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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. You're not going to. So good day everyone and welcome and as we did yesterday today I'd like to again offer a different approach

to our morning practice where the emphasis is not on the usual purposes of meditation might be to become

more calm or settled or peaceful to become more concentrated, to see more clearly in a certain way, to have some

pleasure or even joy or bliss sometimes in meditation,

to put those ideas aside.

And to learn a skill of mindfulness

which is realistic and one that teaches us a lot, and which is useful, very useful,

for guiding us as we live our life. And that is to imagine two baskets, one on each side of you.

And whatever is going on for you, whatever you're thinking, whatever you're wanting,

whatever you're not wanting, whatever that is happening to you,

whatever is arising out of you sitting here in meditation discern whether it is is good for you or not good for you.

The not good is vague that it's beneficial or not beneficial,

that it's beneficial, that it's beneficial or not beneficial that it is healthy for you or not healthy.

And when you're not sure, maybe it's neither, then just leave it alone.

And if it's healthy or beneficial for you or has a rightness to it, put it in one basket.

If it's unhealthy for you, if it brings an ouch for you or feels like it diminishes you, it brings a stress,

brings some kind of feeling of not being supported or being critical, harsh, put that in another basket.

And just put them there in these baskets.

And maybe at the end you have some general sense of which basket is

most full and this ability to discern between that is invaluable so that's what I recommend for this sitting. So to begin you

would maybe lower your gaze or close your eyes.

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