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

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So hello and welcome to this Monday Dharma talk.

And for this week's series, I would like to go back to Buddhist basics,

the very core insights and understandings and practices

upon which a Buddhist life in the world is built.

And at the heart of Buddhism is addressing suffering.

And the core teaching that represents this kind of direct, clear-eyed seeing and working with,

practicing with suffering is the teachings on the fore-noble truth.

And classically, it's described as the noble truth of suffering,

the noble truth of the cause of suffering,

and the noble truth of the cessation of suffering,

and the noble truth of the path to that ending of suffering. And what I love about the way, the classic wording of this,

there are no pronouns in the wording of it.

So it's knowing, suffering, wherever it occurs, not chasing after

it, but if it's in front of us, if we're paying attention to, the world, we'll account

suffering in ourselves and in others, and then understanding the causes of it, addressing the causes of it.

And one of the ways that Buddhism addresses the causes, which is somewhat unique to Buddhism,

is not necessarily fixing the problems in the world,

but directly,

but knowing something about the root cause of suffering that arises in the heart.

The Buddha called it a dart that's embedded in the heart

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