The Buddha described awakening not as a leap to the summit but as a gradual training, one step laid down after another. Drawing on the image of walking (forest monks on tudong, pilgrims, and the cleared trails of these woods), this talk explores the anupubbasikkhā through generosity, ethics, meditation, and wisdom. With the Buddha’s teaching to Gaṇaka Moggallāna, the bird that carries only its wings, and poetry inspired by freedom, we reflect on how one thing lawfully leads to the next. We set up the conditions, and the dhamma does the rest. The arc of the path is long, but it bends toward freedom.

In this wide-ranging conversation with devon hase, Joseph Goldstein shares reflections from more than sixty years of meditation practice. Exploring walking meditation, mindfulness of the body, impermanence, and working skillfully with fear and anger, Joseph offers practical guidance for cultivating equanimity and bringing greater wisdom and freedom into everyday life.

This recording also includes Mat Schencks offering instructions for walking meditation.

Continuing with the body and breath, these instructions explore how to recognize subtle qualities of quiet joy and pleasantness in the body and allow them to become a support for practice. Calming and quiet joy can nourish one another, deepening ease and steadiness in both sitting and walking meditation.

Techniques in the practice take many different forms. Some questions include how to work with grief after recent death of one's mother, how to deal with sloth and torpor, how to do walking meditation, etc.

Beginning with the preliminary practices that establish a foundation for meditation, these instructions explore mindfulness of the body in sitting, walking, and everyday movement, with an emphasis on curiosity, kindness, ease, and continuity of awareness.

Includes instructions on 6-Part walking meditation at the end.