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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So welcome back to this ongoing series on samadhi.

And we're now this week covering the first Jana,

the first level of absorptive, immersive meditation.

And one of the great aspects of this stage of meditation, this area of meditation,

is that we're allowed to give ourselves over to being happy.

We're allowed the ability to trust joy and well-being. It's okay to give

ourselves to it. And one of the reasons, there's a number of reasons why it's okay. More than okay,

it's actually beneficial and a very important part of the Buddhist path.

One is that the happier you can be in a genuine, peaceful, meaningful way, the more you know that

this is a possibility for others. And the more you can support others and see people's potential for

well-being, the more I think it inspires care and love for others. And perhaps also it's a gift

we bring others. Our happiness is a gift. It's also a gift to ourselves because there's

something about a peaceful, healthy happiness that's embodied and present that helps the mind get

organized, helps the mind become whole or be fully here, be immersed in this experience.

And what immersed means in part, it means we're not distracted, we're not divided, we're not

fragmented, we're not caught in any attachments or clinging.

This full embodied happiness is a movement in it

to spread out through our whole being

and bump up against the places

where we're restricted,

...