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

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Good. Hello, everyone. Welcome.

And welcome to the end of this week on the pleasure aspect of samadhi.

And one of the things to consider when you're interested in samadhi is that as you meditate, there's value in taking in, absorbing whatever healthy sense of pleasure is present.

And to become wise over time, what forms of pleasure

support the settling, the calming,

support our mind and body feeling a sense of stability.

We're become in the present moment, awareness is in the present moment, in a stable way.

Often our attention is agitated or flighty, quick to disappear, wander off with our thoughts,

our preoccupations. Sometimes even if we are in the present moment, it's flighty or agitated because of anxiety.

And we might be very much in the present moment,

hyped up in the present moment, where every sound is of concern,

and the stability of the mind is lost in the constant searching out, am I okay?

Or it might be that we're not so stable because we have high expectations

or ambitions around meditation, and we're writing every moment

kind of breathlessly to see, you know, how to get further. So to find the joys, the pleasures

which support a calming, a stabilizing, a quieting of the mind and body.

So often in the beginning of a meditation, I emphasize relaxing.

The Buddha's way of doing the same, maybe with somewhat the same

effect, is to emphasize a calming, a calming of the body, calming of the mind, and the

difference is that calming maybe goes a little deeper than relaxing.

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