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

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Hello everyone and welcome.

I feel the moment, quite fortunate that we get to sit here in meditation.

I get to do somehow talk about meditation a little bit in this guidance I'll offer.

As I give this morning guidance, I'm also guiding myself in doing the guidance.

This kind of opportunity for me to drop in within to my connection to meditation, my inner life.

In our life that has become much richer through meditation practice.

So the topic I want to introduce today is the first introduction and then the topic.

It's sometimes known that ethics and Buddhism is not meant to be a set of rules that we are obligated to adhere to.

They are trainings. They are trainings that we engage in.

They are trainings we engage in for our own benefit.

And they are gifts that we give to the world, the gift of safety.

And they are trainings for ourselves to tap into and support and discover something really valuable within.

So that our ethical behavior is not a commandment but is something that is inspired by our inner state of heart, our inner state of mind, our quality of our inner being.

And so there's a word in Pali that means both beautiful, some one dictionary also provides the word charming or auspicious.

But it also has a meaning of virtue or having an ethical quality.

And someone who has this Kaliana, this beauty is also someone who has ethical, an ethical virtue or ethical disposition on the inside.

And to connect beauty and ethics is quite profound that it's our inner beauty that we discover, that we cultivate, that we evoke, that is the source of living an ethical life.

So inner beauty, what is it?

So to begin with assuming a posture and meditation posture is a posture that allows or begins a process of connecting to our inner life.

To assume a posture that allows there to be some degree, small degree maybe, of confidence manifested through the body.

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