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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. Hello everyone and welcome and I feel delighted and have a good fortune to, for this theme this week to talk about the

symptoms of letting go.

So certainly we can become aware of how we cling and hold on tight and close down. And then there's opening up and the release

of clinging, release itself, that is part of the possibility the potential of this Buddhist

practice of mindfulness is more than just to relax but to really find a sense of freedom through it.

One of the very profound little sayings that come from the Buddha, kind of a summation of what's most important. He said,

nothing whatsoever is worth clinging to. He didn't say that nothing is worthwhile at all. He said nothing is worth

worth while at all. He said nothing is worth clinging to the extra that we do,

the holding on, the resisting, the pushing away, that tightening up.

And with enough clinging, enough things were attached to, preoccupied with, caught up in. The mind, the heart, the very life can feel

claustrophobic. We can feel there's just too much going on, just too much swirling around.

Sometimes it's so much that we can't get our bearing.

We don't even know what to do.

And I've asked people sometimes to notice the difference between being cut up in thought and then

when they notice that they're in their thinking and then they switch to being mindful of it. This is what it's like to be thinking.

What's a difference between those two states? Lost in thought and open and aware to what the thinking is happening.

And some people report back that they feel really small, closed in

when they're caught up in thoughts,

that something almost goes dark,

things become obscure.

But when there's this awareness of it,

...