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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. A warm and celebratory.

Hello on this Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and I believe it's my favorite public holiday

national holiday here in the United States,

because of the phenomenal values that animated and guided Martin Luther King and because of his clear

commentary about the or highlighting of the challenges of our society, the poverty, the

war, the racism, and for the actions he took to rectify these problems, especially the racism.

So, and to do it with the values of nonviolence is phenomenal.

So I celebrate it.

Thank you. So, one of the gifts that the Buddhist practice has provided me is a clear deep connection to my own body and that I didn't pay much attention to my body before I started doing this Buddhist practice.

And without it being so explicit when I was my early years of practice,

there was an awakening to my body, and this was phenomenally important for me and as it remains phenomenally important

our body is not a hunk of flesh.

It's not just a bunch of material,

physical material that's combined itself to move us around like a car.

Our body is a dynamic organ of perception.

Maybe not every single part of it,

but I suspect in one way or the other every part of the body in its own way is

perceiving its environment and perceiving what it needs is, perceiving what comes up against

the cell walls and all kinds of things.

And every living cell is nourished by the blood that flows by.

...