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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Hello everyone and warm greetings and warm greetings in a cold world.

It's a little bit cold and wearing a sweater, but a world that's full of war, violence,

hostility in all directions and no direction you look probably, you don't see it.

So here we are, warm greetings in a cold world.

And one of the things that we're called on to do in this challenging world that we live in is to not be afraid.

And this maybe is a tall order that's a huge challenge.

But if we're afraid, the more that we're afraid, the more that we cannot help make this a warm world, a caring world,

the more that we cannot be agents of change in our households, in our neighborhoods, in our towns, work, spreading outwards.

Fear interferes.

Fear tears apart.

So one of the tasks of practice is to learn to sit with fear so that we're not afraid.

And that is a maybe needs a little unpacking.

I think we can assume that we'll be afraid or say it differently, we can assume that we will be...

There will be occasions when fear will be present for us.

Some of the fears appropriate and healthy and some of it is not.

Regardless of what it is, the practice of mindfulness is to sit in the middle of it and not be afraid.

Not be afraid. Have fear, but not be defined by the fear.

Have fear and know how to study the fear to learn the lessons of fear without becoming frozen or becoming indifferent or becoming removed.

So as we sit this meditation here, where would you go within?

How would you be within if you were meditating in a place that has no fear?

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