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

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So hello and welcome, and welcome to this continued series on insight for insight meditation.

And I think now we're on the 17th talk on this topic.

And continuing with the sub-theme of insight into impermanence, inconstancy, change, as this is one of the most important

insights that this tradition offers. And the other three important insights that are really

the transformational insights come out of insight into change. So the insight into inconstancy, inside into stress and suffering,

and the third one, the insight into what's called not self. So we'll go through these three

as I teach these 7 a.m. through the summer,

through next while. And right now I just want to keep focusing on this impermanence because it's so foundational.

And in this Theravad and tradition, there are teachings on emptiness,

and the primary way of understanding emptiness

is that it's synonymous with the concept of anitya, impermanence, change in constancy.

That, and anything that's constantly shifting and changing

has no inherent solidity,

no inherent thingness there that lasts over time.

And so it's, as I like him to refer to, it's like a river that's flowing that you can't find a solid

place in the water that's unshifting, unchanging. It's always dynamic. It's always in flow moving.

And then, you know, unless it becomes ice. But the river is not,

you know, ice. The river is the flow and the flow. And so, in, so we would say in Therabad

in Buddhism that the river is emptiness of any inherent solid place that makes

the river what it is. What makes up the river is the flowing, changing molecules of water.

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