The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So I would like to talk about one of the really basic practice teachings in our Vipasana tradition.

And in general, the teachings we give tend to be practiced teachings.

They're teachings that really focus on how to support people to practice mindfulness.

That makes the most sense on retreats, where that's really the focus.

But that retreat focus is so central to us that sometimes that spills over.

And it's one of the primary things we're doing is giving practice instructions

that are relevant for meditation and then indirectly sometimes

or sometimes directly we talk about how it applies to everyday life. But these practice instructions

that are coming out of the teachings of the Buddha, sometimes it's amazing how modern they seem.

It's like, wow, this fits just into our world just as well as it probably did

2,500 years ago.

But that's a long time ago.

And that's like the Bronze Ages.

Come to IMC and get teachings from the Bronze Ages.

I don't know if that would, you know, maybe give people

kind of pause to come here. And so in recent years, I've been very fortunate to have some

contact with some of the modern developments, especially here in

the West, of new ways of understanding human maturation, human concerns. That's had a big impact on

me. One of them is the developing field of chaplaincy, pastoral care. And there's a whole set of values or human needs that are seen in chaplaincy is that the chaplain meets with people. And that list is different than any list that I've ever seen in Buddhism.

But they're speaking to fundamental things that are about being a human being.

...