Sounds True Presents

How to Meditate in the Insight Tradition for Inner Peace and Wisdom

Join world-renowned teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein to begin and deepen your meditation practice with their online program Insight Meditation.

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"Beautifully done … a fabulous resource for anyone wanting support as they learn meditation at home."

Jack Kornfield, PhD
Author of A Path with Heart

When You Enroll in Insight Meditation, You'll Enjoy These Benefits …

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Lifetime
Access

Continue your practice at your own pace with lifetime access to all course materials

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Personal Guidance

From two of the most experienced and respected meditation teachers in the West

Two Pre‑Recorded Q&As

Two supportive Q&A sessions, one with each master teacher

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12 In-Depth Lessons

Including guided meditations, a wealth of supplemental materials, and practices for daily life

Dear friend,

Even in the most difficult of times, the Buddha taught that there is a practice to build resilience, find peace, make wise decisions, and live with empathy for everyone on our shared journey …

This practice offers us a contemplative path to emotional balance, personal sovereignty, and spiritual freedom. It's a path that has served millions of people for centuries—and it’s available to all of us.

Insight meditation, also known as vipassana, is the traditional art of meditation as it was taught by the Buddha himself, then passed from friend to friend for over 2,600 years. Insight meditation remains popular even today because it works …

Since we cofounded the Insight Meditation Society nearly 50 years ago, we’ve watched as thousands of our students have made personal breakthroughs and transformed their lives through meditation. (Many have even become teachers themselves!)

Now, we're delighted to bring you our most comprehensive at-home retreat curriculum with Insight Meditation: An In-Depth Course on How to Meditate.

We created this 12-session program to teach anyone, with any level of experience, how to start and continue a meditation practice. We’re confident this course is unlike any other online training available today.

If you want to start—or continue—a profound meditation practice that will transform your way of being in the world … from feeling out of control and reactive to stable, loving, and wise … we wholeheartedly invite you to join the Insight Meditation online course.

Your guides on the journey,

Sharon Salzberg & Joseph Goldstein
Cofounders of the Insight Meditation Society

Meet Your Teachers

Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg, a student of Buddhism since 1971, has been leading meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Influenced by her more than twenty-five years of study with Burmese, Indian, and Tibetan teachers, she teaches intensive awareness practice and the profound cultivation of lovingkindness and compassion. She is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and the author of several books including The Kindness Handbook, A Heart as Wide as the World, and, most recently, Real Change. Sharon's Sounds True audio programs include Embracing Your Boundless Heart and Guided Meditations for Love and Wisdom.

Joseph Goldstein

Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight and lovingkindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974, and has studied and practiced different forms of Buddhist meditation under eminent teachers from India, Burma, and Tibet since 1967. He is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and the Forest Refuge. His books include A Heart Full of Peace, One Dharma, Insight Meditation, and The Experience of Insight. Joseph's audio programs with Sounds True include the three-volume Abiding in Mindfulness series.

When You Enroll in Insight Meditation, You'll Experience:

A Complete Audio Curriculum
Start and sustain your meditation practice with over 23 hours of insightful teachings and practices to inspire, instruct, and transform.
Two Pre-Recorded Q&A Sessions
Join Sharon and Joseph for two supportive sessions, where they answer essential questions and share additional insights.
12 Downloadable Guided Meditations
Practice anywhere and anytime with expertly guided meditations led by Sharon and Joseph, from basic breathwork to lovingkindness and more.
An In-Depth Learning Portal
Reinforce your learning with an online portal full of insightful writing, exercises, resources, articles, and more.
Lifetime Access
Go at your own pace and revisit your favorite materials anytime with lifetime access to all course content.

"Goldstein and Salzberg are wise, gentle teachers who've been there, and who have the genius of leading others into the majestic domain they know as well."

