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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. You're going to. Oh, So, So good morning. Hello everyone.

So for this morning's meditation,

I would like to evoke maybe an experience from some of your childhoods, if you have ever been on a

seasaw as a child, but standing in the middle,

on either side of the fulcrum,

and try to find the balance

so that both sides of the saw are parallel to the ground.

Sometimes getting there takes some muscles to push one way or the other, but when you find the midpoint and you're able to stand there

with the sees-so-balanced, there's no longer a lot of effort needed. Maybe just a little bit of adjustment with the little bit of adjustments with just a weight little bit, but it's very little.

So in meditation, we can find that balance point that stands between pleasure and pain, between what's comfortable and

not comfortable, where we're not leaning into the pain or pulling away from leaning into the pain or leaning into the pleasure,

leaning into the pleasure, leaning away from the pain, leaning away from the pleasure.

We're not, if you go in meditation towards the pleasure too much, the whole

seesaw tips. If you go to attack the pain, the see saw tips.

But there's a place of standing in the middle,

the balance point, where mindfulness has the greatest ability to become clear,

the clearing the fog, clearing the air, clearing the heart and mind.

Completely connected to either side because that's where the balance point is. So it's not avoiding anything, but it's also not picking it up or going

towards it or reacting to it, being balanced in the middle of it all, and clearly seeing.

And for today it's the midpoint between comfort and discomfort, pleasure and pain.

So to assume a meditation posture and to gently close your eyes.

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