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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Thank you. So good morning, everyone from California and good day around the world.

And a big welcome.

So one of the characteristics of many of our minds

is that we will

not know it so well.

And we kind of go on to a certain kind of business as usual as we go about our life.

And we don't really pay attention to the quality of our mind, how the mind is working.

And the opportunity of meditation is to certainly learn about the mind,

learn about the different ways the mind can be, the quality of the mind,

and also to how to adjust the mind in a way that is supportive for us.

And so in the topic of samadhi, the mind is becoming unified, being organized, and an organized mind.

And the mind will do that on its own if the conditions are right.

If we're not distracted, if we're not cut up in preoccupations,

the mind will begin to come together and come in a kind of a settled, unified, organized matter, where all the parts are

kind of working together. And so one of the steps towards that, a step towards samadhi, is to orient the mind.

And orienting the mind is different than focusing the mind. Focusing or concentrating mind is

all too easily interpreted as a laser focus on the control

tower and we're kind of kind of zeroing in, almost like using our eyes to kind of stare something down.

And often it uses maybe the front of the mind. And to orient the mind is something different.

It's to set the direction. A sailor on a boat might orient the boat towards a lighthouse towards a harbor. And then, but then be completely involved with

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