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

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Okay.

I don't know where that meditation came from, but somewhere, somewhere in there. This hasn't been super systematic guiding of meditation practice, to be honest.

But today we, yeah, got on some kind of met self-acceptance train.

Anyway, we find our way with practice.

I don't know what's going to come up in me each morning.

So, Mudita usually rendered as sympathetic joy, kind of delighting in the wealth, love in the face of good fortune,

the welfare of another. And it's kind of known as a little bit of a tricky one because you can't, you know, you can't

force joy. Mudita is not supposed to be like those childhood pictures where, like, a family

photo where the children are commanded to smile

and you can just see the weird, awkward preoccupation

and complicity with the prevailing authorities

just as we smile.

I have a lot of childhood photos like that.

When I'm not protesting,

being photographed,

a lot of forced smiles.

And this is not that.

With kindness, compassion,

the physiological kind of reality of those states

is more easily evoked than joy.

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