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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello from Insight Meditation Center here in Redwood City and welcome you to

our meditation and this week the emphasis is on mindfulness of breathing

as a and the different foundational approaches or attitudes

from mindfulness practice.

And one of them is the idea that there's a wonderful idea I think that mindfulness of breathing works even when it fails and maybe even the language of fails shouldn't be used but

it's kind of a little bit of a kind of evocative way of saying that if the we kind of offer the beginning

our attention to breathing but when that doesn't work then the task of mindfulness is not

necessarily to go back to the breathing but rather to know to recognize what is happening, to notice what is happening, to notice what has taken us away.

And if we notice that and see that, then we're mindful.

So even when we're not successful at staying with the breathing,

the breathing,

the breathing is a reference point for noticing

when the mind is drifted off.

And the more stronger the tendency

to drift off in thought, to be preoccupied with anything at all. The chances are

something in our mind or body has some tension in it.

Tension is often the fuel for preoccupation.

Tension, tension,

clinging, strong sense of pressure about wanting something

or not wanting something.

And part of mindfulness, important part of is to see that and to see it, to know it, know that's happening

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