Our last class was part of a two-part series on vulnerability and intimacy and freedom.

I began the last class with a kind of mythological tale of a dragon who removed its scales and

so doing, opened to the vulnerability of removing his scales and discovered in the presence

that was there a deep loving connection he transformed.

And so I'd like to begin tonight by again in a way of definition saying, well, what is vulnerability?

Every one of us has a sense about it and in that sense we're unprotected at those moments

and at the mercy of forces beyond our control and it might be the vulnerability of aging or the vulnerability of sickness

or the vulnerability of feeling that others might leave us or reject us.

It might be the vulnerability of our finances with the mercy of an economy beyond our control.

It might be that we're in some situation outdoors and it's the vulnerability of being in weather that we, as we're finding on the planet,

that is unpredictable and can cause havoc in our lives.

So vulnerability expresses itself through emotions. Every emotion we have underneath its vulnerability,

whether it's the craving or the fear or the anger or the shame, there's a vulnerable sense of our being underneath it.

And when we start reflecting we get it that all beings, it's universal. All beings are vulnerable.

If you come into existence, there's a sense of separateness, I'm here, the world's out there, things are uncertain and this being is going to die.

We get it, that this being is going to die. So there's like around the corner something that we're really concerned about.

And I love the description that Chogym Trungba has of that we're this bundle of tense muscles kind of protecting our existence

because on the most primitive level, the primal mood of the separate self, the sphere, we're kind of just basically trying to make sure to enhance and get what we need and protect ourselves from harm.

That's the most core level. And as humans, we are pack animals, we're utterly dependent on each other

and so our vulnerability is very much in the relational field. We are vulnerable, we need to feel others accept us and love us and to the extent that we don't.

It means that our survival is threatened. Very, very core for humans. And the more we feel we deviate from the standards of our culture or the parents handed down,

we all got standards to meet every one of us. And our parents are kind of the messenger for the culture, but we all got them on how we should behave, how it's successful, how we should look,

...