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

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So hello on this first Monday of 2025 and happy new year to all of you and welcome to this new series that I'll be doing

on titled Samadhi.

And the last few years I've been doing a long series, some of them 50, 60 sessions long, on different basic meditation practices that

our Buddhism offers. I've done it in anapanasati, mindfulness of breathing, the four foundations

of mindfulness.

And so this year I'm going to do a whole series on basic instructions and practice of samadhi.

The word samadhi is generally translated into English as concentration.

And it's not uncommon for people to not be very satisfied calling it concentration because it it limits it too much and uh narrows the scope of what samadhi is and also sometimes it

suggests a kind of laser focus and a kind of a intensity that's a little bit in the tense

to really stay focused and one-pointedly focused. Whereas the samadhi is not a particular

way of focusing the mind. It's a whole state of being. It's a whole qualitatively state of being.

Like if you felt deeply at peace and the peace wouldn't be a particular, you know, activity of the mind,

it would be something that would be integrated into your whole sense of being,

your body, your heart, your mind. So in the same way, samadhi is something that's integrated in a complete and whole

and all of who we are. It's a state. And to call it kind of a laser focus of the mind

actually interferes with the relaxing and opening

to this general whole state. And so today it's a little bit to make some introductory remarks

about samadhi and this series we're doing. And then we'll just continue. And one of the introductory remarks to say is that

is that samadhi is a very important state for deepening Buddhist practice.

And it's very important for mindfulness practice.

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