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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. Hello and welcome to meditation at IMC and this is the Friday meditation, the last one of this particular series, and the introductory words I want

to make is to say that meditation is not for bystanders. It's not to be an observer from the distance,

but it involves participation,

participating in something profound. But the act of participation is kind of very unique or

maybe different than how we normally would think where maybe the participation is, the idea participation is active,

like it's a real doing.

And it's also not passive, like a bystander just being done too. There's something in between

between those two and this is where some of the profundity of living from

a mindfulness living from the darma begins to be possible.

And the example I'd like to use is if you're cold and you go stand in the sun to get warm.

So you have a role of going someplace where it's sunny and standing

there in such a way that the sun, sun rays can land on you and warm you up. You

probably face the sun or put your back to the sun so the greatest surface

area is kind of facing you know the sun and but then sun.

But then you don't do the receiving of the sunlight and the

you don't send it through your body, but rather the body has

these sense organs, has the capacity to absorb the the heat and you're allowing that to move

through you to warm you up and in a sense your role is to participate in the whole event that is not your doing.

But you have to be present for it and allow this movement of the warmth slowly thawing your body,

warming it up maybe.

And so the same way in meditation there's maybe a sun something equivalent to a sun warming us up from the

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