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

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So good morning everyone and good day, good evening, wherever you are.

And welcome.

And it's 4th of July Independence Day.

I wonder if we could almost claim it as a Buddhist holiday for a different definition of independence or liberation.

And here we sit on the path of liberation.

And the teachings of the Buddha, the idea is to see in our direct experience, perceive in our direct experience the Dharma.

So that we become independent in the Dharma.

We don't have to depend on anyone else to tell us what the Dharma is because we've really seen it for ourselves.

So for today, what I'd like to emphasize is in maybe building on the idea of aspiration.

What I'm going to teach offer you for the meditation maybe can be aspirational so you don't get caught up in the idea of success or doing it right or something.

And the idea is to see if you can, for maybe only a few moments at a time, maybe more longer as the meditation goes along,

maybe you can quiet your discursive thinking.

The thinking that is telling stories, that's explaining things, having commentary, the mind that's having fantasies.

And reviewing things, remembering things, what happened, remembering conversations.

Having conversations with people, that's why it's kind of called discursive thinking.

I think they're holding a discourse with yourself.

And this is a higher order, a kind of more active, agitated, complex form of thinking, that kind of can take all the air out of the room,

or if someone is really going into a room of other people, and it's so loud and so assertive about their opinions and their views.

There's no space for anyone else to speak.

And so the discursive mind fills the space.

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