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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello and welcome to this third talk in a five- series where I'm discussing the practice of not making things worse, not making it worse. And this can seem very simplistic, it could

seem kind of maybe not profound.

Buddhism is a profound religion,

profound experiences of awakening and enlightenment

and this simple thing, ordinary thing.

Just don't make it worse.

Can be easy maybe to dismiss.

I'd like to propose that all of Buddhism can be found through this practice of don't make

it worse, that it's certainly valuable for beginner, for ordinary life, and, you know, everyday circumstances.

But to live this way with mindfulness attention to don't make it worse.

It's a path that opens to all of what Buddhism has to offer, even full awakening.

And one of the ways to describe this

is that say we're fuming with anger around some computer device that's not working the way we wanted to work and it's been trying to fix it and

make it work for way too long and and just can feel the impact in the impact is you want to throw that device across the floor, maybe through the window.

And then you hear that, remember this little teaching, don't make it worse.

And so you stop. teaching, don't make it worse.

And so you stop, and you don't throw the device.

But then you hear again, don't make it worse.

And then you feel, oh, I'm so impatient,

because I really want to go and, you know get an ice cream today it's a hot day and the ice

would be so good and I really want that I'm so impatient in this computer is causing me problems.

...