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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So welcome to this second day of the fifth week, introduction to mindfulness.

And this first few days, a couple of days and this week I want to emphasize the partnership of mindfulness and concentration.

This week I want to emphasize the partnership of mindfulness and concentration,

sati and samari.

And that these two work together and the concentration or somaty brings a steadiness, brings ability in the

steadiness of mind to have a continuous awareness of something.

Mindfulness kind of opens the space to be aware and concentration keeps us connected so that there's a kind of a chance

to really feel and sense something to really get absorbed in something,

to really stay present without being distracted

by the baggage, as I talked about yesterday that we carry or picking up baggage or

without becoming distracted from what we're paying attention to.

The... The mindfulness being the initial kind of awareness or recognition of something

can be engaged in different ways and it's helpful to think of sometimes that the

knowing of mindfulness the being aware of something that with the mind's eye, the mind's sense, we can have the sense that we get

really right close to something, like really right there with the sensations in the body or right there with the emotions

as they're experienced in the body.

Or we can step back, one, two, three feet steps and just kind of from a distance be aware of something.

We don't have to be emished or right up against something, sometimes it's helpful to step back.

And like with fear, if we're really close to fear, it might feel like it's too much

and almost like it is more activating,

activates more fear.

...