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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. You're going to. Hello and for this meditation today I'd like to start with a kind of a simplistic statement for the purpose of making a point, that we want to be careful that we're not

using meditation as a customer, as a consumer,

and overlooking that in meditation we should be the producer.

Now that doesn't mean that we have to work a lot, but we have to create the, we have to

bring forth the conditions that allow... the practice does require something from us.

But it's a practice to mature and develop.

The practice does require something from us. But it's an unusual thing it requires in one way to understand

it is that our hearts, our minds, our inner life, or spiritual life is very

influenced, influincable that is very

put together those influences

in good Buddhist language is we are conditioned.

It's the we putting together the conditions that allows something to mature and develop and our

role is to bring along to produce to make happen the conditions and then we have to make room

in time for those conditions to condition us. So like a farmer or a gardener who has a role in creating

the right conditions for a seed to sprout and ger germinate, and to plant to grow. Once the conditions are in place,

the gardener has to make room and give time and be patient for everything to develop and grow.

And so the question is what are we what are the conditions to put in place?

Many years ago I met a young monk, one of the first monks I met in Thailand, the first time I went there when I

went to a meditation monastery and was clearly, it was had a reputation of being a very, very deep practitioner,

a realized Buddhist in some ways, and it was remarkable to look into his eyes, very deep peaceful.

So I asked him what he had attained through his practice, not knowing at that time that that was somewhat

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