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 to this third talk that I'm calling the four truths of happiness.

And they are compliments to the Buddhist teachings and the four noble truths of suffering,

which I talked about last week.

And these two pairs of four complement each other, kind of parallel each other.

But one of the things they have in common, kind of at the center of them, is they concern

our contribution to our state of mind, state of heart, our state of being.

And the four noble truths have to do with how we contribute to what's called suffering,

dukkha, emotional pain. And it's not necessarily all emotional pain, but that emotional pain which we do, in fact, contribute to.

And the contribution is summarized in the word craving. And now we're thirsting, having thirst for stuff.

They're kind of a compulsive desire.

And that as long as this compulsive desire is operating,

there's frustration, there's expectation, there's tension, there's stress,

there is more elaborate things that begin happening around that compulsive desire,

which is building from a desire,

identities, layers and layers of identities and stories

and realities that we live in.

And so we want to be careful and see how we contribute to the suffering. Our role, we don't ignore the role of others or other situations, but at least we take care of our contribution and makes a world a difference. For the four truths of happiness, we also have a contribution to make.

And we don't just leave our happiness to chance, hoping that the world was somehow provided for us,

hoping that something out there will do it if we pay enough money, or if we find the right person to be with or all kinds

of things that we're looking out there for happiness. But we find it within. We find what within

...