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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So good morning, day everyone.

Welcome to this Monday and I'm happy to be back after having a two-week

vacation which is not so often that I do something like that with my wife and did a lot of hiking and now happy to be here.

So... and now happy to be here.

So, many years ago I met a monk in Thailand I was staying at a monastery and he was somehow known for his great meditative accomplishments, very deep practitioner.

And I met him and there was something very special about looking into his eyes and

seeing both this something like I've never seen such depth in someone's eyes and such peace.

And so I asked him what had he attained in his years of monastic practice and his answer surprised me given to how the

buildup of this is a person of great meditative accomplishments and maybe attainments.

And he said he had attained non-contention.

And this was said in translation translation so I don't know what the

poly exactly the Thai word was but the translator it said non contention and that contention.

And that really made a big impression on me.

One of the first times that I was being introduced to this inside practice was at that monastery.

So the here's idea of non-contention. And the way that it's

been for me very inspiring to practice mindfulness for all the different purposes that

mindfulness can fulfill or can address and one of them is this ability to sit with ourselves and not make anything worse.

Simply to sit with a respect and non-contention, a feeling the tremendous value of non-reactive attention, non-reactive

clear seeing that something very profound begins happening

when we can see clearly without being forward against and reacting,

not making it worse with our judgments and just seeing clearly the good, the bad, and the ugly.

...