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

Please visit our website at audiodderma.org.

So hello and welcome to the Insight Meditation Meditation Centers YouTube Meditation Session.

I'm very happy to sit here with all of you who are participating.

So this is the 25th of the 25 sessions, introduction to meditation sessions.

And, um, and mindfulness has a lot to do with noticing what is happening.

And with that kind of emphasis, it's easy to overlook that one of the things that is happening

is the absence of things.

Things disappear and then no longer there. Suffering

disappears and is no longer there and the absence is significant.

Absence allows for silence,

absence allows for stillness,

absence allows for spaciousness.

And sometimes when we practice mindfulness,

what stands out as the predominant experience or what stands out as a significant thing to

take in, let the register, are these absences, the absences of suffering, the absence of tension.

In that absence there's a kind of nourishment, some goodness there sometimes that you want to take in, that if we go on to

the next happening thing, we don't take time to register and receive the benefits of that those absences. The absence of

noise is silence, the absence of agitation, his stillness, the absence of agitation,

his stillness, the absence of contraction is space,

spaciousness.

And these qualities can always be present to some degree in some ways and certainly searching for them or trying to make them happen is not helpful.

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