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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org.

Good morning everyone and one of the surprises to me when I went to practice in Thailand when I was first introduced to

Terra Bad and Buddhism and to Vipasana was that the topic of CELA or ethics or virtue

was one that brought people a lot of joy.

It was a joyful topic.

It was something that brought happiness and that was not something I had ever imagined growing up or in the Western cultures that I had lived.

In fact, I was just grew up somewhat mistrustful of people who had overemphasized ethics that it was somehow a little bit too puritanical or dogmatic or judgmental

of people or hypocritical even at times. But the idea that they would bring you joy and it wasn't just a

surprise to discover people who had that orientation. It was a surprise that as I started doing long retreats in Thailand

that something shifted inside of me

and there was a something and got cleansed, something got emptied, something got space for something new to arise that I had never felt before, that felt as something that brought

joy for living a life of non-harming,

living a life that avoided the kind of unwholesome behavior

that felt like it did a kind of violence to this inner place that was developing through the practice.

And so the reference point of joy for ethics, for Sheila, for this kind of living, this life of

Kusala and Kaleana, wholesomeness and beauty.

And one of the things that is very central to the Buddhist teachings

is that the mind is malleable and nowadays we might call neuroplasticity that the mind

can be transformed and made workable, wieldy,

so that it's not stuck in a rut,

but can become soft enough or workable enough

...