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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Here we go.

Great.

Okay, so hello, hello, hello, everyone.

It's lovely to be with you.

Lovely to see you.

And I really enjoyed our hello saying at the beginning

with the different geographical locations and with relation to one another.

That was, that was fun.

And I truly feel that when we do that, when we say hello and just share our voices or goodwill, our meta, it brings me more present.

A sense of community, a sense of shared community that here we are from different places in the world.

We're coming together to do this cultivation of kindness, goodness, practice together.

And it's in this light, in this spirit that for today's practice, I would like to offer really two practices that are related together.

And the first one is as we come together, as all of us come together from different places in the world, as you creatively mentioned, to share them at the beginning.

Coming together to hold sacred space together to hold sacred space together.

It's quite a doing for it's, you know, it's lovely that we, especially because we're not in the same room, but we can hold global space, sacred space together across the ocean, many oceans.

And to hold this sacred space for, for both grief, for sadness, or whatever might be arising right now for each of us individually, and also for us collectively with what is happening in the world geopolitically.

And I know that there is, for many people, there is grief, sadness, anger, arising, and to hold the space of, it's just a simple sacred space to hold it all, not turning our hearts away, but when we hold it together,

it becomes lighter to hold, not that the situation is light at all, it's egregious, it's grievous, and it's getting worse, the humanitarian crisis worsening, and to meet it in our hearts with stability of care and compassion.

And I know that for me, as I've been listening to the news, I've been finding myself crying, there are human beings who are suffering regardless of their belief and religions and background.

And maybe also personally, I share with you that, you know, I've identified myself jokingly with friends as a moon jubu.

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