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

Please visit our website at audiodderma.org.

Welcome, everybody. Nice to see you all. So tonight I'd like to start with a small verse that comes from the early Buddhist literature.

Talking about this idea of inner peace, something I think all of us are interested in, having some peace and ease and

spaciousness, well-being, freedom, all these types of words, having this experience, having it be a part of our life.

So the verse goes like this.

Internally one can find peace, not through another.

For one who is at peace with themselves there is no picking up, whence

putting down. This is pointing to you how so often we are looking for things to be peaceful outside

externally right so that then we can settle down and to be sure there is value and doing

something like going on a retreat at a retreat center where things are pretty peaceful.

For those of you have been on retreat, you know that after a few days it just gets really quiet.

Everybody kind of moves a little bit slower and... it can be really be really lovely. It can be really lovely. It can also be aggravating

if you're feeling really restless and everything's so quiet.

But the truth is that whatever is outside of us is of course it's outside of our control.

Not that we get to control everything that goes on inside either, but especially things that are outside.

Whether it's other people or whether it's the situation, the weather, the news, the temperature, whatever it is, these types of things.

We all know this.

And in Buddhist teachings,

there's this emphasis on letting go,

like not really clinging and holding on this recognition that difficulties and tension,

non-peace, the unpeace, the unpeacefulness, the agitation arises from like really holding onto views, concepts, ideas about ourselves, ideas about how we think things should be, or having some

...