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

California. Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

So welcome to this third talk about the Buddha's teachings on disputes, quarrels, and we know

that disputes and quarrels can be verbally violent. They can be assertive. There can be a lot of power and strength that is evoked in disputes.

And sometimes, some people's personal power gets awakened and channeled through anger, sometimes through conceit.

And some people who don't have much sense of connection to their personal power will really value being angry because how it makes them feel powerful and strong.

But when our personal power is channeled into disputes and quarrels, it makes the whole disputes and quarrels much more complicated.

And it's not so easy for us to find ourselves in that. There's a losing of ourselves in it. And it can come along with all kinds of unfortunate things that go on.

One of the things that Buddha talks about is what gives strength to any expression of greed, hatred, and delusion is people's love of power,

some sense that identifying with power, that I am powerful, I want power.

And that kind of power, social power, is a power that has to do with power in the relationship. We want control over others.

We want to not just be right and the arguments we have, but we want to have a sense of that we're powerful, we can get our way in a situation.

Sometimes because we only believe there's a win-lose option, you see that person wins or I win. And so we want to win.

We want to be safe, we want to not be losing, doesn't feel good. And to feel powerful is a way of kind of winning in a sense or being right or having a sense of control or a sense of pleasure even in a sense of power, power over people.

And because power is so often used for people to get their way, or politicians to get their way, or rulers to get their way, and sometimes in these expressed in all kinds of horrible ways, power is often seen as being evil or wrong.

And people then become afraid to express their power, sometimes because if they express it, someone else will come along and knock it down, someone will express even more power and say that you're wrong or conceded or something.

But the Buddha put a lot of discussion about power, personal power, but it was never power over anybody else. It was all a relationship to power over oneself.

Though occasionally talked about having the power to enter into relationships in such a way that to create healthy relationships. And I'll talk about that.

So some of the forms of power that Buddha talked about developing is the power of having a conscience.

So the power of having conscience and care and do not cause harm.

He talked about the power of confidence, the power of confidence over knowing what is healthy and unhealthy, beneficial and not beneficial.

He talked about the power of effort, the effort of doing what's wholesome and avoiding what's unwholesome.

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