Mindfulness of Mind
Joseph Goldstein
Joseph Goldstein — co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts — opens up cittānupassanā, the third foundation of mindfulness. The talk is from his 'Satipatthāna Sutta' retreat series and remains the clearest English-language teaching on observing the mind itself: states of greed, aversion, distraction, calm. Goldstein's exposition is famously precise, famously dry, and entirely free of decoration. It is the lecture you give a serious student who has just discovered they have a mind.
The clearest English teaching on the third foundation of mindfulness — a notoriously elusive practice made operationally accessible.
The sangha responds.
More foundational talks from Modern Contemplative.
The RAIN of Self-Compassion
Tara Brach's signature contribution: the four-step protocol — Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture — that has been adopted, adapted, and absorbed into hundreds of clinical and contemplative settings. In this talk she walks through the practice slowly, illustrates it with case material from her psychotherapy work, and ends with a guided meditation. It has been viewed and listened to tens of millions of times across YouTube and the Tara Brach podcast — the single most circulated practice protocol in modern Western dhamma.
Lovingkindness
Reclaiming Your Energy
Sharon Salzberg, who effectively brought mettā practice from Burma to the American mainstream beginning in the 1970s, gives the definitive contemporary English exposition of lovingkindness. She walks the four classical phrases, the four directions of radiation, and the difficult cases — yourself, the difficult person, the enemy. Salzberg's gift is making a 2,500-year-old contemplative technology feel like a tool you'd actually pick up tomorrow morning.
A Path with Heart
Spirit Rock Dharma Talks
The talk series that became the book that became the franchise that became Spirit Rock. Jack Kornfield — co-founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and arguably the most-listened-to dharma teacher in North America — has been giving 'Path with Heart' talks for thirty years. The throughline is the integration of meditative attainment with ordinary psychological wholeness: the recognition that awakening is not a substitute for healing, and healing is not a substitute for awakening.