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

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Okay.

So, um...

It was making the case that the contemplation of mortality can support somebody,

can cut through the noise and clarify what's of value to us.

And today, Insight into self-limits of willfulness,

the ways in which my life does not belong entirely to me.

And mortality offers us the contemplation.

Maybe we can say the ego's helplessness,

the world that is unresponsive to our willfulness.

Tuesday, I think, was futurelessness,

samadhi today, helplessness.

First of life is left when the ego is all out of moves.

And death is in one sense the kind of the ultimate humbling,

but also the source of a great deal of our grandiosity.

And the sense of self,

the sense of self as a kind of hub of control.

So, what I was alluding to with the ways in which the direction of attention,

the kind of attention spotlight can incarnate a congealed sense of self,

the sense of like me as the attentional agent,

the sense of controlling the attention to the breathing or the body or this or that.

...