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

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So hello everyone and welcome to this Monday morning in United States.

We're doing a holiday called Labor Day and it's to celebrate, to appreciate all the people who offer innumerable labor for our well-being, the well-being of our society to make everything run.

So I guess it's a time of gratitude.

Thank you.

There's a metaphor for mindfulness. Sometimes it's not just a metaphor but a actual practice.

And that is listening.

And sometimes there's listening meditation where rather than focusing on the body or focusing on breathing, it's focusing on the sounds that are around.

And some people find that it's more relaxing to be in the present moment with sounds, partly because with sounds we don't, there's less idea of control, less idea of trying to make something happen or some idea that we're supposed to have better sounds in order to listen.

And sometimes listening is a little bit outside of the ordinary flow of self-consciousness, of self-preoccupation.

And it's kind of self-conscious orientation we might have about how we go through our lives.

And so that can relax and settle and there can be a feeling of just receptivity of no defensiveness, trying to justify or apologize or just allowing the sounds to come.

And so it's a kind of, and then listening can be intentional, but as we relax deeply it becomes more hearing.

The difference between listening and hearing is listening, there's an active engagement with hearing and hearing can occur without intending to hear or just their sounds and there's hearing.

And so to move from listening to hearing is also part of this relaxing.

So, and as a metaphor then the mindfulness practice is understood to be a form like listening, maybe sometimes in the form of sensing.

And the sensing that we do has that same quality of non-defensiveness, non-control, just allowing things to arise.

And there also there's a movement from intentional sensing to the intentionality settling down, relaxing because we're not going anywhere else.

We don't need to intend to sense because we're just resting in the sensing experience of the body or of the breathing.

Some people find that the idea of listening deeply to what's within allows for kind of different sensitivity, a different curiosity, a different way of getting out of the way and being connected to what is subtle signals, subtle messages, subtle experiences within.

So, we'll use that metaphor today for meditation, so to assume a meditation posture and we'll start first with sounds and then listening within.

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