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

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Here we go.

Okay, so hello, hello, and welcome everyone to Happy Hour.

Lovely to be with you and to feel your presence.

So, so for this week what I wanted to bring for our consideration as we engage with the practice is a quote that I ran into this week.

And this quote is often in inappropriately credited to go to if I'm saying his name right in German, go to.

But actually is the person who wrote it is Haim Gennot and I'll put a link to this leader so that Neil can share it with all of you.

But here, actually, you know what I can put it in chat right now because some of you are visual, so you might want to actually see the quote.

So while I read it, if you prefer, you can also, there it is.

So the quote is, I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or deescalated and the person is humanized or dehumanized.

If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.

If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

And Haim Gennot wrote this in the book called Teacher and Child, a book for parents and teachers.

So now you get a sense of the orientation as a teacher.

I was struck by this quote, the power of this quote, especially the way it starts.

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element.

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