Larry Dossey, MD
Author of Prayer Is Good Medicine

The Insight Meditation Course Brings You:

World-Class Teachers

Begin a deep and lasting meditation practice with two of our most beloved and experienced teachers and cofounders of the Insight Meditation Society.

Vipassana Meditation

Explore traditional insight, or vipassana, meditation as it was taught by the Buddha himself and then passed friend to friend for more than 2,600 years.

An At-Home Retreat

Structured much like their sought-after in-person retreats, this course offers an immersive meditation training that can be customized to your schedule.

Inner Transformation

More than stress relief, though it does that too, insight meditation provides a pathway to inner transformation that will carry you through all of life's challenges.

What You'll Learn

The Insight Meditation online course has been designed to introduce you to the practice of meditation in the vipassana (“insight”) Buddhist tradition. It features two supportive Q&A session recordings, written and audio wisdom teachings, guided meditations, and a wealth of additional experiential exercises to help you bring your practice beyond the cushion and into daily life.

12 Sessions of Personal Guidance from Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein

Session One: An Introduction to Meditation and the Power of Mindfulness

In this session, you’ll explore the concept of mindfulness and its importance in our lives. According to the Buddha, we cultivate true happiness and peace when we are mindful, when we are able to bring our full attention to the present moment.

Highlights:

  • Discover insight meditation’s origins with the story of the Buddha
  • Explore the Noble Eightfold Path and Five Precepts for ethical living
  • Practice six breathing exercises and your first mindfulness meditation

Teachings and Practices to Increase Your Everyday Awareness

Session Two: Bare Attention—Expanding the Field of Awareness

Session Two explores the nature of inner awareness. You’ll discover powerful techniques for slowing down and becoming more present in every moment.

Highlights:

  • Learn how to work with your thoughts during practice
  • Practice a guided walking meditation exercise, along with variations for further exploration
  • Discover the role of the courageous heart in being with what is

A Practical Exploration of Buddhist Psychology

Session Three: Desire and Aversion—How to Work with Obstacles

In Session Three, you’ll look closely at the emotions of desire and aversion—how they are widely misunderstood in Western culture, and how we can undo their influence in our everyday lives.

Highlights:

  • Gain awareness of the five hindrances to mindfulness — desire, aversion, sleepiness, restlessness, and doubt
  • Work with pain and physical sensations through a guided practice and additional exercises
  • Learn how attachments to desire and aversion control your life, and how mindfulness can help you break free

Overcome the Most Common Obstacles to Meditation

Session Four: Sleepiness, Restlessness, and Doubt—Antidotes to Distraction

In this session, you’ll continue your exploration of the five traditional hindrances to mindfulness, taking a closer look at the remaining three: sleepiness, restlessness, and doubt. You’ll also begin to bring more simplicity into your life.

Highlights:

  • Access fundamental clarity of mind as you cultivate the balance between being tranquil and alert
  • Explore a guided practice for being with and seeing through difficult emotions
  • Support your work with each of the five hindrances with several additional exercises

Break Free from Self-Limiting Beliefs

Session Five: Concepts and Reality—Working with Perception

What is the difference between our thoughts about the world and the world as it is? In this session, we’ll investigate this question and look at some practical actions we can take to free ourselves of limiting concepts that obscure our direct experience of reality.

Highlights:

  • Explore the nature of mind, our mental “prisons,” and the myths we carry about time, place, and self
  • Begin to unwind the difference between concept and reality to taste true freedom
  • Practice mindful eating—how this routine activity can become a vehicle for greater awareness

Transform Suffering and Reactivity

Session Six: Suffering—The Four Noble Truths

Session Six explores the Four Noble Truths. Many people have negative reactions to the first noble truth: life involves suffering. Yet denying the existence of suffering doesn’t make it go away. By acknowledging this truth, we take the first step toward freedom.

