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

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So good morning, everyone, and I hope you hear me okay with the microphone on my laptop.

So here I am at Spirit Rock,

these wonderful rolling grasslands, oak grasslands,

the retreat center in Marin County, California.

I'm here teaching a retreat with about a hundred people,

with a few wonderful teachers that, my friends.

So, welcome to our meditation session session and maybe you hear the birds and you'll see sometimes when I'm here,

animals all walk by.

Yesterday there was a big, healthy looking, beautiful looking-looking coyote up here walking up by in the hills.

So, I'll offer you a kind of a simile analogy in my yard garden at home.

We have an outdoor faucet used for watering the garden.

And the faucet has an extension to it that is the of a Y, so that we can attach two hoses to the same faucet.

And then the Y has a valve, and you can move the valve back and forth between one or the two arms of the Y, depending which hose you want to have water in.

Or you can also put it in the middle position, and if some water goes into both hoses.

So in the same way, and so whatever part of the garden we want to water

we turn the valve one way or the other

so in the same way for our meditation

we have something that's water like

and it is

ordinarily I think of it as awareness

...