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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So good morning, everyone, and welcome, or good day, day for those you on other time zones.

And so in this exploration of the first of the three major insights of insight meditation, I'll continue talking about

inconstancy, change, and impermanence, the coming and going of experience.

And for meditation, one of the really important milestones in meditation

is coming to a really clear understanding,

clear insight, if you may, if I may, of how much time we spend thinking,

how much time we spend viewing our experience, ourselves, what's important, through the lens of thoughts.

And thinking, most thinking is about something, and so we live in a world of aboutness,

rather than living in a world of immediacy, a world of sensations, sensing.

And even if we are sensing and more or less in the present moment and feeling deeply what's going on,

even there there's subtle conceivings, valuings, prioritizing, selecting of the experience that goes on,

even sometimes sub vocally or subconsciously almost in us, that gives us a kind of holding on to experience, a kind of momentum of pre-occupation,

momentum of reifying or solidifying some concern that we have.

And the most extreme versions would be to be lost in thought about something

that just seems insurmountable, seems permanent,

seems like this is the way it's going to be forever,

and it's terrible or wonderful or something.

And so to see how much the time we spend there,

so that we could, again, experience our life in meditation

in a very different way.

...