Tonight is our second in a two-part series and what we've been doing is exploring through

a really lovely teaching story from the Upanishads, how we encounter impermanence and difficulty and

the three gifts that can be really powerful and helping us to awaken. For those that weren't here

or didn't listen to the last talk it's okay you'll find this stands on its own but you might go

back at some point and listen to it. The story is about Nachikata and Nachikata is a young

Indian man and his father got into a real heavy duty standoff kind of conflict. His father in his

rage said, I give you to Yama, to Lord Yama and Yama is the Lord of death. So as I said last week

it's like saying go to hell you know we just said out of here. Nachikata being a sincere and taking

things concretely type guy said okay I'll do it. So he went into the forest and he went searching

for the realm of Lord Yama. He found that domain and for three days waited for the Lord of death

to appear and endured hunger and pain and exhaustion and so on. Lord Yama appears and he's so

impressed with this dedicated young guy that he says okay any three wishes that you want. So

Nachikata had his three wishes and last week we explored his first wish what which was

he said let me come to peace with my father. So he had the wisdom to know that his spiritual journey

began with releasing the armoring around his heart. Let me learn the art of forgiveness.

And so that's the that's the first wish that Lord Yama granted him and it freed his heart.

It freed his heart to then go deeper into his journey. And so it is that we in our lives

whether it's a major wound where we really need to bring our attention to the pain and the

vulnerability that's there. So with a real compassion so we can then begin to include the other

with compassion are the daily ways that we get caught in the small judgments, the small blames,

the resentments that carry with those even closest to us that we love, that make a distance,

that creates separation, that if we were at the end of our life looking back we'd wish we hadn't

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