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

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Good evening.

Welcome, welcome.

So tonight I'd like to continue on this series I've been doing on this whole idea of crossing the flood.

So there's a, this is a metaphor that shows up in a number of different places in the

sutas over and over again.

And the general idea is that we find ourselves what we call like the near shore, just

here, wherever we are.

And then there seems we come up against what seems like a flood of water

you know just something that's like feels overwhelming or just sets us off balance or too much

something that we feel like oh my gosh how do I get to the other side?

So many things in life, right? Life brings us that it's maybe not so uncommon or unusual or

to have at least once, if not more, in a person's life, like, wow, I don't know how I'm going to do

this.

And then the way that this metaphor goes is for sitting on the near shore, see the flood,

and on the other side is the far shore, that which, you know, for different people means different things.

But in general, we could say that's where peace and ease and freedom, lasting happiness,

this type of thing.

And so there's the question, well, how do I cross the flood?

How do I get over to the offshore, to the other side? And as I said in the Polly Canon, the Buddha gets asked this

a number of times, like how did you do it? How does a person in general do it? How do we

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