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

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So, earlier today I talked about how there's always two things. What's happening and your relationship

to it, how you relate to it, and that that's a big statement that half of what's going on for you

is your relationship to it. And sometimes what's happening that we're focusing

on is the relationship. And the question is, how are you relating to your relationship?

Some people really are troubled by how they respond to the world, react to the world, they

criticize themselves for it. Some people are proud of themselves by how they respond to the world, react to the world, they criticize themselves for it.

Some people are proud of themselves by how they relate to the world.

And so that relationship to the relationship can just keep going back and back and back.

And then if it goes too far, we lose touch with reality.

There's reality.

There's our relationship to it. Then there's our judgments and attitudes towards how we're relating.

And then there's the, what that triggers in us.

And then that triggers in us, we relate to that, and we're concerned about that.

And that continues that cycle.

And so people, what's happening in the world is kind of disappeared.

People are just spinning out in their thoughts and with all that.

And one of the functions of mindfulness is to wake up and come back to here, to here, right here and now.

And to kind of somehow, in a loving way, appropriate way, to cut through the tremendous fog, the tremendous thick soup of preoccupation, entanglement,

all the things we're worried about and concerned about, and be here.

Partly so I can start over again, but start over from the beginning so we have a better chance

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