Hello, welcome to the waking up podcast. This is Sam Harris. Today I'm speaking once again to my friend Joseph Goldstein. Joseph is a meditation teacher. He started the Insight Meditation Society in barre, Massachusetts, where I did, I think most of my retreats back in the day. And he's been on two earlier podcasts, podcasts number four and 15. And if you haven't heard those, those are worth listening to because you find out who Joseph is and how he got so deeply into practice. It is no exaggeration to say that Joseph is as responsible as anyone for bringing the practice of Vipassana, otherwise known as mindfulness to the west, from India. Joseph is certainly one of the finest meditation teachers I know. 

And today, we take your questions in an AMA. And we deal with some basic questions like Why meditate in the first place? And how long do negative emotions actually last when you pay attention to them, but then we get into esoterica like, selflessness, and the Buddhist concept of enlightenment, and topics that will only be of interest perhaps to a subset of you. And again, as always, if you find conversations like this valuable, you are free and encouraged to support the podcast at Sam Harris dot o RG forward slash support. 

And now I bring you Joseph Goldstein. I am back here for a third podcast with my friend Joseph Goldstein. Joseph, thank you for doing this once again, my pleasure. So we have taken questions from the internet, this time around so as to ensure that we answer questions that are interesting to people rather than try to find our way through the the maze of our minds together. We went out on Twitter and Facebook and got a bunch of questions.

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