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

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Welcome, welcome. Good evening. Nice to see you all.

Thank you. Good evening. Nice to see you all.

So tonight I'd like to talk a little bit and in a way of just like throwing some seeds out. And in some way maybe the seeds will take root and germinate and sprout into something,

and maybe they won't.

Or maybe it'll take some time.

Maybe they have to sit in the darkness for some time,

or maybe there has to be more rain or more sun or something like this until the seed sprout.

So just this idea of, I'm doing this with my hand, kind of like just throwing out seeds and see if they land and produce something.

Partly I offer this just as an encouragement to maybe

to see what's being said here

and maybe just feel into it.

And if it feels like, I don't know.

Can you just hold that?

I don't know.

Can you just hold that?

And take what's helpful and just leave behind what's

not helpful. And I want to start by talking about thoughts. Like, what are thoughts? Like, what are they?

For me, this is like such a fascinating topic. Like, what are they made out of? Where do they come from?

I think we all know there are like these mental events that kind of like arise and pass away. There's temporary appearances that just show up on occasion. But it happens that they show

up more often than just occasion. I'm fascinated by this. I saw that there was a study that said

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