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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

So hello everyone and welcome.

And so maybe I already feel kind of quiet.

So this topic of speech today's topic is truth.

And meditation is the mindfulness meditation is the practice of being truthful to oneself.

That we often say we talk about a simple recognition of what's happening in the present moment.

And some people use mental noting.

Noting what's happening in the moment with a little mental note, breathing in, breathing out, hearing, itching.

But those are all small little statements of truth saying what is true in the moment in our experience, in our sensory experience.

But also we can say truth about other things.

Like now I'm quiet. I feel quiet internally.

Or I'm agitated or I'm happy or sad.

And it's the accumulation of these simple, freely given moments of truth that build in meditation,

that help us to grow in the Dharma, help us to become quiet, help us to become clear, uncomflicted.

So you might think of meditation as a continuous act of being truthful, being true to this moment.

So becoming aware what's happening truthfully.

And this of course means much more than just recognizing that we're breathing in and breathing out.

It's really recognizing how we actually are.

The quality of the heart, the quality of the inner being.

How we're showing up in the world at this moment.

Recognizing what we're avoiding, hiding from.

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