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

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Good morning.

Hello.

Lovely practice together.

So nice to sit in community.

Even if it's this kind of modern version of community.

And check boxes on YouTube and these kinds of things.

So thank you for we're sitting together.

And I'd like to continue on this theme that I've been doing this week about letters from Mara to leaders of his armies.

So he has ten armies.

I'm not going to go through all ten.

And he sends letters to them encouraging them to continue in their efforts in obstructing or getting in the way of or preventing people from finding freedom.

So I'm not also going to worry myself about what exactly is Mara.

I'm holding it right now as a rhetorical device, a literary device that's getting used to convey something and what's getting conveyed is.

We might consider these.

I don't know.

Maybe these experiences, things that prevent us from finding freedom.

And this way of including this character, Mara, is it way in that can.

De-personalize it make it feel less like, oh, this is a problem that we have or some failing that we have or something on those lines.

And so Ajahn Pranadamo in the Ajahn Cha lineage up in arrow river hermitage monastery in northern Ontario and of course in Canada.

But wrote these letters kind of written more in modern times where Mara is sending letters to the leaders of his armies trying to encourage these armies to continue preventing people from finding freedom.

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