Insight Hour with Joseph Goldstein Ep. 253 – No Foothold: Integrating Relative & Ultimate Truth In Our Lives
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Oct 10, 2025 Dive into the art of integrating relative and ultimate truth, as Joseph Goldstein explores how perceiving life as a lucid dream can enhance our reality. Discover how compassion naturally arises from understanding emptiness and the illusion of self. Learn about the pitfalls of ordinary perception colored by desires and aversions, and why the attachment to pleasure hinders liberation. Goldstein also probes the mind's ability to remain peaceful amid suffering, emphasizing that past and future are mere constructs, freeing us from burdens.
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Two Levels Of Reality
- Joseph Goldstein distinguishes relative (conventional) and ultimate (more ultimate) levels of truth as complementary ways of seeing experience.
- Integrating both lets us act in the world while retaining insight into emptiness and selflessness.
Bird Hits Its Reflection
- Goldstein recounts a bird repeatedly flying into a chrome bumper because it kept mistaking its reflection for another bird.
- He uses this image to show how we repeatedly crash into suffering driven by mistaken perceptions and habits.
Pleasant ≠ Ultimately Good
- Goldstein highlights the deep-rooted misperception that pleasant equals good and unpleasant equals bad, which fuels attachment and aversion.
- He stresses that liberation is impossible while clinging to pleasant and rejecting unpleasant experiences.
