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

Please visit our website at audiodarma.org.

Okay, so welcome.

Ah, welcome folks.

It's nice to say with you.

So, uh, nice to say with you.

So, uh, theme. So theme this week is facets of faith in kind of like historically evoked some some measure of suspicion and

me kind of you know I thought that was what that word was what people invoked when they didn't have evidence

for believing something but wanted to believe anyway.

And early in practice, I sort of intuitively sense the power of the

darma that it was it was kind of pushing deep buttons inside me and in sensing that the kind of the power of it I

sort of felt a little intoxicating, you know, like I could sense the intoxicating potential of like giving myself over to something.

And I didn't know what I was giving myself over to. I wanted to be careful.

I wanted to be careful not to give away too much of my mind. So I would kind of like dip my toe into practice and then pull my toe out.

It's okay.

And, uh... And at the same time I did have a sense that some measure of surrender was really required to deepen, that the kind of gates of

darma closed to those who will not surrender.

And that was about 25 years ago, a century, it's really kind of wild.

And maybe without knowing it, faith kind of snuck up on me.

And now just animates

Darma practice to a large extent.

So what is this? What is faith? It's not faith in in some sort of like it's not faith that everything works out okay it's not yeah it's not naive a

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