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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

So we come to the third talk on the ten protectors, the ten supports or the ten helpers,

depending on how we translate the word nati, the polyword.

And this is a teaching coming from the Buddha that appears in the numerical discourses.

It's on that in the tenth chapter, it's the discourse number 17.

And what's provided is a list without much discussion or any discussion about them.

But it's a wonderful list and in other places these qualities are discussed in different ways.

And today the protector is having good spiritual friends.

So the first was our own virtue.

The second yesterday was, what was it yesterday?

Sometimes my mind doesn't work so fast sitting here.

And already kind of my mind going with the next thing.

But anyway, today it's a loving kind.

It's a Kalayana Mitta.

And the word Kalayana can mean beautiful.

That's usually the first dictionary definition.

But it also refers to the kind of inner beauty from which virtue arises.

Ethical integrity arises from which the disposition to be honest and truthful appears.

And so someone who is a good spiritual friend, Kalayana Mitta, is someone who is honest,

someone who has kind of virtuous behavior and life.

It's also refers to someone who is a spiritual teacher.

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