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

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Grecings from Insight Meditation Center and this week offering you some reference points for doing mindfulness meditation.

And one remarkable reference point for it

is that if you are at ease, if you're relaxed and

present, if you're relaxed and present, if you're relaxed and present, if you're relaxed and if you're relaxed in just here, you cannot not be aware.

If you're relaxed and at ease here and you know you're aware you're

not able to turn off being aware unless you fall asleep or unless you distract yourself

by something that absorbs your attention.

And this idea that if you are at ease,

you cannot not be aware. What kind of awareness is it that you can't turn off? What is it that's here, the simplest thing? And one answer to that

question is that it's an awareness which is undefined.

Or to say it a little bit more provocatively,

rather than from the point of view of awareness,

it's a way of being.

It's an awareness that does not define who we are,

the undefined self.

So we're not defined by our experiences,

whether we feel pleasure or pain, there is a way of being aware of it.

There's a way of being present where we do not define ourselves and where awareness is not shaped by the pleasure

or the pain. If we have gain and loss, success and failure, praise and blame, fame and disrepute.

These are experiences in the world. Things are happening around us and experiences in the mind.

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