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

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So, hello, and welcome to this now 10th talk on samadhi, putting down the foundations for what is needed to really have a useful form of concentration in meditation.

And the, um, the, um, so we're learning how our minds work, how our thoughts, our attention works,

so that we can use it in a useful way. To not understand ourselves and try to get

concentrated sometimes doesn't work or we override ourselves or the concentration comes with a lot of

tension and force. And one of the things I've been emphasizing this week is that the ways in which our thinking,

the ways in which desire and aversions, and the ways in which identity, how we identify ourselves,

can be divisive in ourselves.

How it could create divisions, fragmentations,

how it contributes to not being fully in touch with ourselves,

sometimes even a disassociation or disconnection from ourselves.

And because to try to develop samadhi while being disconnected is going to be much harder.

It's through being connected.

Somebody is a gathering together.

It's a collectiveness.

Everything collected together, collectiveness of mind and body.

And so we have to kind of understand how we do the opposite.

And then to understand how to use the mind, how to use the attention,

so that that attention doesn't further the division, to divide,

that attention actually begins to heal it. So to use attention in a, like a laser

focus, in a fixed way, determined way, to blast through something or blast into concentration,

...