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

Please visit our website at audiodarma.org.

So for the talk, to hopefully say something succinct and memorable that you can carry through the talk,

maybe through your life. In the time of the Buddha he was characterized as a teacher of action,

a teacher of action and why would he be called that and what did he mean by action

that he would be known as a teacher of action. So that's kind of the part of the topic for today.

And in introducing this topic topic I would just say that the Buddha was much more interested in what we do than who we are.

And in fact, if we, he was going to find who we are, the Buddha would define it by what we do.

A farmer, someone who farms is a farmer.

Someone who's a cook.

The woman cooks is a cook.

And so, someone who meditates is a meditator.

So, it's what we do that the Buddha was interested in how we got recognized and known.

And that goes a little bit against some of the popular orientations we have maybe in the West, the Modern West,

where I get a sense with a lot of people who are looking for a message that somehow who they are is perfect.

Somehow who they are is guilt-free. Someone who they are is okay. Something like that and somehow inherently in

who we are we're just fine to what we are somehow. And I think that comes from a culture that has really conditioned people to think the opposite for themselves.

There's a lot of self-criticism, a lot of anxiety about me, myself and mine in this culture.

There's a touching story that wasn't there, but I've been told of it many times by people who were there that the Dalai Lama was doing some kind of teaching and someone was asked him a question and he had a translator and the translator would translate the question into

Tibetan. And the person asked some question about how to work with, how to deal with self-hatred.

And so the translator translated this with Dalai Lama,

and then he looked perplexed.

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