicing for ourselves alone. This is the arising of what is called bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is that motivation and practice, or the aspiration, that our life and our dharma journey be for the benefit, for the awakening of all beings.” – Joseph Goldstein