Join Sharon and Joseph Goldstein hosted by the Insight Meditation Society for a Fireside Chat. Several years ago I sat on a stage with one of my colleagues, Sylvia Boorstein, to have a conversation. Some of the topics we had decided beforehand, many were spontaneous. Even though we were on a stage in front of a crowd, we wanted the atmosphere to be intimate, as though someone was listening in as we were chatting over lunch.

The first question Sylvia asked me, totally unexpected, was “What do you think of as the most important thing a teacher has ever said to you?” Because I hadn’t expected it, my unprepared response emerged from deep within, “I’d say it was when my teacher Dipa Ma told me to teach meditation. It formed the foundation of the rest of my life.”

During the fifth session of this series, I will be having a conversation with Joseph Goldstein. I want to bring alive the feeling we got to create on that stage … inviting Joseph -- and more friends in the future -- to  look at our dharma influences, our meditation experiences, issues of contemporary life, and how we deal with them.