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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. You're not going to So good morning everyone and hello everyone. And hello everyone. and delighted to be here.

So, it's possible to listen to two things at once,

to be aware of two things happening at once. We do that

with music where there's maybe many instruments playing at once and somehow we hear them all and can distinguish one from the other.

And when many of the instruments in the orchestra

may be stop playing so there can be a soloist we're very aware

of the silence around the soloist and that allows the solos to be highlighted and accentuated.

And then the whole orchestra joins in again.

Or we can be listening to something in our kitchen and maybe listening to someone

talking and then suddenly the hum of the refrigerator goes off.

And now there's a silence.

And we still can listen to our friend speaking and the voice of that friend is

highlighted by that silence that we also can be aware of.

So in the mind, as I've offered here, is that there are two different operating systems, two different categorically

different ways of thinking. There is what can be the world of

discursive thought, distracted thought, jumping around thoughts, spinning

thoughts, where we have conversations, where we have

accurate stories and images and predictions of the future that

relatively abstract and kind of a filling it with the fullness of the story life that we live.

And then there, and that is more like the hum of the refrigerator.

And that's possible sometimes for that to become quiet. And it doesn't mean we no longer have any thoughts,

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