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

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Hello, everyone.

Hello from the Insight Meditation Center.

In Redwood City, and it feels kind of homey to be here, sitting here, and so meditation.

There's a lot of different languages and metaphors or ideas that support people in meditation.

It's nice to have a range of different options, because at different times, different times in a person's life, different ways of practicing are relevant.

There's a strong tendency here in the West for many meditation teachers to use language that has to do with being receptive, receptivity to experience.

And that's maybe because being assertive or actively going out to have an experience, to look at experience, to address something, what's happening, sometimes can feel like too much strain and too much work and too much expectations and agendas involved.

And the idea of being receptive is to drop agendas and not assert the self, but allow just things to unfold and arise.

We can settle back in meditation and just let things come and approach us.

And then there's another kind of approach that's either kind of going towards or addressing or focusing on something versus stepping back and letting something come to us.

And that is the notion of being open.

And open is neither assertive nor receptive, neither going out to address, to focus on an experience, but also it's not receiving it.

To be open is like being an open door where people and beings can just freely walk back and forth and the door is untroubled by what happens.

Or like a house with all the windows open and the neighborhood kid who's throwing baseball, somehow or others able to throw a ball right through the house, from one open window in one open window and out the back open window.

And nothing gets hit, nothing gets struck.

And so there's neither a stance of receptivity nor a stance of going out to address something.

It's just allowing things to be, but being fully open, so whatever happens doesn't strike anything, doesn't hit a window, doesn't...

It's not picked up, it's just allowed to be without any reference to me, myself and mine, without any reference to stories and what it means and what it means for me and what I have to do and this shouldn't be there or this should be there.

And there's all these layers and layers of ideas and thoughts and notions of what's right and wrong that the experience can meet as it appears and that's like the window that's closed and the ball hits it.

But to just be open and open is like an open window and whatever arises in a sense just passes right through us.

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