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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So when I studied at the university, I took a class, I don't know if it was history class,

Japanese history, actually it was Japanese religious history, I think it was. But I took this

class and there was some occasion that I was talking to the professor and there was some little detail of Japanese history.

And it was such a little detail, I said to him,

so this is not something we need to know,

but this is not important enough we have to remember there,

so know it or something.

I was thinking back for the test or something,

you know. And he looked at me like I always thought by by, he was like a Zen master for me. He looked at me and said,

Gill, everything is important. There's no little detail that's unimportant. Everything is important. Every person you meet is important. Every detail of what you're doing in the moment is important.

There might be other things that are important as well.

But this, an attitude way of life that feels that things are important.

Life is important and guess who's important.

You're important.

And there's a way to interpret Buddhism that's a lot about letting go,

and there's all teaching about there's not self,

and you're not supposed to be selfish and it's easy

to kind of be so self-effacing that we don't want to take care of ourselves or

we don't think we're important. If you look at the statue of the Buddha, if you haven't looked

closely, you should go up here and look at it at some point. This is someone who is not asserting themselves, not asking for anything, not pushing for anything, but someone who's sitting here with tremendous presence,

they're really sitting upright and really inhabiting this moment,

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