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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Hello and welcome and

and

one of the aspects of insight meditation is to delve deeply into the source of our experience of life. Where the experience of life begins, before we add a lot of interpretations,

before we add a lot of concepts on top of it. And one of the concepts that we add is the idea of self, me, myself, and mine. And it can be innocent enough

and appropriate enough. Nowhere does the Buddha say there is no self. though that's a very popular idea that many people,

and some teachers still teach. But what we should focus on for today is how we add self on top of our experience.

So for example, if we have pain,

there is a world of difference between experiencing the pain

carefully, respectfully, wisely,

and living close into the idea that it's my pain.

I'm feeling pain.

As soon as we say the word I or me or mine, it becomes a magnet for all kinds of

cultural ideas, religious ideas, philosophical ideas, personal ideas, commercial ideas, ideas coming from advertisements,

that about what the self is and how the self should be

and what the self is, and judgments and fears, and all kinds of things.

And some people find that when they feel something uncomfortable, especially, but it could

be something also pleasant, that they can experiment with going back and forth between saying

pain, to acknowledge the pain in the knee, for example, versus saying my pain.

And if you're really attentive, very, very quiet and still, not kind of thinking about it

and trying to figure it all out with your thoughts, but really still and quiet, like you're

...