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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org.

It is sometimes in poly called vipassana and the word the part of it that has

possana in it means to see special or special seeing. My teacher in Burma he called the

clear seeing and the emphasis here on seeing. And it's what's

really something special about seeing is that seeing does not interfere with what's being seen?

It just allows it to be there and the bell is just the bell, I can see it.

But if I you know hit the bell I probably won't break it but you know I could I can destroy things but just

to see it doesn't allow things to be.

Seeing is a profound act of the mind that we can see and one of the act of the mind that we can see.

And one of the kind of little reference points

for how profound it is is a little story

that I like to tell of when my son was small enough that he was playing with blocks on the floor.

And I was laying next to him, just watching him to building the blocks, and he was humming.

This is some kind of song or something, some tune.

And I thought, well, he's humming, he's absorbed in his blocks,

so he doesn't need me anymore.

He's letting even know, hardly know that I'm here.

So I have things to do.

So I got up to do something else.

As soon as I got up, he stopped coming.

And I thought, oh, it was actually important that I was there.

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