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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So good day on this Martin Luther favorite holiday and I love that Martin Luther King's

expression's soul power was his translation of Satya Graha, which is

Mahatma Gandhi's term, which literally means holding to the truth but sometimes is translated as power of truth.

And... And so today we'll continue this five week introduction to mindfulness meditation.

And last week was the foundation of it the way I

usually teach which is with the breathing and this week it's mindfulness of the

body and for some people This week it's mindfulness of the body.

And for some people, mindfulness of the body in the way that this last guided meditation

was done works better than mindfulness of breathing. There's something

about narrowing perhaps or focusing on the breathing or something about the

breathing which some people evokes challenging feelings, emotions.

And so it's not necessarily useful to center on the breathing, but to kind of be more broad and just feel the body without focusing

on any particular part but letting it be a gentle drifting and opening and receiving of the different

parts, sensations of the body as they appear, is freeze up the mind that is usually fixates and then maybe becomes is a

freeze up the mind that is usually fixates and then maybe becomes reactive to what's happening.

And this ability to be grounded in the body,

to become more embodied, is a central feature

of the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness.

His classic instructions in meditation always begins with mindfulness of the body.

Feeling the whole body and relaxing the body are his two explicit instructions around the body,

to feel the whole body and to relax.

...