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

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So, this topic of this week's aspiration is something very dear to me, my journey along Buddhist practice.

It's related to the topic of intention and wise kind of way of letting desires bubble up from within, from some deep wise place within.

And some degree the aspirations which the deeper intentions with which we want to live our lives, in some ways are among the most important aspects of our lives.

And getting clarity about our intention, clarity about our aspiration.

And using the word aspiration rather than intention suggests also that we're talking about something that can be grand or big or central.

Intention might be something very specific.

And that could be broad in general, but aspiration is a little bit more in my mind, in my breathing, has more of a wide, broad, largeness to it.

It's like really central, it's like the heart's aspiration, the heart's deepest wish or something.

The reason to refer to it that is that as we settle in meditation, as we relax and calm, we're calming the agitations that are always going to be there if there is conceit, if there's self-preoccupation, if we're being driven by desires for what I want, desires of what I don't want.

Not all fear, but a good part of fear is rooted in our certain kind of self-concern, self-preoccupation.

It could be that it's a preoccupation with my emotions, my feelings, my reactions, that might look like our preoccupation is with someone else.

Someone else is suffering, and we're really concerned about them, but what fuels it is our own distress.

And if we're distressed, there is a way in which that has its roots in our self-concern, self-preoccupation or some idea that we have to take my distress somehow seriously or something.

It's a complicated ecology, this inner life of ours, and the degree to which known and unknown, it's centered on self-concern, self-attachment, is actually quite large.

So as we begin to, as we as this practice, maybe any spiritual practice, deepens and deepens, and we're calming and calming and letting go and relaxing the self-concern, relaxing the anxieties and fears, relaxing the desires we have, relaxing the hates, all activities that take energy and take stress and takes effort to some way, even though it might seem like it's effortless,

that there's no me behind it is there. It's actually as we settle in quiet, we see the effort, the energy that goes into it, and that effort can be softened, can relax, we can begin to slowly stop.

It's not easy to do, it's a slow process, but the goal, the treasure that's found in the end of that process, is an experience of living alive, being alive, which is not self-concerned.

Not self-preoccupied, I like the word preoccupied, so really stressing that there's something extra going on in the self-concern, there's an attachment, there's a tightening, there's a drivenness, there's a preoccupation.

And so then at some point what becomes here for us is attention, awareness, presence, heartfulness that doesn't have the limitations that come with self-preoccupation,

that doesn't come with, and as we're less self-preoccupied, it's a simultaneous movement, or a parallel movement, is to not be preoccupied with others.

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