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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So, hello, and welcome to this 15th talk on Insight.

And this week has been a exploration of the topic of Anitja, the poly word A-N-I-C-A, and it's usually translated as impermanence, which tends to emphasize

the ending of things, that things will stop and cease and no longer be there.

The poly word more literally means inconstancy, meaning that things are not constantly there,

but they come and go.

And some things are obvious.

The meals come and go, days come and go, daytime comes and goes, mornings come and go, meditation sessions

come and go, all kinds of things come and go, and they return the next day, they return

the next hour, the inhale comes and goes, but it's always there, in a sense, so it's in constant.

And a lot of the deeper insight of meditation, a lot of the wisdom, ordinary wisdom of being

a human being, appreciates that things are impermanent, that things do sooner or later stop and disappear,

and to learn how to be wise about that, compassionate about that.

And there's also this deeper truth that's not seeing as clearly is the inconstancy of things. One reason we don't see it, so obviously,

or live in it so much, is we tend to be focused so much on one thing. There's a tremendous

reification, tremendous preoccupation that mind has. And the preoccupation of the moment

can feel like it's constant.

The metaphor that's used for this kind of illusion of constancy that involves a very busy

and active mind is called monkey mind.

And this is a mind that a monkey is swinging through from branch to branch in the forest

in the jungle.

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