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. Hello from Redwood City, the Insight Meditation Center and welcome to this day's meditation.

And as an introduction, there is a wise, There is that it

a very direct approach to

mindfulness practice

and that is that to the degree to which insight, Vipassna, is involved seeing, a form of clear seeing.

Some people are looking for something.

But what we're, it's useful to think of that what we're looking for is how we're seeing.

What we're looking for is in the seeing itself, not in what's being seen, you know, through the eyes or heard through the ears or

tasted through the tongue and so forth. It's the matter by which we know that we're aware. That is the, that's where the

that's where the secret, the key is found.

So an analogy would be that if we are given someone says I have a wonderful means by which for you to penetrate the depths of your spiritual life

and you'll find it with the stone.

And the person hands you a little stoned,

can easily hold in your hand.

But there's no more instructions.

And your freedom is found through this stone.

And so it's been a year studying the stone, analyzing the stones,

boring into the stones with the drill, trying to find out what is about the stone that's going to bring your freedom.

And then finally you go back to the person saying, I'm not finding anything. You explain what you've done and maybe the

person laughs or cries or no no you misunderstood. It's not the stone itself. It's how you hold the stone. That's where your freedom is found.

If you are bearing down on it, if you're intensely straining to understand it to analyze it to figure it out

...