![Joseph Goldstein is one of the original founding teachers of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre.](https://www.worcestermag.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2024/05/13/NTEG/73674237007-photo-2-joseph-portrait.png?width=660&height=559&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
When asking Joseph Goldstein, one of the three original founding teachers of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, who turned 80 this May, what first launched his commitment to Buddhism, he spoke initially of a two-year stint in the Peace Corps in Thailand during his early 20s.
He used to visit the Marble Temple, one of Bangkok’s most beautiful, made of imported white marble from Italy and a traditional multitiered roof with gold birdlike accents on the gables. Under this ornate roof, a few dedicated Thai monks taught curious Westerners the Buddha dharma (Buddhist teachings). Goldstein, who had only recently graduated in philosophy from Columbia University, quickly became known there for asking endless questions. One monk, to keep him quiet, said Goldstein with a laugh, invited him to actually try meditation.
Even in this brief exposure, lasting all of five minutes, Goldstein said, “Something really remarkable happened but it wasn’t any great enlightenment. Even in those first few minutes I saw that there was a way to look into the mind as well as looking out through it. I was amazed that there was a methodology for actually looking at the mind, and that was very exciting to me.”
‘It was all new, completely new’
Although his original hope in joining the Peace Corps had been to go to East Africa where he could climb Mount Kilimanjaro, Asia hooked the young man, who had grown up in a small town in the Catskills of New York, known then primarily as a Jewish resort area. “I was 21 years old and it was all very exotic to me — the first time in Asia, first time being in the Far East, meditation — it was all new, completely new. I didn’t know anything.”
After completing his two-year assignment in Thailand and with a lingering foretaste of Buddhism, Goldstein returned home and tried to meditate but felt the need for a teacher in order to make any real progress. This realization triggered his decision to head for India where he remained for most of his 20s, returning occasionally only to make some money in order to go back again. “If I went with a couple of thousand dollars, or a thousand dollars, it would last for a couple of years, so it was perfect,” he said.
Goldstein found his first teacher in Bodh Gaya, a pilgrimage site in northeastern India, where the iconic fig tree had once stood. Under its canopy, the prince Gautama Siddhartha had attained enlightenment and become known thereafter as “the Buddha.” The tree itself has since been referred to as the bodhi tree or “awakening” tree.
Goldstein’s teacher, a monk named Munindra (1915-2003), was a rare breed in the Buddhist world because he combined great scholarship with a formidable meditation practice. Originally from east Bengal, what is today Bangladesh, Munindra was born into a clan of descendants of the original Buddhists of India who were forced east by the Muslim invasion of the 11th century.
Goldstein described him as “quirky, open-minded and curious about everything.” He encouraged his students to study with different teachers and to learn about other traditions. “There is something he said so many times, a million times, and I just love it,” said Goldstein, laughing. “Just be simple and easy. Be simple and easy about things. About your practice, about your life, simple and easy.”
Aside from that pithy teaching, he told the young man, “The dharma takes care of those who take care of the dharma,” a phrase that found resonance with Goldstein and became something of a mantra and guiding principle throughout his life.
‘Conditions arose for me to begin teaching’
When Goldstein returned to the U.S. in 1974, he was uncertain of what to do with his life but teaching had always seemed a likely prospect. As Munindra had sagely noted, the dharma takes care of its own, and as Goldstein phrased it, “Conditions arose for me to begin teaching.”
The occasion was an invitation from Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert, ex-Harvard psychologist, from Brookline), the charismatic spiritual teacher with the recent bestseller “Be Here Now” (1971) under his belt. The two seekers had met previously in India and had reconnected by chance at a restaurant in Berkeley, California.
Ram Dass wanted Goldstein to teach at the founding summer session of Naropa Institute, now Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado. Naropa was the first Buddhist-oriented institution of higher learning in the U.S. at that time, and the inspiration of the globe-trotting Tibetan monk Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Ram Dass suggested that Goldstein teach the meditation section for his lecture course.
“That really seeded the whole thing,” said Goldstein. Meanwhile, Trungpa had recruited Jack Kornfield to teach vipassana or mindfulness meditation after the two had met at a cocktail party in Cambridge the previous year. Sharon Salzberg, who had attended retreats in India given by the renowned Burmese monk S.N. Goenka, had also become friends with Ram Dass there and was likewise recruited to teach a meditation class at Naropa.
Said Goldstein, “In our tradition, we team-teach — always two or three teachers.” In this way, Goldstein, Salzberg and Kornfield, who had each trained independently of each other in early Buddhism, known as Theravada, and learned its vipassana meditation techniques, shared some common values and experience.
That summer Goldstein formed lifelong bonds with Kornfield, whom he had met for the first time and Salzberg, whom he had met previously in India with Ram Dass at a retreat given by Goenka. All on a similar trajectory, they began to receive invitations to teach retreats across the country, then in Europe and Australia. “It was a very grassroots setup,” said Goldstein. Generally, they would organize a course, rent a place and someone would volunteer to cook.
They were grateful to find such a receptive audience for their teaching among young Americans. Not only were they among the first Western meditation teachers who had trained in Asia with authentic Theravadin teachers but they also had a flair for making Eastern spiritual teaching accessible in an American vernacular.
