This excellent audio course is based on curriculum developed at the Insight Meditation Society's retreat center in Barre, Massachusetts. The leaders are Sharon Salzberg (Lovingkindness, A Heart as Wide as the World) and Joseph Goldstein (Insight Meditation), the co-founders of IMS.

The 24 CDs contain 17 hours of teachings, practices, and meditations covering many related topics including how happiness arises, breathing exercises, working with thoughts, the five hindrances to mindfulness, mindful eating, the truth of suffering, delusion, equanimity, lovingkindness, and ways to bring meditative awareness into everyday life. "The entire art of meditation practice," says Salzberg, "is knowing how to begin again."

Insight Meditation also includes an 88-page workbook with interactive exercises, articles, and interviews. "Our progress in meditation does not depend on the measure of pleasure or pain in our experience," Goldstein explains. "Rather the quality of our practice has to do with how open we are to whatever is there." This audio retreat is an ideal resource for anyone seriously interested in cultivating a daily meditation practice.