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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So, good morning, good day to this third day of third talk on the four noble truths.

And after the first talk on, that was an introduction yesterday, talking about suffering.

Today, the focus is the cause of suffering.

And when the Buddha talked about the first noble truth, the way that he

described it is it's a suffering that arises or is constructed by the person who suffers.

And how he describes or defines it, the classic way,

he talks about five different ways that we construct our experience

in such a way that there's clinging and craving involved,

that we build up a kind of cathedral of self-cathedral,

or building of reactivity,

that the accumulation ends up with one big ball of suffering.

And so when we come to the second noble truth, it's the truth of the cause of suffering. And what, before I tell you what it's what that

cause is that the Buddha offers. But it's important to understand that here the orientation is,

what is our contribution to suffering?

If someone walking down the street or someplace

steps on my foot, maybe even hurts it a little bit, that might be painful. But it might be, I might get

irritated. It might relate to all the different people lately who have been stepping on my feet

and I'm just frustrated and angry with now humankind because of how thoughtless they are stepping

in my foot.

And I start spinning out about all kinds of thoughts about myself, when people are doing to me,

...