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

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So, hello, everyone, and welcome to this series on Insight, and we're now into the second half of the year, and what I'm introducing

this week is built on all that we've done in the first half of the year, so this is not out of the blue,

it's not meant to be self-standing, it's meant to have a phenomenal support that we're ready

to bring mindfulness to, excuse me,

we're ready to bring mindfulness to that part of our life that's quite difficult

to the world that English Buddhists call suffering.

And an essential part of Buddhist practice is a mature, clear, honest encounter with suffering,

with stress, with tension, with the emotional difficulties of our life, the ways that life

can be so challenging for all of us, and how to be

able to meet that in an effective and useful way, to be able to be present and not collapse in

the face of challenges, to meet it and stay in some way strong and open,

to meet it and not be defined by the suffering, not be overwhelmed by it,

not be confused by it, but to be able to really be present for it in a clear, effective, and honest

way so that we find our way to freedom, so we find a radically different way to be with

suffering than how ordinarily we might be.

And so to hear this emphasis and be ready, hopefully many of you have been doing this now for six months,

feel like you have this in the background to be able to meet

this in a new way. So the word that we translate by suffering is Dukha in the ancient language of

the Buddha, Pali, we call it, the way it comes to us.

And Dukha, D-U-K-K-H-A, is in the ancient language, is actually an adjective,

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