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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Hi again, hi everyone, and welcome to Happy Hour, this rendition of what's practicing together in this way.

So for today's practice I'd like to invite us to explore the relationship between devotion and love.

It's an interesting exploration here at Happy Hour we spend many of our sessions practicing and cultivating kindness, cultivating meta, loving kindness.

There are many different translations for the world, for the word meta, love, friendliness, kindness, loving kindness, care, warmheartedness, and more.

And love is also one translation, unconditional love, it's not a romantic attachment love that is full of attachment and need and needs and wants, but meta is more an unconditional, just love, just care.

And another experience, devotion, another word devotion is related to love, often those we love, we are devoted to, and it could be not just beings, but causes that we love, we are devoted to, the sense of uplift, the sense of wholeheartedness that arises from devotion.

And for some people in the West devotion can be a bit of a dirty word devotion, I'm not devotional actually, for some people can bring up a lot of lovely feelings.

I remember my grandma when I was a kid, being a devotional person really devoted to her faith, devoted to her faith, which was important to her, knows what devoted to her children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren, she was devoted, she was a devoted matriarch, she just devoted to everyone.

And that really truly was her meta, her love, her devotion.

So exploring this feeling of the heart, the heart is pulled towards, it has interest in, it's devoted to, so what do you love? What are you devoted to?

What do you love? What are you devoted to? People, causes, this being who is yourself, again, being devoted to your own well-being, need not necessarily be a selfish or self-aggrandizing project, it can be a sense of, oh, the way you take care of another being, another child, as if you had a child, you were devoted to their well-being.

You cared for them, you fed them, you made sure they had balance in their lives and they were working towards their goals and their ethical, et cetera, et cetera.

The same way, treating yourself as your own beloved child, devoted to your own development, devoted to your own awakening, devoted to your own cultivation.

Cultivating kindness, cultivating wisdom, so devotions, so many aspects, so let's explore that a little bit together in our practice together.

So let's sit together with that preamble.

So arriving, arriving, arriving in the seat, arriving in this moment in time,

arriving in this body,

letting there be a sense of connection to the earth, the felt sense of sitting,

sensing this body, sensing knowing the breath, knowing the felt sense of the sensations of contact with the earth.

For your feet, your sit bones, your hands, your breath,

...