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

Please visit our website at audiodarma.org.

So good morning everyone, welcome. Happy to be here with you all. And as I prepare to give this talk, certainly what's happening in the Middle East is very much on my heart.

And, you know, when I teach the darma sometimes it's not explicit why I teach, but all my teaching is as a teacher is directed towards trying to

address the suffering of the world and hopefully at the deepest level.

But there's so many different ways to get at that

that sometimes it seems like I'm maybe not talking about that directly.

So I'd like to dedicate today's talk to the people who are suffering in the Middle East and certainly the Palestinians in Gaza where so many innocent Palestinians are dying and injured and homeless and it must be

hellish to be there right now. Very difficult. I think of all the children who are going through how difficult it must be for them and how difficult it would probably be for them for a lifetime to go through this.

And the hostages that are also being held is really hostages and

it must be also hellish to be there and part of that.

And so I dedicate it to the welfare and happiness and the peace for all the people who are suffering in the Middle East.

So the... So conventionally that topic for today is effort is

is Veria and Veria has a lot of different translations into English and

sometimes it's effort, sometimes it's energy, sometimes it's

endeavoring, some people like the word persistence, the word in Sanskrit has a kind of has association with courage or maybe even

heroism and we have in I think in Tibetan Buddhism I believe sometimes is very yes translated as heroic effort because of the connotations that Varya has

and connotations that Varia has. And the word that I'd like to use today is vitality.

And having a is a point for wisdom in Buddhist practice and not just the emphasizing the importance

of making effort but how we make effort is important and the source of our

effort is important within us and by paying attention to this we can develop a lot of

wisdom about how we practice. This topic of how we make effort is so important that it

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