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Namaste and good evening. When I was in my 20s for much of that decade, I was living

in an ashram or spiritual community. And I've shared that I was a bit of a type A type

yogi. I was pretty driven trying to reach enlightenment. I had an idea it would take about

seven years so I was trying real hard. That was not a true idea. It didn't match with

reality. But there was a story that I remember hearing early on that has stayed with me and

I share it now and then because it helps me. And it's of this musketeer who got a whiff

of this heavenly fragrance and felt this urge to find the source of it and it became this

compelling life journey that this musketeer was always on its way trying to find the source of

this incredible fragrance and it went over the tallest rocky peaks and across wide-reaching

rivers and through dense jungle chasing after this sacred scent. And finally at the end of its

life, it was exhausted and as it was dying, it's horn pierced its belly and the scent absolutely filled

there. And so it is that what we are longing for is here. It's already here. It's really what we are.

And yet we get caught in this idea that it's around the bend or it's down the road or it's after

the three-month retreat where we've gone into the Himalayas or it's back 25 hundred years ago with

only special beings at another era. And in some ongoing way, we feel like we have this problem we

have to figure out and solve before we're really there. There's always something else. How many of

you can relate to this being on your way? Okay, so here we are on our way together. And what the Buddha

taught, I find it's through most spiritual traditions I've encountered, it's this radical reminder

and it really kind of cuts through that what we seek is what we are. It's the way Kabir says,

the guest I love is inside. Even when we're most neurotic, when we're feeling most confused,

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