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

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Good evening. Welcome.

You know, Jim, can we have the volume be just a tiny bit higher?

Just a tiny bit so that I don't have to throw my voice as much.

There we go.

Thank you.

So welcome.

It's an interesting thing that if we come and have a meditation practice and we have this

intention that maybe there'll be some calmness that shows up, maybe some well-being, maybe

some mindfulness, maybe some settledness, whatever it might be.

It's interesting that if we come to meditate and we kind of have this orientation or this direction we're going,

it requires that we go through the territory of non-calmness, non-mindfulness, non-settledness, non-well-being.

It's part of the practice.

And yet so often, kind of when we sit down and close our eyes, perhaps, for meditation,

we kind of have this idea like, well, where is it?

You know, where is this calmness or well-being that I'm looking for?

And forgetting, at least I certainly in the early

parts of my practice, really kind of forgot that, no, it requires, it's part of the practice,

it's inherent in it, that we work with everything that's not what we're oriented towards.

So it's not a failing. It's not that we're oriented towards. So it's not a failing.

It's not that we're doing something wrong

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