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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Okay. So, in this mindfulness practice that we do, there's a lot of different pieces of wisdom

or perspectives that are useful to learn over time

and to be given all of them at once is too much,

but slowly over time you learn the different aspects of it

and learn when these different things are useful.

And what's coming to mind at this moment is,

first I want to say that the Buddha in his time was sometimes seen as a teacher of action.

In other words, living the world, living in the world, behaving and acting in the world,

was an important part of it.

It was this not a renunciant tradition in the sense of going to live in a cave or avoid society.

He sent his monastics out not to be renunciants.

They renunciants a certain way.

They give up many of the ordinary things of life, but they're not supposed to disappear.

They wandered around India.

They'd go into villages and towns and meet people and have exchanges with them.

So living our life.

So that's kind of in the background of all this.

But one of the really important things to do in this practice, one of the

really important pieces of wisdom are really essential at certain points in practice,

and that is to do nothing. Just don't do anything. And when is it useful to do nothing.

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