Highlights:

  • Understand the Four Noble Truths as you begin to transform suffering into an experience of freedom
  • Learn the three categories of human suffering: painful experiences, change, and conditionality
  • Work with suffering in your own life with a guided practice and additional exercises

Avoid the Trap of Self-Deception

Session Seven: Delusion—Practicing to See Things as They Are

In a sense, delusion can be seen as the opposite of vipassana, or insight. In this session, we’ll look at the various ways our minds create delusion and how we can recognize and transform those tendencies through awareness.

Highlights:

  • Shed light on our shared illusions and how delusion traps us in “unreality”
  • Nourish the “wise attention” necessary to free yourself from the bonds of illusion
  • Identify and work with your own delusions with a guided practice and additional exercise

Deepen Your Understanding of the Law of Cause and Effect

Session Eight: Karma—The Fruits of Our Intentions

Session Eight explores the often misunderstood concept of karma. You’ll investigate the law of cause and effect, as well the importance of the intentions that precede our actions.

Highlights:

  • What is karma? Understand how consequences are generated and compounded throughout our lives
  • Learn the Four Brahma-Viharas: lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity
  • Explore the six realms of existence, your intentions, and meditation as a path to purifying your karma

Tools to Find Your Balance and Stay Poised Under Pressure

Session Nine: Equanimity—The Power of Perspective

In order to stabilize the positive effects of wisdom, compassion, and mindfulness, it is crucial that we learn to develop equanimity. This spiritual force gives us the perspective we need to ride the changing tides of experience without getting washed away each time a wave rolls in.

Highlights:

  • Gain tools to let go of your habitual responses as you chart a steady course forward
  • The Eight Vicissitudes—learn the four joys and their respective opposites that we encounter again and again throughout our lives
  • Engage with all of your senses as gateways to perception

Cultivate the Qualities That Will Empower You on the Path

Session Ten: Faith and Wisdom—Deepening Our Practice

In this session, we’ll take a closer look at faith as a quality of mind that leads to freedom from ignorance. We also explore the meaning of wisdom—a word that takes on specific nuances in the Buddhist tradition.

Highlights:

  • The Five Spiritual Powers— the inner qualities that empower us on the path to freedom
  • How faith and wisdom are available to us in each moment, and are of great importance on the spiritual path
  • “Big Mind”—a guided practice to show us how, through choiceless awareness, we can begin to penetrate the nature of reality as it is

Learn a Revered Practice for Opening the Heart and Extending Love and Compassion

Session Eleven: Lovingkindness—The Revolutionary Art of Happiness

In this session, we unpack the power of metta, or lovingkindness, and its revolutionary potential in our lives. Lovingkindness practice provides a perspective of radical non-separation, and its skillful application plants the seeds of love in our lives.

Highlights:

  • Clarify the obstacles to experiencing lovingkindness in our everyday lives
  • Learn the four phases of lovingkindness—from loving ourselves and loved ones to strangers and the world
  • Deepen your experience of lovingkindness with a complete guided metta meditation and exercises

A Meditation Practice That Grows with You

Session Twelve: Practice in the World—How Wisdom Grows

Session Twelve brings us to the end of the course—and to the true beginning of the next chapter in your ongoing practice. You’ll explore practical ways to continue meditating on your own, as well as how to take your meditative awareness into every area of daily life.

Highlights:

  • Revisit the basic techniques of mindfulness and integrate them into the formal sitting practice you’ve been cultivating
  • Continue to explore how you can bring more wisdom and awareness into your practice
  • Take your practice off the cushion and into the world with several exercises to help you

What You'll Learn

The Insight Meditation online course has been designed to introduce you to the practice of meditation in the vipassana (“insight”) Buddhist tradition. It features two supportive Q&A session recordings, written and audio wisdom teachings, guided meditations, and a wealth of additional experiential exercises to help you bring your practice beyond the cushion and into daily life.

In this session, you’ll explore the concept of mindfulness and its importance in our lives. According to the Buddha, we cultivate true happiness and peace when we are mindful, when we are able to bring our full attention to the present moment.

