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

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Welcome, welcome. Welcome. You know what, can we turn the volume just a tiny bit higher? Just because I don't want to I'm getting a little lazy with these microphones.

I don't want to protect my voice. I think this is good. Thank you.

Thank you. So, good evening.

I was thinking about this bell, when the bell rings there was a time when I first

started a meditation practice and that I would come to the group sits like this and I

would be like holding on for dear life just waiting for the

bell to ring and the bell would ring and like oh my goodness you know this kind of

this feeling I didn't even notice really how much I was I couldn't wait for the bell to ring

maybe I was in like some physical discomfort or maybe just some mental

discomfort or maybe just some mental discomfort.

Or there would be times when I would realize

that, you know, again, I'd be in a setting where other people are meditating and there would be just I don't know what would happens but something I like go I can't meditate and then I just okay, well I guess I'm just going to sit here.

And I would just totally stop meditating, pretend to meditate. I was trying not to wiggle too much but you can't help it when you're not meditating you're just shifting your weight around. And I remember reporting this to a teacher that I would just like give up and then just wait for the bell to ring.

And this teacher told me, you know, you're not what you're actually doing there is cultivating aversion just this

you know waiting wanting something to happen that's not there so there's this way in which we can practice, you know, with this effort or, you know, just really

striving hard or really just being kind of lackadaisical maybe about it, or there's a way in which we're kind of present.

Not completely present, but not completely lost in thought either.

So I'd like to talk a little bit about this tonight.

This idea about balanced efforting,

like the right amount. We might say wise efforting. And

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