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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to this Friday meditation session.

And to say a few words preparing us for the meditation,

the phrase for today is that samadhi is sweetness.

That samadhi has a kind of sweet quality to it. And maybe in case the word sweetness doesn't have such

positive associations with you as it does for me,

there are other words that speak to the goodness that comes with samadhi.

It can be, there can be a feeling of beauty.

And feelings of beauty that come with it.

More classically, people talk about their being joy, gladness, happiness, sometimes bliss,

and more simple and maybe a little more humble way of saying the same words is there can be

pleasure, that samadhi involves pleasure, that something starts becoming very pleasant

as the state of samadhi begins to develop. And at first it might be something very specific,

like there might be a feeling of pleasure

and it seems to irradiate or come with the experience of breathing.

Sometimes the experience of breathing can feel like it's just beautiful.

There's a beauty to it.

It could be that there's a tingling and warmth and joy, maybe kind of similar to what happened

if you had a half smile and a little bit of, you know, turned up the corners of your mouth.

There might be a little bit of kind of delight that, physical delight that appears maybe in the eyes or the cheeks or someplace.

So this idea of, I'm calling it sweetness today, and that sweetness can start to be pervasive.

...