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

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Go. Great.

So welcome, welcome again, everyone, to Happy Hour.

Lovely to be with you in this moment in time.

And for today's practice, I'd like to lean into practicing with silence as we did a couple of days ago on Wednesday.

And it seemed like a lot opened up for many of us in this way of embracing silence as a healing,

as a supportive witness that's held because sometimes no words are needed, words are just extra.

And the heart can relax when there is silence and this sense of being held by the silence,

whether they're suffering internally with what we're holding ourselves,

whether we are witnessing and holding the suffering of the world.

And in fact, in these times, sometimes words fail with the enormity of suffering, especially in war zones.

In our world, the challenge that many fellow human beings are going through.

So offering, offering our heart up, offering the suffering and holding witness in silence can be a way to enter into this practice.

So I think I've said enough.

I'm going to cough, so I'm going to mute myself.

They'll recover. This fires anyway.

So with that, there's not much more that needs to be said.

Let's sit together, let's lean into the practice.

So I'd like to invite all of us to arrive in our bodies, in our hearts.

The sense of presence.

With dignified presence, no matter what is happening internally in our bodies, in our lives, in our minds, hearts.

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