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

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So hello everyone and welcome.

And today I'm introducing, continuing to introduce to you, this ancient text, it's maybe the earliest teachings we have of the Buddha. And the language is archaic, the context is old. before all the teachings of Buddhism built up, and maybe over the 40,

45 years in which the Buddha taught, he slowly built up and expanded on his teachings

and organized them in ways. And we certainly know that after he died, his teachings kept being organized and

expanded and added to. And much of how we understand Buddhism as a religion, it wasn't really,

it wasn't there at the very beginning, where the message was very simple. And I have this image of this man who is

living, you know, outdoors mostly, wandering around India as a monastic, meditating much of

this time available to meet people and walking around encountering people and people being

inspired by his peace, his presence, and he would offer teachings that were very simple.

And these teachings in this book that I call the Book of Eighths, the Bolly word is Atakavaga,

which can be in the Book of Eighth, is in my book that I published through Shambala called

the Buddha before Buddhism. And I'm going to talk today about the first of four themes that exist in this book.

And the first theme is letting go of views, letting go of opinions about religious doctrine,

spiritual ideas.

Having a view that we should stop for red traffic lights is not a problem,

but having views that are metaphysical, views about ultimate reality,

views about what is really true.

People often want to know what's true and want to hold on to the truth, they have the truth,

they know the truth.

And for the Buddha, he was very sensitive to the movement of clinging to so-called truths,

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