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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So good morning everyone or good day. I think there is an invaluable tendency.

I think there is an invaluable tendency or maybe not tendency but an invaluable

approach of offering meditation instruction which is radically simple, but sometimes a simpler

and more profound it is, the more difficult it is to enact.

So one of them, so at the beginning of many meditations,

I offer something which maybe seems kind of preliminary and that is I

mentioned to let your body be a posture which is expresses both being relaxed and alert, an alert posture in which

you can relax.

And any meditation posture at all can find some balance of those two. If you're sitting in a chair or couch using their

backrest, it might be helpful to sit up a little straighter, maybe not be quite as leaning back as you would

into kind of on your own do, but still using the support, but sitting up more so the chest opens up a little bit.

If you're lying down, maybe there's a way of also adjusting the spine, the shoulder blades, if there's a pillow so that maybe the

some part of you the chest is more alert. Some people will have their arms, their

upper arms flat on the bed next to them or the floor next to them, but their

forearms pointing to the ceiling, one or both.

And that brings a kind of intentionality and alertness and engagement that can also help this alertness.

But this instruction to have a balance between being alert and relaxed is also appropriate for the mind and for what we do.

In fact, it's enough that could be, this can be the only instruction that meditation is to stay alert

and relaxed and when we do that, it says, it says,

it says, one more step, alert and relaxed

and let nature take its course.

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