Hello, thanks for listening to this Darma podcast. I hope you consider that in accordance

with the Buddhist tradition all of my work is a teacher is offered without charge and supported

entirely by donations only. If you'd like to support this work, you'll find a paypal button on

darmapunks NYC.com.

Tonight, talking about preoccupation.

And when I say preoccupation and when I say preoccupation there's obviously it's a word that

denotes a lot of different possibilities presents in different ways.

You're a fixed, fixed idea, obsessive ideation,

intrusive thoughts, and so forth.

There's different underlying causes for preoccupation.

I'm not going to be talking tonight about the kind of repetitive thought that's

associated with neurological disorders of which there are some forms of preoccupation.

There's a region in our brain called the striatum.

The striatum is essentially the automatic transmission of the brain.

It's a terrible metaphor, but what it does is it generates certain thoughts and behaviors.

So the Streatum, when it's using a part of it

called the Putaman it activates habitual behaviors walking, sitting

up out of a chair, sitting down to a chair, tying your shoes, brushing your teeth.

All of those habitual behaviors are initiated by the hoodaman and then it's connected to a

part called the basal ganglia which helps you actually

act those out.

When people have a disruption of the

...