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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So hello and welcome.

And this will be the beginning of a four-part series

following the five-part series on the four noble truths,

which are the truths of suffering. And now I'll offer you four

truths of happiness. And these don't come directly from the Buddhist teachings, but hopefully

I've been so involved in the Buddhist teachings for so long that this can be a kind of a reformulating it in some way that is useful for you all.

And begin with the ideas that happiness is a very important part

of Buddhist practice, that it might be overlooked if the emphasis is so much on suffering.

Some people are quite inspired, and maybe even inspired in a happy way.

People have told me this, that they've come to hear a Buddhist teachings.

Some Dharma teacher was emphasizing that how much suffering there is in the world,

naming it directly, and that it was such a relief to have someone say that,

that there is suffering in this world. there's lots of suffering in this world, that we suffer a lot, because so many

of the people around were denying it or trying to pretend otherwise or painting it over with

some kind of, you know, bright picture of how things were,

you know, wonderful and inspiring or that we just ignore it and something like that. So to hear

someone name it so that we say that, you know, I like to say that in Buddhism

we stop for suffering. We stop to look at it, to be with it, to see it for what it is, to study

it, to find our way through it, but not so that we can suffer better, but rather so we can become free of suffering and

end that freedom to find happiness.

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