Summer at Naropa had been a game changer. They were making something new — an American Theravadin Buddhism but without gurus, incense and robes. Part of their success was that the Buddhism they introduced was without the dogmas, doctrines, rituals and religious hierarchies associated with the Judeo-Christian traditions that many had left behind.
Seeking a permanent retreat center
With the growing popularity of these vipassana retreats, Goldstein, together with Kornfield, Salzberg and several of their students, decided it would provide a more stable existence to establish a permanent retreat center. They began their search for such a place in the Berkshires and the Catskills, but nothing affordable turned up.
Were it not for a parallel but opposite trend within the Catholic Church — that of dwindling religious vocations combined with a growing number of disaffected Catholics leaving the church to explore Eastern religions — they might have had to look much longer. But the Blessed Sacrament Novitiate, which had been in Barre since 1946, was up for sale. It had only 18 residents and one novice in a building that could sleep 100.
The building also had a fully furnished kitchen and even a small bowling alley in the basement. After minimal haggling, the parties agreed to sell the building to IMS for $150,000. Following a similar trajectory, Kripalu, ashram turned retreat center in Stockbridge, had been a Jesuit novitiate for 48 years before it was an ashram and then a yoga center.
The small band of American Buddhist teachers called the new center the Insight Meditation Society and doors opened for retreats in 1976. As a nonprofit, it was established as a church, which legally required IMS to have a traceable spiritual lineage. Within early or Theravada Buddhism, they chose three founding teachers that represented distinct traditions and methodologies in which they had been trained.
These teachers were the Burmese vipassana master U Ba Khin (1889-1971), who was Goenka’s teacher; the Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw (1904-1982), who had been Munindra’s teacher and represented the forest tradition of Burma; and the Thai monk Ajahn Chah, who represented the Thai forest tradition. Given this lineage requirement, from then on IMS would only host Buddhist teachers in the Theravada tradition, which excluded the Mahayana schools such as Zen and Tibetan Buddhism.
Once established, other influential vipassana teachers came to teach at IMS. The well-known Burmese monk U Pandita (1921-2016) offered a three-month retreat in 1984. U Pandita was “strong and demanding. He upped our game,” said Goldstein, adding, “He was like a kick in the pants.” He taught the metta (loving kindness) meditation phrases for which IMS is widely known. Another cherished visitor was the Bengali Dipa Ma (1911-1989) who also taught a retreat in 1984. Said Goldstein, “When you went into her room it was just like walking into this field of light because the quality of her peace and her love was so palpable you felt bathed in it.”
‘We emphasize the teaching of loving kindness’
In the U.S. today, a multiplicity of Buddhist communities representing nearly every part of Asia can be found. These diverse dharma streams exist in conversation with each other, revealing what is essential or common to all the teachings, something Goldstein wrote about in his book “One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism” (2002). The gist is, said Goldstein, “it’s not uncommon for students to practice in different traditions or just explore different ones, even if they’re committed to one.” In the Theravadin tradition, “we emphasize the teaching of loving kindness, known as metta, which some of the other traditions don’t emphasize so much.” But with a lot of interaction among the different Buddhist groups or sanghas in America, “we see some of these other traditions beginning to incorporate the practice of loving kindness.”
Goldstein even offers himself as an example of this tendency to borrow and integrate from another tradition. Over the years Goldstein has taken several trips to Nepal to get teachings from Tibetan monks there. He learned things compatible with Theravadin Buddhism but “with a slightly different flavor.” As a result, Goldstein noticed a shift in his own practice. Whereas in the past he recognized the impact of meditation in improving his mind, which could only have a positive effect on others. But after his Tibetan experiences, he confessed, “I made the helping of others the very motivation for practicing, and not only as the outcome of practice.”
Goldstein attributes the amazing growth of interest in Buddhism partly to some of the secular mindfulness teaching. “I mean, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction has had a huge impact on the country,” said Goldstein, “Lots of people come here through that.” Reflecting on his first years teaching in the ’70s, no one knew what mindfulness was and no one used the word then, but now it’s in the mainstream. The way the teachings spread occurred when people could see that “meditation is not a strange exotic thing but actually has a lot of practical benefits in one’s life as well as being a profound spiritual path.”
Each person can connect where their interest lies. “Some people may say, OK, stress reduction, that’s a good thing. But some people may want to delve a little deeper.” Among its benefits, meditation teaches people a great lesson in “how we feel is up to us,” said Goldstein. “We cannot control all the circumstances of our lives but only how we feel about them. Nobody makes us feel a certain way. What we feel will be conditioned by a lot of different things, but meditation provides a way of disentangling from patterns that just cause more suffering.”
Today, IMS has two meditation retreat facilities in Barre — the original Retreat Center and the Forest Refuge, added in 1998 for long-term personal retreats. It has plans now to build a third complex on its 400 acres of woodlands in order to accommodate the few thousand of annual retreatants who come to IMS for spiritual retreats that fill up fast with waiting lists. These retreats are usually for 10 days, but the longest lasts three months.
Having recently turned 80 and reflecting on the previous decade of his life, Goldstein was delighted to share his new definition of enlightenment, which he calls “lightening up.” “I really see that’s what the whole process is about, meaning not taking oneself, and one’s views, and one’s opinions so seriously. You know, just lighten up! It doesn’t mean not having views, but we can hold them lightly.”
For more information visit dharma.org.