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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. Welcome to our morning sitting and I want to begin today by emphasizing that one of the strong associations people have with Buddhism, with the

Buddhist teaching is, especially in relationship to non-attachment,

is the idea of letting go. Let go, let go, let go go some teachers will emphasize and what's remarkable in the

Buddha's teachings he never talks about letting go of anything, any person, any thing in the world, the

emphasis over and over again is to let go of the grasping in the mind, the clinging in the mind.

Gasping can be done towards things which are healthy and beneficial for the world,

and grasping can be done with things that are unhealthy and harmful to the world.

But grasping itself is always harmful to the person who grasps clings attached.

So when the Buddha emphasized letting go, letting go,

letting go, it was really letting go the clinging.

And so in this week they've been looking at grasping, clinging.

Certainly it helps to see what we're clinging to, what we're holding on to.

But those are a mirror for doing the deep inner work of letting go.

So for this meditation, I'd like to encourage

that it be an ongoing meditation on letting go. Not of anything, but of the grasping to anything that

arises here for this next, you know, almost 30 minutes that stay very relaxed in the present moment,

I'll guide you, and then at some point whatever it is that you know that's happening in the present,

whatever you are aware of, gently, lovingly, release any holding to it.

Release any preoccupation with it, any fixation, any concern, any lingering with it, any even interest

and curiosity to it.

Just let go, let go, let go. And when you let go, something else will come into awareness.

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