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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Okay. Thank you.

So, last week, I addressed topic of golf.

This week could have done badminton, dressage, equitation.

But I'm pivoting to mortality.

The only logical follow-up to a talk on golf. So William James described death as the worm at the core of the human condition.

And the worm at the core that turns us into melancholy metaphysicians.

And increasing. into melancholy metaphysicians. And increasingly seems to me that

that death is not the end of life,

it's the center of life.

Kafka apparently said the meaning of life is that it stops. And it's not like exactly that we have a life and then we have to let go it's sad it's the end we die mortality and

finitude are right here they're woven into the fabric of of now of how we experience the present moment.

Finitude is woven into our emotional circuits, you know.

And we are, I could say, we're here,

we're here because evolution has made death the centerpiece of life.

Infinity is in the architecture of our brains.

It's woven into our thinking and our cognitive systems,

it's woven into life itself.

And there is this kind of overt truth

that all that arises, passes,

but also this more pervasive pressure forged by finitude.

...