The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit our website at audio-dharma.org.

So good morning, good day. Welcome to this new day, even if some of you are on evening and time zone.

The idea that every day is new. We wake up to discover what's new overnight. There's a kind of ancient tradition that we wake up a new to something in New World.

Today, the topic is aspiration. It belongs to a family of mental activities that one end can be planning or expecting to inspire to work for.

Some were in the middle of that, maybe intention is the midpoint of that family, if it's a kind of arranged spectrum.

But intention can lend itself to expectation, to trying hard, to trying to get something, to intend to do something.

It doesn't have to. There can be intention for how we want to be right now in this moment. We would like to be kind. That's the intention. And then it's immediate as opposed to a plan for the future.

But I like the word aspiration because it's closely connected to the word inspiration. Intention can be dry.

Inspiration comes from some deeper place within as something that may be inspiring for us or something which is in the inspiration, in the aspiration, something that feels nurturing or nourishing for us.

There's a goodness to aspiration. For me, aspiration works for other people who speak English. But for me, aspiration always has an ethical quality, wholesome quality.

What do we aspire for? And here I want to offer you an analogy for having an nourishing aspiration for meditation.

And that is the idea, the image, the sense that the way in which sunlight enables a forest to grow in the springtime, maybe a deciduous forest.

And the way, the speed, the calm, the patience, the gentleness, maybe even for many times imperceptible changes of ways sunlight in the sunlight, the forest grows.

So in our aspiration, the Dharma can grow in us. And it's not a Dharma that we see moment by moment. It's not a Dharma that we force or are measuring moment by moment by there yet.

But rather, we're allowing ourselves to be taken the goodness of our aspiration, aspiration to be present in a way that is free, present in a way that is kind, appreciative, present in a way that deeply attuned to ourselves.

Present in a way where there is a heightened awareness that is like the sunlight growing a forest.

So assuming a meditation posture and becoming aware of yourself here and now sitting in a particular place at this time,

be aware of sitting here and meditating here in this body in all its dimensions, all its sensations.

If it's comfortable for you and close your eyes, and maybe with a sense of invitation to invite your body to breathe a bit deeper, fuller.

To exhale a bit longer, relaxing as you exhale.

And to let your breathing return to normal. But on the exhale, letting your attention roam around your body, finding places to relax, to soften in your body.

And then letting your breathing return to normal.

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