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

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Okay, so good morning. Good morning again.

Lovely to be practicing with you all.

So yesterday I introduced this idea of stories

and some other role that they play in our practice,

and certainly in our tradition and in our lines.

And it turns out there are a few different stories about the Buddha's Awakening.

And one of those stories includes that as the Buddha to be was sitting underneath the OD tree.

I think this commitment that he's not going to move until he becomes awakened,

that Mara shows up and is bringing his armies with him.

So Mara, we might understand as representing or symbolizing that which is obstructing or trying to prevent our movement towards awakening

or our progress on the path towards greater freedom and peace.

So Mara, as I said yesterday and I like to emphasize, in this tradition,

Mara is not a satanic figure.

It's this story of Mara versus the Buddha is not a story of good versus evil.

Instead, it's a story of complacency versus effort or complacency versus commitment to practice.

And we have to be a little bit careful here because when we talk about effort or commitment to practice,

there might be a tendency to think like we have to work really hard and strive in some kind of way.

But actually, there's certainly it needs to be effort, but too much efforting is itself can be an obstruction to practice.

So part of the art of practice is knowing this right amount.

So the story of Mara versus the Buddha is, are we just floating along in our life,

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