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

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So... So one of the, I just mentioned that for the last three weeks, almost four weeks, I've been living outdoors, mostly in the sleeping bag under the stars at night and natural settings teaching mostly

teaching in that context and there's something quite marvelous about the immediacy of living outdoors and that contact with the natural world and the awakening of our natural senses.

And this speaks to the topic for today, which I'll introduce for

the meditation, by saying that Buddhism begins and ends Buddhist practice with being in the present moment.

A radical clear seeing of present moment experience.

And in between the beginning and the end, it's seeing clearly that thoughts about the future,

thoughts about the past, are occurring in the present.

And to see them really as present moment occurrences,

that everything we need to discover in the darma for the purposes of the kind of deep

liberation of heart that Buddhism teaches is

found by a simple attention to present moment experience.

And it's fascinating to watch

how difficult it is for the mind sometimes to stay in the present, how it travels off into

the land of thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, thoughts of fantasy.

And so this morning, let's see how to be here and now with a clear seeing of present moment experience

without wandering off and of course you will wander off and then

the task is always going back to clear seeing.

No need to analyze, judge, no need to criticize, if you can return to the clarity of seeing oh this is present moment experience.

This is what is what is inviting me to see more deeply into reality. The reality

as it unfolds in the present moment.

...