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

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Welcome. Welcome and welcome to your meditation during this guided meditation time.

One of the strong associations, I believe, with mindfulness meditation

and often how I teach is that mindfulness is a non-reactive awareness that doesn't add anything to the experience,

just as present for our experience as it is.

And that when we practice that way,

then we're not allowed to change anything, we're not allowed to think about anything,

something like that.

But in fact, this mindfulness practice, as a Buddhist practice,

as a Buddhist practice, sometimes it's useful to think of it as a strategy, and we're using the best strategy we have we know of to become free, to become liberated.

And sometimes we practice non-reactive awareness, and that's really, you know, really valuable,

invaluable. Sometimes we practice not adding anything or projecting anything onto experience, no stories.

But sometimes we do.

Sometimes it's strategic, it's useful to change our experience.

Sometimes it's useful to have stories that we tell ourselves.

Sometimes it's useful to interpret our experience in ways that support the strategy of being

able to be here present alive and be free. So this week we're doing, I'm talking about wise thinking and often I'm

talking about wise thinking and often I believe for many human beings,

thinking goes unexamined, unconsidered.

We just think what we think, and we might be troubled by it. We might be involved in it. It just kind of goes along on its own merry way and we're kind of the participants of it. But if we're living a mindful life and a deliberate life, we don't

just let our thinking go on overdrive, go on automatic pilot. we can actually engage it in a useful way, in a strategic way.

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