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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome.

And...

So a few words about meditation before we start.

That it can go without saying maybe that in the context of a community that practices mindfulness, that mindfulness is important.

But I think it's probably often the case that for all of us we don't appreciate how important it is

that our capacity to be aware, to be attentive, is not what we pay attention to is important, it is.

But how we pay attention, how we are aware, that's the real key.

And the goal of Buddhism is found more in the freedom of awareness, where awareness is not hijacked for our desires and our versions.

That awareness is not drowned out by our self-preoccupations, that our connection or the way that awareness can enliven us is not lost by the focus on what we're aware of.

And so to pay attention to how we're aware and see if we can find some degree of freedom in the how we're aware, some degree of nourishment, some degree of peace, some degree of kind of coming home,

where it feels really right to abide in awareness, to simply be aware and not be tricked into thinking that what we're aware of is important, what we're thinking about.

These things are important, but what we're thinking about, what we're aware of is the solution, is where we have to fix these things or have a better relationship to them or better mindfulness of them.

And then we need to be mindful of things, but how we're aware of them, how we're mindful.

So to assume the meditation posture, and to gently close your eyes,

and to begin the meditation, to do a just as simple as possible, check in with yourself. How are you?

You know, it could be as simple as from scale one to ten, where ten is really good and one is feeling pretty lousy. Where are you on that scale?

And then you recognize how you are.

Are you reactive to how you are? Are you judging how you are? Do you somehow, are you somehow entangled or concerned about how you are?

Or is there a way of just knowing how you are, and let the knowing be so really simple, almost as if the part of you that can know, maybe it doesn't feel the way you are, knowing just as peaceful and quiet, open.

...