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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

A few words about the practice.

I find it useful to have this orientation or this understanding, that there are only two things

ever going on.

And that makes it really simple.

You know, not a lot to figure out.

There is what's happening and then our relationship to it.

And ordinarily we're relating to something, we're involved, engaged in something.

And it's possible to ask the question, how am I relating to what's happening?

So if you're thinking, maybe the way you're relating is that you are, depending

on what the thoughts are, is that you are leaning into them. You're knotted up and tangled in them

and I try to figure something out. It could be you're not happy about what your mind is thinking.

And so you're pulling back, you're resisting, you're, you're not happy about what your mind is thinking. And so you're pulling back,

you're resisting, you're, you're aversive to it in some way. If you're sitting and you have

some nice calm feeling as you're meditating, that's what's happening. What's your relationship to it?

You're trying to pump it up to make you're eagerly in a hurry to become more calm. And so you're

kind of engaged in that way. It could be that you are just very nice. It's nice and you're very welcoming to it.

This is nice. Neither leaning towards it or pulling away from it, you're just welcoming. Oh,

it's calm. It's good. Maybe you're feeling knee pain. Maybe there's aversion to it.

Maybe there's the mind screaming that ring the bell.

Maybe there's all kinds of things, restless, anxious, you know, agitated.

...