Good evening.

One of the great signs of meditation and our culture, you know, is all the paraphernalia.

One is this necklace, this bone-shaped necklace, and on it it's written, sit, stay, heal.

So here we are.

And I wanted to start in tonight a bit where we left our hero, Nabuda, under the Bodhi

tree last night, and I was reflecting on the nith, you know, of the Buddha and, you know,

battling Mara and at the end, you know, the Mara is kind of, the forces are demolished

and scattered and the elephant, this monster elephant that Mara is riding is down on his

knees and, you know, he's been vanquished basically, the Buddha vanquished him, and Mara is

this bad guy.

So I was reflecting on this artippocasting of this battle, okay, and how this was not a

myth that came out of the minds of Buddhist nuns and wise women through the ages.

This is a male myth, you know, battling Mara, a bad guy, then the inquiry really of what

happens, you know, when we start sensing, okay, so the forces of Mara are these energies

inside us and we're battling them and what really happens when we frame it that way?

When there's this bad energy, when it's good against evil, when it's been casted that way,

what really happens?

So it's an interesting thing because, you know, if we're at war with Mara, if we're battling

Mara, you know, if that's all we're doing, we'll always be at war, if that's the frame

we have.

Now that wasn't the, that's not the wisdom of the myth, you know, it's intention and

in the deepest way, it's really an encounter with energies that's done with tremendous

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