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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org.

Okay.

So, uh. So I have a lot of very reasonable.

So I have a lot of very reasonable thoughts and a lot of kind of dumb thoughts. But my dumb thoughts generally don't get me into trouble anymore.

And it's not that I sort of like listen to my reasonable thoughts and ignore my

dumb thoughts. It's more the senses like like that I no longer ask my thoughts to do things for my life that thoughts can't do.

And thoughts can't do.

And we ask, you know, we ask our thoughts to do so much when you get down to it, like okay how do they function in our life? And a lot of beautiful ways but we ask them to do too much.

We ask thoughts to really game out and protect us from uncertainty, to digest emotionally painful experience to make us feel good

about ourselves to provide meaning.

And a question arose in a recent

Sanga meeting that like the woman asked Sarah,

what's the difference between reflection and rumination.

And on the one hand,

we can say just on, you know,

conceptual understandings of the darma are not

themselves liberating but there is a vital place for contemplation and reflection on the

darma path.

And we're instructed, you know, often,

often to hold the teachings in mind

hold the teachings in mind

...