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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Thank you. So welcome to the continuation of this series of talks on samadhi. I think we're now on the 40th talk. And what I hope is that these guided meditations that go along with it and these talks.

More than teaching you techniques,

more than teaching you how to do samadhi practice,

it's pointing you to feeling something meaningful and satisfying within.

The normal state that people live in

involves some kind of tension, some kind of stress.

It might be a low level,

and it might not be recognizable by people that they're living with stress and tension.

It's become normalized. It's expected. It's just how it is to be in the world, how it is to be a human being.

And the person might have a reference point for something that calls stress or being tense,

that's some kind of serious level or quantum leap above their normal state.

But still, often people live in this normal state.

And what that means is that the thinking that comes from tension also has become normalized.

Also seems just as this is how what it is to be a human being.

And we're supposed to do this, or may it even be almost invisible,

that we're constantly chattering, talking, having conversations,

remembering, reviewing, planning.

And, but to enter into samadhi is to drop into someplace that's below any level of tension or stress that we can experience.

And in a sense, we are now in samadhi dropping below the stress level of our life, the tension level.

Sometimes the stress and tension kind of

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