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

Please visit our website at audiodderma.org.

Hello and welcome.

So this week, the instructions have been offered on mindfulness of thinking, and hopefully it hasn't been too complicated.

The idea always is to try to keep the instruction simple.

And that's the intention today as well.

But it might, what instructions I give might not be understandable.

So then don't worry yourself about it. Don't try to force yourself to do

it or think that you're supposed to do it. And the mindfulness of thinking is valuable.

And what can be also helpful is not to be too involved or to focus on thinking.

There are people who identify them with themselves with their thinking.

They are their thinking.

The thinking is them.

There's no distinction between the two and so and some people being aware and be and

thinking are also indistinguishable and there's a big overlap between mindfulness and thinking but it doesn't have to be

exactly the same and so today I'd like to emphasize that which is not thinking.

And of course of many things which are not thinking but in relationship to thinking

there are two areas that I like to point out and that is that

beyond the edges of thinking or outside the domain of thinking, we can sense and feel and experiences. We can hear, but we don't have to think. We don't have to have discursive thinking. We don't have to have words or images in

response. We can have body sensations and we don't have to be

involved in it and be thinking about it and we don't have to be identifying what it is with thoughts or images.

The sensations you just be there, may be unidentified,

...