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

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Welcome,

welcome.

Before I turned on the recording, I was just, I don't know,

having a delight and how many of us are coming together for these practices.

It's such a beautiful thing we're doing together.

Thank you for that.

And today I'll continue on this theme of faculties for Fearlessness.

Fine. Five faculties for Fearlessness forever. And I'm sure we can make up all kinds of

all iterations, but we'll start with a guided meditation and then we'll introduce the fourth faculty.

And when I'm saying the fourth, it's not necessarily the fourth faculty and the traditional

listing of the five faculties I'm choosing to do them in a different order and to

emphasize particular aspects of the faculty so not in the most common

conventional way.

And so, start our meditation. Just tuning into the posture. Whether you're sitting on the floor, sitting on a chair, or even lying down, can there be a sense of uprightness

and not a way that is stiff or forced, but in a way that maybe conveys a sense of respect for yourself, for the practice.

allowing the vertebrae of the spine to stack one upon the other. and maybe moving the chin backwards just a tiny bit.

Someone might not even be able to see how much you move,

but it opens up the

vertebrae or the experience in the back of the neck.

Now those are a little bit more stability, a bit more openness, this tiny movement. and then getting a sense of this posture at this moment in general the sense of uprightness the contact with the surface

...