Insight Meditation - Joseph Goldstein

After all this time in practice, it is funny that I have never read any Joseph Goldstein. I have always been a bit allergic to the "big names", thinking that their dharma was a bit watered down for my more hardcore tastes. But after reading Dan Harris' book, I decided to give JG a try and, I have to say, I am glad I did with this:

“Insight Meditation” by Joseph Goldstein
itun.es/ca/S8_KD.l

He has quite an earthy style that is very likeable. The book is a whirlwind tour of vipassana, but my favourite parts were sections 2 and 3, "How to Practice" and "Freeing the Mind". Both sections had a lot of useful little tips that seemed to resonate with me, the latter section being particularly useful as it discusses how to deal with specific hinderances. Also kind of nice is that each chapter is literally no more than 2-3 pages, so it makes for very focused reading and I can see myself using this as a future reference.

Later sections were a little less practice-based, and dealt with issues like karma, psychology, and "practicing in the world", all of which remained interesting but a bit less so in my current stage of practice.

Sadly, I am a horrible note taker these days so my book reports don't have a lot of meat on them to help you make reading decisions by but FWIW, this is for sure a keeper for me.

Yes, I get your "cup of tea" comment. Unfairly, no doubt, I was not really drawn to him, or Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Sylivia Boorstein. But in Dan Harris' book there was more direct mention of Paths, stream entry, etc., that I found previously lacking that prompted me to pick this up.