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

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So to continue this series on samadhi, that as at a certain point, as the mind and body get settled, collected, unified, as it gets stabilized, the means for the support for entering into the temple of deep samadhi

is through the doorway of pleasure.

Not necessarily sensual pleasure, but certainly an embodied pleasure, that begins to feel like a sense of well-being,

joy and happiness.

And so you're allowed

to take in, feel, be nourished by, saturated by, well-being when you're doing samadhi practice.

And so to be oriented towards it in just the right way, to not be attached to it, expecting

it, pushing for it, but rather to be open to it, to allow it, to acknowledge it when it's there, to appreciate it.

And as it's there, to gently allow it to, there'd be a kind of a feedback loop between the joy, the pleasure, and the meditation, and the focus on

breathing, focus on your primary object. And so that the joy, the pleasure keeps you connected,

and it's a feedback loop where that as you get more stable,

more engaged, more fully in the experience of the breathing, of the meditation,

you can feel that the well-being shifts and changes, gets richer, gets stronger.

And so this is not, it can seem like you're, you know, wanting or, you know, clinging

or trying to make something happen. It can, some people get tense, but it is to stay relaxed, almost as if

you're not expecting anything to happen, but you're allowing it samadhi willing.

Samadhi willing, let the joy, the well-being spread. And one of the little tools for this is to have a little half-smile.

Turn up the corners of your mouth.

It's a little bit until you feel a sense of pleasure there.

And let that pleasure be the support to keep you connected, keep you here in the present moment.

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