Highlights:

  • Discover insight meditation’s origins with the story of the Buddha
  • Explore the Noble Eightfold Path and Five Precepts for ethical living
  • Practice six breathing exercises and your first mindfulness meditation

Session Two explores the nature of inner awareness. You’ll discover powerful techniques for slowing down and becoming more present in every moment.

Highlights:

  • Learn how to work with your thoughts during practice
  • Practice a guided walking meditation exercise, along with variations for further exploration
  • Discover the role of the courageous heart in being with what is

In Session Three, you’ll look closely at the emotions of desire and aversion—how they are widely misunderstood in Western culture, and how we can undo their influence in our everyday lives.

Highlights:

  • Gain awareness of the five hindrances to mindfulness — desire, aversion, sleepiness, restlessness, and doubt
  • Work with pain and physical sensations through a guided practice and additional exercises
  • Learn how attachments to desire and aversion control your life, and how mindfulness can help you break free

In this session, you’ll continue your exploration of the five traditional hindrances to mindfulness, taking a closer look at the remaining three: sleepiness, restlessness, and doubt. You’ll also begin to bring more simplicity into your life.

Highlights:

  • Access fundamental clarity of mind as you cultivate the balance between being tranquil and alert
  • Explore a guided practice for being with and seeing through difficult emotions
  • Support your work with each of the five hindrances with several additional exercises

What is the difference between our thoughts about the world and the world as it is? In this session, we’ll investigate this question and look at some practical actions we can take to free ourselves of limiting concepts that obscure our direct experience of reality.

Highlights:

  • Explore the nature of mind, our mental “prisons,” and the myths we carry about time, place, and self
  • Begin to unwind the difference between concept and reality to taste true freedom
  • Practice mindful eating—how this routine activity can become a vehicle for greater awareness

Session Six explores the Four Noble Truths. Many people have negative reactions to the first noble truth: life involves suffering. Yet denying the existence of suffering doesn’t make it go away. By acknowledging this truth, we take the first step toward freedom.

Highlights:

  • Understand the Four Noble Truths as you begin to transform suffering into an experience of freedom
  • Learn the three categories of human suffering: painful experiences, change, and conditionality
  • Work with suffering in your own life with a guided practice and additional exercises

In a sense, delusion can be seen as the opposite of vipassana, or insight. In this session, we’ll look at the various ways our minds create delusion and how we can recognize and transform those tendencies through awareness.

Highlights:

  • Shed light on our shared illusions and how delusion traps us in “unreality”
  • Nourish the “wise attention” necessary to free yourself from the bonds of illusion
  • Identify and work with your own delusions with a guided practice and additional exercise

Session Eight explores the often misunderstood concept of karma. You’ll investigate the law of cause and effect, as well the importance of the intentions that precede our actions.

Highlights:

  • What is karma? Understand how consequences are generated and compounded throughout our lives
  • Learn the Four Brahma-Viharas: lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity
  • Explore the six realms of existence, your intentions, and meditation as a path to purifying your karma

In order to stabilize the positive effects of wisdom, compassion, and mindfulness, it is crucial that we learn to develop equanimity. This spiritual force gives us the perspective we need to ride the changing tides of experience without getting washed away each time a wave rolls in.

Highlights:

  • Gain tools to let go of your habitual responses as you chart a steady course forward
  • The Eight Vicissitudes—learn the four joys and their respective opposites that we encounter again and again throughout our lives
  • Engage with all of your senses as gateways to perception

In this session, we’ll take a closer look at faith as a quality of mind that leads to freedom from ignorance. We also explore the meaning of wisdom—a word that takes on specific nuances in the Buddhist tradition.

Highlights:

  • The Five Spiritual Powers— the inner qualities that empower us on the path to freedom
  • How faith and wisdom are available to us in each moment, and are of great importance on the spiritual path
  • “Big Mind”—a guided practice to show us how, through choiceless awareness, we can begin to penetrate the nature of reality as it is

In this session, we unpack the power of metta, or lovingkindness, and its revolutionary potential in our lives. Lovingkindness practice provides a perspective of radical non-separation, and its skillful application plants the seeds of love in our lives.

