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

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So thank you.

you. It's good to practice with you and yeah,

thank you to everyone for you all for you all for sitting and practicing and yeah Kevin Julie editing.

Kevin, Julie, editing, maybe, maybe others too, Nancy, scheduled me.

The website people, the managing directors, the board of directors, the volunteer

coordinator, oh my goodness, it keeps going, right?

Yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you.

So, um, if one, um, If one were tasked with creating a religion writing the holy books, right?

Be a very tall order.

You would have to write with two considerations in mind how will you be read but also

how you will be misread.

You'd have to guard against misreadings that would legitimize bad stuff.

And... my

is bad stuff. And part of the Buddha's

's genius to my mind is that his set of teachings provide very few footholds for fundamentalism, very few footholds for the derangement of overconfidence, it's an incredibly nuanced path, where in a way usually rhetorical force is not privileged over nuance.

And so one factor balances other factors and we can't kind of

fetishize any one aspect of the path.

That's what I've been highlighting this week, just with pairings of teachings that maybe are not even traditionally paired but on my own path of practice

have been important counterbalancing forces and so with the last pairing I'm highlighting that I've been circumambulating often these past couple of years of compassion,

equanimity. So we talk about freedom and happiness and these things, but a huge part of our practice is actually experiencing

...