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

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Hello and welcome to our Monday beginning of the week series of meditations and teachings.

Overall we're doing samadhi over this extended period of time.

And in thinking about samadhi,

many people consider samadhi the same as concentration,

and that is the same as some kind of mental laser focus of the mind that happens from the control tower.

Another way of thinking about it is that the word samadhi is

can also be understood, and the very related word samahati,

can also be understood as a settleness, to be settled, deeply settled.

And so in meditation, in Buddhist teachings, there are four dignified postures for meditation.

And I love it when it's called dignified.

There is walking, standing, sitting, and lying down.

But the kind of the representative for meditation is the sitting posture and the posture here we have of the Buddha here next to me.

And there's something that happens there in this posture. If you stand or if you sit in a balanced way,

rooted, upright in this kind of posture, it allows something to settle, to relax. The body,

then with time, begins relax, the tensions,

the shoulders which are tight, the belly which is tight,

the upward kind of swirl of agitated energy,

begins to settle.

And there's a feeling of settleness,

a settling into the body, deeper in the body,

...