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

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Okay, well thank you for all those announcements and the planning around those events.

Is that loud enough for everyone?

Great.

Well, thinking about what to talk about today just seemed like somehow, maybe from my sake,

just to say something that touches on my heart's ache around the war in Israel and in Israel

and Hamas that started yesterday.

And then we're not going to talk about it directly, talk about something else,

but that I associate with a response to it.

But that's kind of sitting on my heart, not least because I have distant relatives who live in Israel.

I have friends who have relatives in Palestine.

And so this idea that it affects people in all directions is kind of a big thing.

And the way that these things kind of ripple out into the world, out into generations to come,

it's very painful to consider the consequence of these kinds of fights and wars.

And then there's so much, these wars in the world.

I mean there's been going on for a very long time, wars around the world,

but we have big ones, Ukraine and Syria and Myanmar.

One of the big armed conflicts is the drug wars in Colombia, in Mexico.

Many, many people are dying there every year.

And the way that such conflicts trigger rage and people anger,

that just perpetuates the very thing that maybe they're trying to stop,

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