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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Good morning.

Welcome, welcome.

Those of you who have arrived since I was last speaking here this morning.

So earlier I offered a practice note of to notice your relationship to thinking when you recognize, oh yeah, I've been lost in thought.

And sometimes there can be this feeling like, dang it, I'm supposed to be meditating.

And sometimes there can just be like, oh yeah, thinking is happening.

But this shift in relationship to our thinking can be so powerful, can make a big

difference.

There might be this subtle way in which we've set up this little battle against thoughts

and somehow we're trying to get rid of them.

Instead of just acknowledging, yep, thoughts happen.

They arise. We don't make them arise and we don't make them go away. They just arise and pass away on their own.

And can we have a friendly attitude towards them? Yep, this is what's happening.

There's the sound of the train sometimes.

There's thoughts sometimes.

Can we neutralize them?

I don't want to say that thoughts are bad

and I don't want to say that they're not helpful.

But when we're meditating,

we're just choosing an anchor and we're staying with that,

...