Without further ado, I thought tonight I'm going to give a talk on one of the Buddha's most, I think, important teachings of many.

I'm going to read it first, the epicenter of the teaching.

Then I'm going to explain why these observations, the Buddha is. of the directly address the suffering and stress in our lives.

It's unnecessary.

This is called the two arrow teachings.

And some of you might be already familiar with it.

So this is from the teaching. When a normal person experiences a painful

event, they become distraught with self-pity. They resist the feelings. They try to escape the feelings by craving anything that makes them feel good quickly.

And so they become obsessed. And when it doesn't work, they feel two pains, the original pain in the body,

and the other pain in their minds.

It's as if they were shot with one arrow and then choose to shoot

themselves with a second arrow. They fail to understand that there's another

way of responding to painful events other than seeking to escape it as soon as possible.

When a wise individual has a painful feeling, self-pity doesn't necessarily follow.

They only feel the pain in their body but not in their mind. They haven't shot themselves with a second arrow.

This person understands that all experiences arise and pass on their own, all experiences aren't personal.

This is the difference between the wise and the normal person.

This is a longer explanation in what in Buddhism we call the first and second

noble truth. The first truth is that no matter how you live your life, you're going to experience

old age, sickness, death, you're going to experience old age, sickness, death, you're going to have painful

events that lead to sorrow, lamentation, grief, despair.

It's a happy list.

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