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

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So good morning, everyone. Can you hear me okay? Is it loud enough, everyone? Yeah? Okay.

So, I'd like to offer some thoughts, reflections on the topic of agency.

It's the topic that for another program that I'm thinking about these days. So, and then agency

in a spiritual life, agency in particularly for a Dharma life,

how did these come together? And, and one of the reasons for this is that sometimes in doing

meditation practice, doing a Buddhist practice, spiritual life, people don't feel they have the ability to do it.

So in that sense, they feel that there's no agency.

And if they sometimes, they do feel they have the ability to do it, then maybe they don't think they have agency,

but in a way that they do. They can sit down to meditate,

they can go in retreats, they can spend time maybe reading spiritual books, and it's a very

meaningful part of their life. So to introduce this topic some more, in the very important teaching in insight work in mindfulness practice,

Buddhist mindfulness practice, is a teaching that whatever experience you're directly

having in the present moment. So we have to really clear,

like whatever you're feeling, sensing, experience in the present can be distinguished or divided

or distinguished as having three tones, three feeling tones.

It can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

And for some people, they find it phenomenally fascinating and helpful to just see and recognize that that's the case, because something can be amazingly complex,

like some kind of social drama that you're involved in, maybe, you know, at a holiday party,

and boy, there's a lot going on here, and it's difficult, and social dynamics are ancient and difficult and you know and then in the middle of

that well Buddha said there's a feeling tone to experience and so what's the feeling tone of

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