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

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Okay, so welcome. Welcome everybody.

So when the guided meditation I dropped in a horn.

This is where continuing this series on the poetry of practice.

And it's a poem that's written by Maddy Wine Gast.

So, his name is W-E-I-N-G-A-S-T.

And it's from the book The First Free Women.

And Maddy looked at the poems of the Terrigatta.

That is the first awakening poems.

I should say the awakening poems of nuns that are preserved in this Buddhist tradition.

And Maddy was inspired by those poems.

And if I wrote his own poems that are based on those,

but it includes some modern thinking, some modern twists.

So they're not a translations necessarily, but just use them as inspiration.

And I think these poems are just wonderful because Maddy is pointing to something that we recognize in practice.

But maybe we haven't, you know, articulated so well or maybe even understood so well.

So the poem that I dropped in during the meditation, maybe I'll say it's pointed to you that we get to be exactly who we are with this practice.

It's not asking us to be somebody different.

It's not asking us to completely transform ourselves into something or somebody that we're not.

And I love this. This is like so important.

I feel like it's asking us to move towards authenticity and to cultivate the skillful, the wholesome, the helpful parts of ourselves.

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