Podcast Summary: “Three Strategies for Getting Over Yourself”
Podcast: 10% Happier with Dan Harris
Guest: Joseph Goldstein
Date: October 10, 2025
Overview
This episode features renowned meditation teacher and Insight Meditation Society co-founder Joseph Goldstein, who shares “three strategies for getting over yourself.” Drawing from his recent personal meditation retreat, Joseph explores how Buddhist psychology identifies three mental habits—called “proliferating tendencies” or papancha—that reinforce an unhealthy sense of self and generate suffering. The discussion is a deep dive into practical ways to loosen the grip of self-centeredness through mindfulness, language, and meditative focus.
Key Points & Insights
1. The Three Proliferating Tendencies (Papancha)
- Papancha refers to the mental proliferation—a runaway process where the mind spins stories, identifying with passing experience, creating a rigid, suffering-prone self.
- There are three main tendencies that reinforce the sense of self:
- Craving ("Not Mine")
- Conceit ("I Am")
- Views of Self ("Myself")
[07:47] What Are Proliferating Tendencies?
“It's just the mind proliferating and elaborating from the bare elements of our experience... we build whole worlds and then get enmeshed… which adds complexity and suffering.”
— Joseph Goldstein [08:13]
[09:39] The “Imperialistic Mind”
“You take a data point from the present moment… and you colonize the future with this whole, ‘Why am I always the guy who stubs his toe?’... Three runaway trains that are main contributors to our suffering as humans.”
— Dan Harris [09:39]
2. The Three Tendencies Explored
a. Craving: The “Not Mine” Proliferation
- Taking things as “mine” fuels attachment and dissatisfaction.
- Example: Meditatively labeling sensations as “leg” instantly makes it “my leg,” intertwining with self-concept.
- Societal link: Body advertisement and self-image obsession.
“When it's mine, we have all kinds of wantings or cravings about it… When we see the body as just physical elements… We're in harmony with nature, rather than creating a papancha.”
— Joseph Goldstein [14:04]
b. Conceit: The “I Am” Proliferation
- In Buddhist context, conceit means persistent “I am” identification, not just arrogance.
- “I am,” “I'm better/worse than,” “I was,” “I will be”—all are forms of conceit.
- Comparison and self-referential thinking often occur beneath conscious awareness, causing contraction and dissatisfaction.
“It’s just the I am-ness which manifests... I’m better than, I’m worse than, I’m equal to—just some comparing function is all considered conceit… even in a negative way, it’s still revolving around that I am sense.”
— Joseph Goldstein [17:07]
c. View of Self: The “Myself” Proliferation
- Mistakenly reifying self as something solid and persistent, rather than as a process.
- Buddha’s foundational teaching: “Not mine, not I, not myself.”
- Our lives consist of six sense experiences (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought); self is a conceptual overlay, not a fixed essence.
“Self is just like river. Self is a designation for this changing process of mind, body, elements... In understanding non-self… it’s simply understanding that the word ‘self’ does not refer to anything substantial…”
— Joseph Goldstein [27:00]
3. The Building Blocks of Experience: “The All”
- Six foundations: eye & visible objects, ear & sounds, nose & smells, tongue & tastes, body & sensations, mind & mental objects.
- Everything we identify with is just these six “pieces” in flux.
“It’s like our lives… a six-piece chamber orchestra… what makes the music harmonious or discordant is not the first five, but our mental responses to what arises.”
— Joseph Goldstein [21:23]
4. The Two Truths: Conventional and Ultimate
- Conventional truth: “I,” “Self,” “You” are linguistic conventions necessary for communication.
- Ultimate truth: Phenomena (including self) are processes, not things.
“For the purpose of communication [‘I’] is totally appropriate… The problem is that for most of us… we are seduced by that language into believing that is the more ultimate reality.”
— Joseph Goldstein [40:26]
5. Practical Strategies (“Three Pieces of Joseph Homework”)
a. Practice 1: Use the Passive Voice [45:32]
- Why: Conventional language (“I see a sight”) inserts the notion of an “I”; passive language (“A sight is being seen”) removes the subject, aligning with Buddhist insight into not-self.
- How: In meditation and daily life, mentally note experiences in the passive voice (“A sound is being heard”), emphasizing the process over the possessor.
- Effect: Reduces over-efforting and softens the grip of selfing.
