Three Strategies for Getting Over Yourself | Joseph Goldstein

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, how we doing everybody? Every year, the great meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein does a three-month retreat by himself at his home in Massachusetts. And every year he emerges with a bunch of really interesting thoughts about how to do life better and often very specifically about how to improve your meditation practice.

And in the conversation you're about to hear, Joseph had just emerged from one of his retreats with a bunch of thoughts on what are called the three proliferating tendencies, or the three prapanchas, to use the ancient Pali term. By the way, Pali was the language in which the teachings of the Buddha were written down. Anyway, these Three prapanchas are the ways in which we perpetuate a sense of self, not a healthy sense of self, which we all need, but an unhealthy sense of self, like the Beatles sang about in that song I mean mine, the sense of self that locks you in and blocks you from full connection and happiness. As Joseph has explained to me and to many others before, you can think about the process of going deeper in meditation.

as a process of lightening up or getting less self-centered. And you're about to get a master class in doing just that. For the uninitiated, Joseph is one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie, Massachusetts. He's written several books, including One Dharma and Mindfulness, both of which I highly recommend. In this conversation we talk about the three proliferating tendencies or prepanchas

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