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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So the theme this week will be on different aspects of both knowing and not knowing.

It can be said that inside meditation is based on knowing the mind

for the purpose of freeing the mind, of being fully at peace.

But only by deeply knowing how our minds work can we free the mind.

And we can only know something well if we pay attention to it closely.

In this insight practice, we value the quality of how we know something.

We develop our ability to pay attention, but we do so with equanimity.

So even if what we want is unwanted, we can meet it with respect and meet it with careful attention.

Ashum Brah, there's a story that Ashen Bran tells about one of his monks. He's an abbot of a monastery

in a remote area of Australia.

And one of his monks was having trouble with his teeth.

And he was procrastinating, going to the dentist, you know,

knowing he had to have a tooth pulled.

And it was such a long trip.

And, of course, monks don't drive.

So one day, Dr. Brown saw the monks standing outside the tool shed with a pair of pliers holding a bloody tooth.

It was obvious he had just pulled his own tooth.

So he asked him, you know, how are you able to do that? Didn't it hurt?

And so the monk responded that he was in his kutti, in his little hut when he decided to pull

out his own tooth. But he hesitated at first, you know, and he asked himself,

...