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

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So, greetings, greetings everybody, welcome, welcome.

So this morning, I want to drop in a poem that reminds me a little bit of part of the

Buddha's biography part of the way in which he found his way to awakening.

And maybe it's a modern day version of part of his biography and I'll unpack that later during the

Dormat and it'll become obvious to you once I drop in the poem.

But I wanted to say just a few words about poetry and that is that to fully enter a poem.

There's a way in which we must stop

and step away from our usual way of showing up.

It's a right to really often,

like we don't think about people reading poetry

while they're doing something else. Instead, I tend to think, and this is my own experience, I read poetry when I'm like seated, when I'm like seated when I'm sitting down and have like a book in front of me.

This is or yeah often like my the books I have a poetry or, you know, like actual books, a requirement for that, but just this wave, like it's shifting out of, it's not something that I'm doing well, I'm fixing a meal or walking, or, you know, sometimes we see people with their devices while they're walking or something like that. But instead, it's like to stop and pay attention to a poem is a way to help kind of like bring that poem to life.

And so often, we're just caught up and getting from one place to another doing

one thing and then the next thing and I feel like there isn't a compelling reason to just stop.

Except this is what mindfulness practice can be.

You know, I don't have to stop, but maybe a meditation practice,

to take a meditation poster and we might say that poetry

is also a way that encourages to stop and enter into a different way of being with the moment.

It's kind of like interrupt this momentum that we often have with whatever's compelling us to go on and on to the next moment.

So poetry is a way that really encourages us to stop and really enter into the world that it is offering us.

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