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

Please visit our website at audiodderma.org.

Good morning.

Good afternoon. Good evening. Welcome. Welcome.

As I explore the fourth session on this theme of faculties for Fearlessness.

And maybe I'll say again that I'm not using going through the faculties in the traditional order and in this

exploration of the faculties and fearlessness I'm emphasizing different aspects of fearlessness.

It's kind of started with, I wanted to do something about fear,

and but I wanted to do something uplifting about fear rather than just talking about fear.

And so this idea of faculties of fear, like how can we use them as a support?

Because it turns out that naturally humans have fear.

Sometimes it's really obvious and sometimes it's really subtle

because there's a way in that risk is just a part of the human life.

In fact, if there were a life that's not open to the uncontrollable elements in the world and therefore

not subject to fear, then that life would be a divine life.

That would be like a god right not a human being because human beings

have risks we're vulnerable where accident disease embarrassment humiliation where's accident, disease, embarrassment, humiliation, loss, failure, these things happen to humans.

And if we don't like maybe address them or acknowledge them, there can be this effect, this long-term effect of like perpetually feeling fear, and there's a way that we just become habituated to it and not even

noticing the different ways it shows up and then this impact of this continuous or long-term feeling of this little low-grade fear,

maybe with spikes of a lot of fear, it affects our ability to take risks, which includes things like feeling

deeply, feeling love, feeling the loss, we all have losses.

And also affects our ability to think independently and not just be pushed around by whatever sources we have in contact

...