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

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Okay. Okay, it's good to, good to sit with you.

So, uh, good to sit with you.

So, uh, Agnes Callard quoted that so long ago, she says, when you're feverish you're not healthy in that you cannot engage in your normal productive

function.

Something's wrong with you. Your body's awry. Fever is a form of sickness. But a fever is also a healthy immune response to the presence in your body of some kind of infection.

If I lost my susceptibility for fever, that would be a sign that things had gone very wrong.

It would be a way of getting sicker, not healthier. So while it is clearly not, quote,

best to be weak, feverish, sleepy, and incapacitated,

it might nonetheless be the best option on the table.

A fever is a healthy way of being sick.

I have much the same view about anger.

Fever is a healthy way of being sick and the argument here is that anger you could say is a healthy

way of being sick. A healthy recognition that that something of value is under threat.

And yeah, I have a fever.

Anger, anger is not health,

balance, a fever is not health,

but nevertheless a sign that our body is trying to return to balance.

And so I begin in this way just to note, yeah, okay, in me, some fear, some anger, and the anger and fear is set against a much larger backdrop of love. And anger may be a kind of important first word, but anger can never be the last word. A fever, in other words is not meant to keep you

feverish.

And if we truly care about suffering,

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