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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So welcome to this fifth talk on taking the road less traveled.

And emphasis this week has been that there are two different operating systems within us.

There's the operating system that's unwholesome and one that's wholesome. And unwholesome doesn't mean that it's bad or in and of itself, but rather it involves a way of

the activity of the mind

that might even have good things in mind.

It could be generous and loving parts of it,

but that the way we engage in it has a kind of tension

or has attachment or clinging or aggressiveness or anxiety connected to it

so that there's a quality of it which is denourishing for us

rather than being nourishing for us.

That is stressful for us rather than not just de-stressing,

but better than that, that is inspiring for us rather than not just de-stressing, but better than that, that is inspiring for us.

That brings us, kind of enlivens us in a wonderful, happy way.

So there are these two different systems that we have, and that Dharma practice has a lot to do with becoming free enough,

becoming settled enough, that we can start allowing this deeper system to inform us, to move through us, to carry us.

And these are all kind of passive verbs in the sense that a lot of what we do is we get out of the way,

we allow this organic movement to go through us and guide us.

I love the metaphor the Buddha uses for a particular state of samadhi, that of a lake which there's nothing coming in from outside the lake to

stir it up or to replenish it with muddy water.

When it rains and the ground is muddy,

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