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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello and as I start this last talk on the introduction to mindfulness meditation and considering that this

is the last of 25, I'd like to say that I plan to continue with this kind of series starting

next week and maybe we'll call this intermediate mindfulness or introduction to

mindfulness part two but I think that there's much more to say that kind of builds on what we've done so far and all

at the heart of mindfulness practice. And for today the in a sense maybe it's poignant at the very

end and also in the end where this coming to a conclusion that all things must end. That all

things come to a time when they are not there except saved on follows that the end of the

internet but all things are not there and and that that what follows

that the end of things is an absence and that absence of course can lead us to

loneliness and sadness and grief all kinds of things when things come to an end

and we miss them or we love them.

And there's also something very poignant in absence that we can find sometimes in this practice maybe it depends on what the absence is,

but one of the key absences we're looking for in the darma is the absence of suffering and when that absence is

there then if that absence is there then if that absence is there, then that is sweet or that is freeing. That's very nourishing to feel our existence without suffering is part of it.

And so one of the things that we want to be attuned to when we do

mindfulness and recognize is in fact absence.

There's a very strong instruction in mindfulness practice

to pay attention to what is happening.

But what is happening is certainly central to this enterprise. But what we really want to look at is, not really, but we want to also include when some things are no longer there.

So if we're caught up in distracted thinking and it just goes on and on and then when it's absent

when it stops finally don't just don't go on to the next happening take time to

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