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

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So hello and welcome to this seventh talk on mindfulness meditation

to introduction to mindfulness meditation.

And this week, the focus is on mindfulness of the body and as I said yesterday this is one of the

central teachings of the Buddha the foundation of his meditation practice is a

deep stable connection to the body.

And part of the reason for this is that we're trying to become free

of the hegemony of our thinking, our judgments, our biased, our stereotyping,

our preconceived ideas, free of our fixed agendas and opinions and stories of what is and

isn't.

Not because these are necessarily wrong to have, but because they interfere

with their ability for a deep connection in the present moment. It would be, it's kind of like a friend who

cares for you a lot through some effort. Maybe the person is challenged in some kind of way, but overcame the challenge

so that to make you a really nice meal took a lot of care in the preparation of the food, the flavors, they lay out of the table.

And you sit down at the table and you don't really notice what the person has done and you hardly taste the food because

you're caught up in judgments about worldly affairs and who's right and who's wrong and

and you're spinning out opinions and and ready to argue your case and you're kind of like kind of preoccupied that you don't even notice what your friend has done for you.

So in the same way, we don't even notice what our body, what our inner life, what the world

is doing for us in the moment here.

And there is something really special, whether we're suffering or whether we're happy,

whether the body's in pain or whether it's comfortable.

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