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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Sitting down here for the first time in three weeks,

I feel very delighted and happy.

I wish you a warm greeting from the Insight Meditation Center and warm greeting from the momentum of the three-week retreat that I was just teaching.

At our Insight Retreat Center, and it's nice that it ended on Saturday.

It's nice now to come Monday morning and sit here.

Just first arrived here, it was still dark,

and just like going for the morning meditation at the retreat center, it was still dark.

So, thank you for being here.

One of the challenges around meditation is to avoid over-prioritizing thinking,

certainly to avoid being stuck in thinking,

and it might be useful to consider that the role of thinking, ordinary thinking, discursive thinking,

the useful role that it has, is it's a bridge between an inner source within and our action, how we live.

And if we understand it to be a bridge, then we see that action is more important than thinking.

We learn more about ourselves and our actions than we do in our thoughts.

Even though many people are trying to understand themselves, trying to understand something through thinking,

we understand more of ourselves through action than thinking if our thinking is a bridge to understand, to be in touch with,

some source within, exactly what the source is, is maybe each person needs to discover for themselves,

but it's the source from where generosity flows, where love flows, kindness, benevolence,

where respect for others and for oneself, the source for an inner peace and well-being,

the source for an inner intuition, for wisdom, for acting on love, acting on kindness, acting on generosity.

...