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Welcome friends.

I'd like to begin today with a short teaching story and it's about three beginner novices

from a seaside monastery and they get caught in a mini tsunami and stranded on a desert

island hundreds of miles away.

And after struggling to keep themselves alive for several weeks they find this cave with

meditation cushions and they sit down and then the spirit of the cave starts speaking to

them in an echoing voice and says you've found your Feng Shui spot on the island and you've

properly assumed Zhazen and I'm going to give you three wishes.

So the first one says I want to return to the monastery.

I miss the morning bills as I'm sweeping the walks, vouch, that one vanishes.

And the second one says I want to return to the monastery too.

I want to learn again at the feet of our beloved abbot swish that one disappears and third

one looks around and gets really anxious and goes I'm lonely.

I want my friends back here.

The teaching is that when we're stressed or when we're in crisis unless we're mindful

we get carried along reflexively by this kind of quick twitch of our habitual thoughts and

wants and fears and what's really needed especially in these current and challenging times

is instead of that habitual reaction that we pause that we awaken our deeper intelligence

...