“As soon as we drop into the passive voice… we can really settle back. We've taken the ‘I’ out of it, and new experiences are arising by themselves.”
— Joseph Goldstein [49:13]
b. Practice 2: See Through the Elements [63:48]
- Why: Identifying bodily sensations as “mine” creates craving and ownership. Instead, recognize fundamental qualities: earth (hardness), air (movement), fire (heat), water (cohesion).
- How: During walking meditation, instead of labeling “my leg moves,” note “air element moves, earth element touches,” connecting direct experience with the language of elements.
- Effect: The “I” and “mine” stories fade, replaced by a perception of experience as impersonal phenomena.
“Just the change of language removed that veneer of I, me, mine, and it dropped the whole experience into simply being the elements being known. That’s all that was there. The I disappeared, the I am disappeared, the mine disappeared.”
— Joseph Goldstein [66:14]
c. Practice 3: Focus on Disappearance [73:43]
- Why: The mind is trained to notice what arises; focusing on the constant vanishing of experience reveals impermanence at a deep level and reduces grasping.
- How: Try a walk (or sit) where you continually notice not just what arises, but precisely how everything vanishes. “What happened to the step of 5 minutes ago?... Gone.”
- Effect: Attachment and grasping become impossible, replaced by a profound sense of freedom and heart-opening equanimity.
“Brought my mind right to that point of things just disappearing... It’s impossible to hold on. The thing is gone by the time we could even hold onto it. And so the mind has let go of any kind of grasping or attachment or even wanting… so we get into a kind of free flow.”
— Joseph Goldstein [75:01]
- Analogy: Free-falling out of a plane—initial exhilaration, then fear, then profound relaxation as you realize there’s no ground and nothing to cling to.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
-
On Self-Judgment in Practice:
“We can get to a place in practice where we're actually delighted to see all this stuff [defilements] because we'd rather see it than not see it... as we see them we are not so caught by them.”
— Joseph Goldstein [57:12] -
On Using 'I' Usefully:
“We use ‘I’ and ‘my’... just for ease of communication... It's just to understand that even as we're using that language, we don't want to be caught by it or seduced into believing it's something real.”
— Joseph Goldstein [60:16] -
On the Liberation in ‘No-Ground’:
“You realize there’s no ground… Then you relax into an equanimity… It’s just a being that’s not holding on to anything and is resting in the peace of that.”
— Joseph Goldstein [80:58]
Timestamps for Key Segments
- 07:47 — The proliferation of mind explained: introducing papancha
- 09:39 — “Imperialistic mind” and mental colonization
- 13:58 — Craving and its link to “mine”
- 17:07 — Conceit and the “I am” habit
- 21:23 — The six building blocks (“the all”) defined
- 27:00 — Non-self and the “river” analogy
- 39:46 — The two truths: conventional & ultimate
- 45:32 — Practice 1: The transformative power of passive voice
- 63:48 — Practice 2: Meditating with the elements
- 73:43 — Practice 3: The liberating insight of disappearance
Tone & Language
Joseph Goldstein brings measured depth, warmth, and clarity, weaving stories from his own retreat and classic Buddhist texts. Dan Harris is candid, a touch playful, often serving as the stand-in for the skeptical or new-to-Buddhism listener, asking Joseph to clarify or justify difficult ideas (“How can I be held responsible for my actions if I don’t exist?” [36:12]). Joseph often responds with patience and wit, gently dismantling assumptions and offering direct experiential pointers.
Summary Takeaway
Understanding and practicing with the three proliferating tendencies—craving, conceit, and view of self—offers a practical path toward reducing suffering, deflating unhealthy self-centeredness, and opening into greater freedom.
Joseph’s accessible strategies—shifting language, seeing through the elements, and highlighting impermanence—are concrete tools for daily life and meditation, pointing listeners toward a lighter, more spacious relationship to their experience.
Listen If You Want To...
- Go beyond basic mindfulness into tackling the roots of human suffering
- Understand the psychology of self from a Buddhist perspective
- Practice concrete, simple meditative experiments in selflessness
- Hear warm, pragmatic dialogue between two gifted teachers
“We’re not completely captured by the world of conventional and concept… we're kind of poking holes in that, and they're powerful. That really begins the process of liberation.”
— Joseph Goldstein [71:55]