Highlights:

  • Clarify the obstacles to experiencing lovingkindness in our everyday lives
  • Learn the four phases of lovingkindness—from loving ourselves and loved ones to strangers and the world
  • Deepen your experience of lovingkindness with a complete guided metta meditation and exercises

Session Twelve brings us to the end of the course—and to the true beginning of the next chapter in your ongoing practice. You’ll explore practical ways to continue meditating on your own, as well as how to take your meditative awareness into every area of daily life.

Highlights:

  • Revisit the basic techniques of mindfulness and integrate them into the formal sitting practice you’ve been cultivating
  • Continue to explore how you can bring more wisdom and awareness into your practice
  • Take your practice off the cushion and into the world with several exercises to help you

Frequently Asked Questions

Insight Meditation has been designed to introduce you to the practice of meditation in the Buddhist vipassana (“insight”) tradition. While these teachings and practices derive from a particular tradition, they are universally applicable and used by those of all faiths (or none at all) around the world. Their purpose is to help you cultivate wisdom, love, kindness, and compassion in your life, and to find true happiness for yourself and others.

Insight Meditation was created with newcomers in mind, however, the in-depth curriculum provides teachings and skills to continually deepen an existing practice, no matter how many years you’ve been formally sitting. If you are a complete beginner, you’ll find no more qualified teachers than Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, who have truly heard it all and can help anyone new to the path. If your practice needs a reboot or new inspiration, you’ll find that and more in the course.

Insight Meditation is based on Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein’s many decades of formal teaching and practice with revered masters and countless students from all over the globe. If you want to learn meditation from teachers you can trust in a way that honors its rich origins and fully prepares you for a rewarding daily practice for years to come, Insight Meditation may be the perfect course for you.

If you have additional questions, please find our technical FAQs here.

Student Praise for the Teachings of Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein

Joshua G.
Joshua G.
Read More
An excellent overview of Insight (or 'vipassana') meditation. I've loved this one for many years now. I've listened to it repeatedly and I glean something new from it each time I listen … I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Jo Y.
Jo Y.
Read More
This is a very good meditation study. Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein are both quite wonderful. It is a very nice way to become acquainted with a meditation practice.
K.B.
K.B.
Read More
I have wanted more formal training in meditation for a long time … this was a godsend.

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100% Money Back Guarantee

If you are not 100% satisfied for any reason, simply return it for a full refund for up to one year.

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Secure Checkout

All orders are processed on a secure server. If you prefer to order by phone, call 1 (800) 333-9185.

1 year money back guarantee badge
100% Money Back Guarantee

If you are not 100% satisfied for any reason, simply return it for a full refund for up to one year.

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Secure Checkout

All orders are processed on a secure server. If you prefer to order by phone, call 1 (800) 333-9185.

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Presence FAQ

Can I participate in an Inquiry discussion group?

The Diamond Approach is offering live, online Inquiry groups to accompany this course at a discounted rate — $100 for eight, 90-minute sessions, where you’ll take turns with other students working one-on-one with an expert teacher. This is completely optional and available after purchasing Presence.

 

How do I purchase Presence: Venture into the Heart of Enlightenment?

You can purchase it here.

 

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To access Realization Unfolds: A Conversation between A.H. Almaas and Adyashanti, you will need to:

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How do I know what time live sessions start if I live abroad or in a different time zone?

All events are Eastern Time unless otherwise noted. Here is the schedule. Please use a time zone converter of your choice or thetimezoneconverter.com.

 

Why is the video player blank, or why can’t I hear it?

Player solutions:

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Are the sessions live or prerecorded?

The course videos are prerecorded. Videos noted as “Live” are live.

 

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