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

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So... So over the years, teaching a lot of

years teaching a lot of a lot of pain's been shared with me in one way or another. And that pain has the quality of being both sacred and quite ordinary.

And some of the pain that's been shared are, that I've directly experienced,

no directly, and then some of the pain there are things I've not known,

must infer, must draw from other experience to better understand.

And when I'm receiving something like that, somebody sharing that in a conversation, a retreat something, you know, I try to convey from my own being, from the kind of, from the stillness

in me. What I try to convey is this.

I'm unafraid of your pain.

I will not diminish the sorrow, but I'm unintimitated by your pain.

That's what I wish to convey. And of course I feel it. It resonates with my own

pain. We feel its weight together, right?

But I'm not scared by it, and I'm not scared by you.

And that feels important because people need

to learn to trust their own capacity to heal.

People need to know, like, oh yeah, me too, me too.

Like I am also included in the Buddhist grace.

And there's this very

I don't know kind of yeah sort of intriguing way that our pain gets threaded together with shame.

Why is it like that I don't really know but our wounds and our shame somehow become

one and it's odd in a way that what most needs compassion somehow that's

...