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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. Good evening. Welcome, welcome. So maybe I'll start by just sharing a little bit that sometimes at the end of retreats we have a closing circle and people talk about how their experience was and not all closing circles are exactly the same but But sometimes, you know, it's not uncommon for people

to share something that happened that was meaningful for them,

that was noteworthy that something

they want to take away perhaps with them.

And sometimes, not every closing circle,

sometimes I say something like,

whatever you found here that was meaningful, some new understanding,

a feeling of peace and ease, or some settledness in the mind and the body or maybe a connection with somebody else.

You know that might happen if you did a job together or something like this.

I often say, give it away. Just give it away. So this idea of maybe as you get in your car to leave the retreat and there's other people in the lane next to you.

Here, have some peace.

Here, have some stillness.

Here, have some sense of well-being. Just give it away, give it away like actively doing this.

There's something about sometimes when we find things that are meaningful or helpful, we want to hold on to them of course we do of

course we want to hold on to them but right those of us who have been practicing

for a while and certainly the Buddhist teachings are pointing to this this idea of clinging right just leads to duka leads to suffering and so there can be a way in which like oh this is And so

meaningful that I have to hold on to it.

So meaningful that I have to hold on to it.

But the act of holding on sometimes transforms it from an experience to just an object to just another concept or memory,

and it's no longer a lived experience.

For me, this was very powerful,

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