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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So, hello and welcome to this Wednesday morning at IMC, meditation time and one of the very significant, maybe under-appreciated

teachings and instructions of the Buddha

has to do with the word, you don't have to remember

this Polly word, but Vichharati which means to abide. And I love this word, to abide, to dwell. It's very closely connected for me to the idea of

resting in the middle of what's happening.

And the Buddha, in terms of meditation, the Buddha uses this word abide to rest within as a something that happens when

meditation becomes mature that we have the ability to, no matter what's happening, to find a place of rest,

a place to abide in what's happening, not away from what's happening, not to turn away

and go someplace where we can relax deeply and forget about our issues in our life.

But the deepest thing is when we can find a place of profound rest that is not conventional rest but something that is deep within and

maybe you know at the center of all things, there's a place of rest, a place of

delightful, vital, dynamic stillness, a place of rich, rich, intelligent silence here. So maybe today the theme of the meditation is rest and that the emphasis on relaxation which the Buddha also does

is to not just relax and then relax again and then relax again,

but to relax, and then in the relaxation

as to the whatever degree of softening, quieting, relaxing we can have, to appreciate the sense of

abiding, the sense of rest, the sense of quiet or stillness that's found in the relaxing.

And then to begin to maybe have that as a cornerstone or the foundation for how we breathe,

how we are embodied, how we're present for our inner life of thoughts and emotions and feelings,

from a vantage point of a place of rest, quiet, peace.

So to... to take a, assume a meditation posture,

and not to assume it, to enter into a meditation posture forcefully or aggressively,

...