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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. Hello from Redwood City and welcome and it's a wonderful thing to be with you all and it's a wonderful thing to come here and sit in this seat that I have meditated in for so many years and to assume my position, my

meditation position, which I want to emphasize for you for this coming meditation.

One of the pervasive emotions in many people's lives, sometimes quite evidently and sometimes in the background, is fear, anxiety, and sometimes the opposite of fear is courage.

But I would like to offer another kind of antidote or alternative to fear, a healthy one,

and that is to offer our full presence to what is happening. So we might not know

what to do, we might not know what to say but we don't and maybe we don't even courageously deal with

a fear or face the fear overcome the fear. We offer whatever the situation is our

attention, clear present attention. We don't we don't necessarily have courage but we don't cower.

We don't necessarily distract ourselves, but we But we attract ourselves to the present moment.

We stand here, we stand, we sit, we're present,

with a certain intentionality that maybe is an alternative

to fear, especially fear that's an attitude, chronic fear that's a, almost like a, that's been

conditioned into us by life circumstances, that's not really necessary to have all the time.

So the attitude of fear, we somehow will transform it into an attitude of mindful presence.

And for that it helps to assume a posture

that offers are here,

are here, really here and present,

kind of like, you know, standing our ground

or taking our place.

So if you're meditating lying down,

one way the posture might help this if the body allows for this is with your feet, you know, on

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