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

Please visit our website at audiodderma.org.

It's a strange question to ask because if you can hear it then you'll answer and if you

can hear it then you'll answer and if you don't hear it. So we do have hearing assistant devices

around the side table there just in the outer hall and and sometimes my voice gets softer as I speak so if you feel like you need to get it in the

middle of the talk you're welcome to get up and pick one up.

So up. So I thought of starting this talk with a warning and so that because I'm going to say something that some people immediately turn off.

So just pay attention and just get through this.

So I'm going to introduce to you a poly word,

the ancient Buddhist word. So some people, as soon as they hear the

Polly is going to be spoken or this ancient words, like okay this is not for me. But this word is maybe in my

mind maybe the most important word to learn if you want to

understand the Buddhism and a little bit the ancient language and what's important about this word and reason to use the ancient language version of it is that there's no one English word that translates it.

And because the word can mean a variety of things in English,

but the two main ones, in some contexts it means wholesome.

In some context it means

skillful.

And it's a little not so clear which of these contexts

and you know or which translation so some people just leave it leave it

untranslated and we might also just use two words, wholesome skillfulness or skillful wholesomeness.

So the word is K-U-S-A-L-A and the concept of it or the experience of it the attuned to what is skillful and unskillful wholesome and unhulsome lays at the heart

of what Buddhism has to teach.

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