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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. You're going to be here. So hello everyone.

Very happy to be back here with you all to sit here and at IMC and welcome you into the IMC orbit, the IMC community for this Monday morning. And it's pretty special that I have this opportunity to be with you in this way. And it's pretty special that there's such a wonderful rich sense of community that's forming

just from the chats.

And for those of you not reading or writing in the chats. I just know that this is a very that those

chats kind of exhibit a very warm community, kind of warm,

warm,

kind of warm-hearted, supportive community that gathers for these meditations.

So, probably for some of you, maybe for many of you, one of the challenges of meditation is having a wise relationship with thinking.

And some of you maybe think a lot in meditation

and it becomes more time for thinking than it is time for meditation.

Some of you might struggle with your thinking and maybe even think, have, think that

your thinking is an enemy and something you have to fight against.

For this meditation, I would like you to be allowed to think.

And I'll offer some guidance through the sitting around thinking.

Certainly you can be centered in your breathing while you're aware that you're thinking.

You don't have to let go of your thoughts, but to be

curious about them, to see them clearly for what they are, to, in a sense, stand away from

them and look back at them.

Oh, this is thinking, yes, this is what my thinking is about.

Get to know your thinking, but maybe a little bit like getting to know someone who's speaking

a foreign language you don't understand, and what are some of the things you can pick up to this person who's thinking all along,

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