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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello and welcome on this Monday when I begin we begin a new series of new

topic for the week and maybe because I just came from meditating for a week or teaching

for a week on a retreat.

Somehow what's surfaced for me is to want to talk about

is thinking.

And a very important part of a wise life is becoming wise about our thinking.

Often enough, I think for many people, thinking happens on automatic pilot and we just take our thinking

for granted that this is how it should be and thinking just churns out whatever thoughts it does and we just go along for the ride.

And the thoughts that we have can have a huge influence on us.

And if we just on automatic pilot... influence on us.

and if we just an automatic pilot just allowing those thoughts to be there and have that

influence on us, they can be quite detrimental.

As I like to say, that some psychologists believe that one of the leading causes for depression

is rumination.

If we are thinking thoughts which are not pleasant, that having one of those thoughts might

be just a small little drop of unpleasantness or unpleasant effect on us. But if we have the same kind of thought over and over

and over again throughout the day, it begins wearing us down. It begins filling us with unpleasantness of that comes along with them.

So if those thoughts are self-criticism of any kind, if we're constantly having thoughts about our shame or our guilt or

inadequacy or whatever it might be, the frequency of those thoughts are never questioned.

Maybe, maybe to some degree all those might be true so that they warrant a few thoughts and reflection and consideration.

But there's no need to have thoughts like that repeatedly over and over and over again.

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