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

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Thank you. Hello everyone and welcome to the meditation.

One of the associations that often comes with meditation is that it involves silence. It doesn't have to. There is what's called listening meditation. The primary focus of meditation is the sound. But meditation is often done in places that are fairly silent and quiet,

meditation halls that are quiet. And, um, but the real silence, it's sometimes called

noble silence, it's sometimes called noble silence,

is the silence of a peaceful mind,

the silence of a mind that's deeply settled,

that's unified, that's whole, that feels comfortable with itself, that's at ease in some deep way.

And so there's no drive to think. There's no anxiety fueling thinking or desire fueling thinking.

There's no resentment and hatred, fueling thinking. There's no resentment and hatred, fueling thinking. There's no interest in fantasy,

no interest in reviewing the past. Not because those things are wrong to do, but because the

present moment, just being alive, just breathing, just feeling,

the peace, the quiet, the happiness, the well-being is so satisfying. And one of the then characteristics of that noble silence, the quiet mind,

is that the way that the thinking mind, the way that an active, reactive mind,

somehow builds, creates,

is integrally related to our ideas of self,

me, myself, and mine,

putting kind of the story of self, the idea of self, the concepts of identity, the concepts of right and wrong,

the concepts of needs and wants, and all kind of centered around this little constellation called the self.

They become quiet.

And part of the relief of this kind of noble silence is a vacation from selfing,

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