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

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Hello on this Friday morning. Hello for this day after for people in United States,

day after Thanksgiving. And perhaps with whatever goodwill that exists here in this community today coming together,

there's a way of meditating that even if we center ourselves on breathing, the attitude of mindfulness, the

attitude of attention, the attitude is to be open to all things, to be aware of all things

in all directions.

And one analogy I have for this is if you turn on a light bulb in a dark room

and if you could slow down time

to be really, really slow,

you would see that the light would move through progressively,

first right by the light bulb,

and then it would go further out,

and then it would light up the objects that are close to it. And then it would light up the objects that are close to it.

And then it would light up the objects further away and further away and further away.

But it would light up and go out in all directions of light bulb and kind of equally, freely, openly, to touch whatever is there.

And if it only goes so far because it's in a room, then it has no problem with that.

That's the distance it goes.

So in the same way, I like to think of our capacity for awareness

is like a little light bulb within,

that rather than directing that attention someplace, we turn it on

and let it radiate, let it spread like a light, like a lighthouse or something,

...