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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So recently I had the occasion to have desire for a Buddhist statue and so I had this desire but then later I had the occasion to offer something to someone.

And then I compared the state of my mind wanting the Buddha statue versus my state of mind in wanting

and giving this thing away. And for me, I could see what I wanted to put a statue. My mind kind of got closer in and

got a little bit tighter, more constricted, or a little bit more narrow,

and maybe they've been a little bit tense.

And in a way that I, you know, probably if I wasn't mindful I wouldn't even have recognized it required a certain degree of sensitivity to feel it,

even to occur to look in that direction to notice that I could feel.

And in the giving away the desire to offer something I could feel the same area of my mind open up and feel expensive and

that contrast between those two is where wisdom resides to see that and to see that it's more valuable to have this expansive mind than to have a

Buddha statue. I mean the Buddha statue is pointing to that mind. That's what it's all

about. Don't you know lose the mind for the Buddha statue. That's ridiculous. What's precious is this mind that's at ease, that's open, that's not uncontracted, unconstricted, and that's free in some way.

It doesn't have to be a dramatic idea of like liberating, enlightening lightning freedom but just a very simple kind of to

that's a kind of sense of ease and relaxation openness that the tensions of the mind have relaxed. That is phenomenally

important. To feel that, to know that, to see that in your own mind is to see a treasure, is to discover something really, really

valuable. That's the Buddha. And that's the key for this whole practice of the darma is to recognize that in yourself

and then stay close to it.

Sometimes that whole feeling that I, you know, for me, I say, you know, I felt it in my mind,

but it was really a somatic experience. It was a physical experience, just happened to be in my head, but it was very

physical in nature. And sometimes I have the same kind of contrast around my heart. My heart gets small and tight and sometimes it feels

more open and relaxed. Sometimes it's my belly that something is going on there and the belly feels more what he is and oh there it is there's the Buddha belly and so if you can in this practice that time comes, sometimes it takes a while that you yourself

will begin experiencing that contrast. You'll see that distinction with these two

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