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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So, good morning and welcome to this next talk on Samadi.

And this week we're exploring the third jana that is um basically the

second and third are recognized as a form of noble silence.

And silence, of course, in our society could be a dictionary of silence.

All the different meanings, what's conveyed in silence, many of it which is not kind,

and sometimes is off-putting.

But this is called a particular kind of silence called noble silence.

A silent treasure, a treasure silence.

And where it feels cozy, it feels wonderful, it feels like nothing's needed.

And there's a remarkable thing that happens when discursive thinking stops, conversational thinking stops, rumination stops.

Not just a few times, often for many people, rumination, obsessing about things with the mind,

storytelling, telling herself stories, repeating the same idea over and over again, commenting, judging, having thoughts which are mean, or thoughts which are scary,

or thoughts which are filled with desires. All these limit us, all these narrow the window, narrow the wholeness.

They divide us, they keep us not really deeply in touch in a holistic way with ourselves from the inside out.

There's in fact, even though thinking can be quite pleasant at times, or quite compelling, seemingly very important, involves a tremendous sacrifice,

tremendous loss. And oddly enough, sometimes the people who are most worried about the Buddhist teachings

of renunciation, letting go, which these Jannas have a lot to do, but letting go in the meditation.

The people who are most worried about it, most troubled by it, are the ones who are most involved in their thinking mind, discursive mind.

And there's good reason for that, because that's the mind that tells us stories about all the things we need and should have or don't have and all the ways that, you know,

we've been offended or hurt. And of course thinking is valuable. Of course, some of the things we think about are true enough.

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