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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

So, hello everyone.

Welcome to this meditation session and the talk that will follow.

And of some words about meditation before we start or mindfulness, it can be useful to divide up our experience into two halves and give each half equal value.

One half is whatever is happening to us, whatever our experience is.

The other half is how we are aware of it, the mindfulness of it.

Commonly, we are concerned with our experiences, our thoughts or ideas, the content of our thoughts.

And it's appropriate to do so, to be concerned, focused, be aware of that.

But sometimes we are so aware of it, so involved in our thoughts, so involved with our experience, the conversation we are having, that we are not really attuned to this whole other half.

And that is how we are aware, how we are attending, how we are mindful.

And by giving it so much value in this little description, I'm going to emphasize it's really important to be aware of how we are aware.

And it's actually a kind of key to living a more happier life, a more easeful life, peaceful life, calmer life.

If we are not consumed by or preoccupied by or fully engaged in the content of our experience, the experience itself of the conversation, the what's happening in the moment,

involved with our thoughts about the past, the future, and our ideas and fantasies.

But rather than being absorbed in those or completely caught in them to open up and really take into account the other whole half, and that other half of awareness, being aware of it, being mindful of it, that's the domain, that's the place where huge place,

where that's where we discover and are tuned in some meaningful and deep way to ourselves.

That's where we begin discovering freedom.

So there's a simple, excuse me, there's a simple guideline for what I'm talking about today.

And that is whenever you're aware of what's happening to you, the breathing, the body, your emotions, your thoughts, the sounds around you, whatever it might be,

ask yourself, is the way that you're aware of it beneficial?

Is the matter in which you're receiving it, registering it? Is it enjoyable? Is it satisfying? Is it peaceful?

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