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

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So hello and warm greetings.

And happy to be back here at IMC at 7am sitting here with all of you.

And so the last three weeks was at Tassahara Zen monastery in deep in the Los Padras National Wilderness, which is kind of in Monterey County.

And it's several mountain ridges over from Big Sur coast, deep in the mountains.

And up and over one of the mountains in a 14-mile dirt road coming down steep valley and narrow valley to this beautiful creek river called Tassahara Creek, Tassahara River.

And in there there's a now for 55 years as Zen monastery.

I trained there many years ago and it was formative for me to be there in many ways.

And it was very significant to go back there to actively support people who were practicing in that valley and that monastery and to be in conversations with them.

And I'm reminded over and over again, but certainly being there for something which I feel is quite sacred.

And that's what we might call everyone's hearts, the depths of people's inner life, inner capacity for feeling connected and belonging and alive in this world.

And how that deep inner sacred dimension of our heart that was maybe is in some ways most personal and at the same most impersonal, most transpersonal is sometimes buried, sometimes wounded in deep ways, hurt, sometimes difficult to access.

Sometimes people are afraid of it, but to come close to it and support people and meet people in the depths of their inner most valuable, most important parts of what their inner life is about, their full life is about.

That's where we're not distracted, not cut up and the things of the world or in our conceit is, for me, that's a sacred dimension and to care for that sacred dimension, to meet it, to be part of each other's sacred kind of inner life.

And perhaps you could use a different word than sacred, just the word I like.

And I do feel that coming here and surprisingly coming here at 7 a.m. with a loan in this room with a camera on the wall opposite me and two monitors in front of me, a laptop and a large screen so I can see more easily you all in the chats.

And surprising that for me that this is a vehicle, a means for feeling something that again I call sacred kind of very special deep profound, maybe profound is another possible word that sacred, maybe heartfelt, maybe something very core or essential.

So it's very nice to be here, it's very nice to be able to share this part of myself and hopefully touch this part of you.

And coming from Dasara I feel kind of inspired quite a bit by all this.

And I offer this introduction because this week I'll continue this series I've been doing now for about six, maybe seven weeks related to compassion.

And the Polly Sanskrit word for compassion is Karuna.

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