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

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So hello and welcome to this third talk on series, on long series.

Now it's going to be on samadhi.

And this first five days of it is really setting the stage,

its introduction to the topic and entering into it.

And today in particular, I want to emphasize that samadhi is something that I believe is appropriate to enter with humility, with care, with reverence, with respect, that too many times I have, and people I know

have attempted to get concentrated without humility or reverence or care,

with a kind of forcefulness, a kind of expectation,

I'm going to do this, and I can do it, I'm going to really kind of

bear down and laser focus and just stay focused.

And it is possible to get somewhat concentrated that way,

maybe sometimes very concentrated in a certain kind of way

with that kind of attitude.

But I don't think that that's the useful attitude to have.

And useful for what purpose?

In the Dharma, in Buddhism, Samadhi is the precondition.

It's often considered the precondition for the rising of liberating insight.

And that if, and liberating insight is not just an understanding

that we appropriate for the purposes of the self

but it's liberating insight from the appropriation of self

from the attachments to self

...