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

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So warm greetings from IMC and to this series on the Ten Protectors.

Yesterday, what protects us is a love of the Dharma, and that of course can have different meanings depending what you mean by Dharma.

Different people do have different reference points for this wonderful word.

And what I offered was that the core aspect of Dharma is non-harming.

And then that's pretty powerful in itself, but the companion to that is to do what's beneficial, to do that which is the opposite of harm.

And this protects us, and this protects the world around us.

Now with the operating idea of love, I think it's fantastic.

So to do this with love, to have love for this, so that the way we approach it, the way we meet the world is something healthy and nourishing for us and for others.

Now we come to the next protector, which is sometimes, and when I first, first many years, I was introduced to this, it just seemed too technical and it seemed a little bit too technique focused or something felt very different than for me than just having open mindfulness and presence for whatever is here.

It seemed a little bit judgmental, it seemed a little bit more difficult, but I've come to really appreciate that what's coming next here is really again also very fundamental to the Dharma.

And the traditional way of translating the English is to abandon what is unwholesome and aroused, to awaken what is wholesome.

And sometimes it's said to be abandoned and what's unskillful and awakened, aroused, what is skillful.

And I like to think of this as to let go of what is unhelpful and pick up what is helpful, do what is helpful.

And sometimes I like to say, put down what is unhealthy, that we are mind and speech and body can be doing and pick up what is healthy, where we can pick it up.

And so this distinction makes a huge difference. If we don't see this choice we have in any kind of situation or life between what is unhelpful and what is helpful, why would we kind of stop doing the unhelpful?

If you have a thorn in your foot and you don't see that it's helpful or serves you to take the thorn out and you just keep walking on the thorn then eventually you can get infected and might cause lasting damage.

So the idea is to, you know, we constantly make this distinction in our life. We sit in the chair and we feel what it's a nice way of sitting that helps us to relax and what maybe is not nice, maybe there's a kind of some painful pressure against part of our body in a certain way of sitting in the chair.

So we make an adjustment. So this constant adjustment that we make is pretty much human nature. But when we apply it in Dharma practice is we are learning how we relate to our experience.

And the things that we do that come out of us is as opposed to looking about the world and changing the world. Dharma practice has a very central thing of taking responsibility for what comes out of us.

And if what comes out of us is a not helpful for the world or not helpful to us, then there's the art of letting go of it.

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