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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Good morning, welcome.

And one of the things that's been on my mind, my heart for a while now around this meditation practice,

is how the practice can grow in us, as opposed to how we make the practice.

Practice is what we call practice in Buddhism is often

gives the idea that you're supposed to do something like a technique

and you have to kind of just do the technique a lot. But, and if you ask someone, you know, what practice do you do,

people will say, well, I do breath meditation, I do loving kindness meditation,

I do Zen meditation, I do, oh, my practice is running.

Is it something? In Pali, meditation, I do, oh, my practice is running. It's something.

In Pali, the ancient language of the Buddha,

the word that they would use in the same way that we use the word

practice literally means to grow, to cultivate, to develop something. And so if someone asked you, not asked, they didn't ask you,

what are you practicing, but they asked you, what are you growing? How would you answer that?

I mean, that's like very personal. Is that too personal? What are you practicing? I do

vipasana. I do insight. I do mindfulness. That's safe. That's kind of cool in some places,

mindfulness. But what are you growing? I mean, wow. Now we're getting personal.

You know, I don't know if I want to share that, because that's like... Now we're getting personal.

I don't know if I want to share that because that's like, well, I never thought about that.

What am I growing?

The other way to ask it is not what are you growing, but what is growing in you?

...