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

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So here I am at IRC.

Very happy to be here with two of the former or present resident volunteers who is sitting here with us and I very happy to be here.

And this is a concluding now talk on the themes from this ancient Buddhist text.

As I keep saying, some scholars believe it's the oldest teaching in Buddhism,

the Buddha's first teachings, perhaps. And in the appendix of the book, I go into some

of the reasons people think this and the evidence for that. And that there are three, four themes that I've selected out of this. And it's perhaps

these themes are things that are subjective to me, especially this last one we're going to do

today. So the first one is, it's really clear in the text that's repeated over and over again,

this idea of not clinging to any kind of views and not holding some religious views as being better than others or more superior or ultimate.

Just not getting involved in that comparison at all and not depending on any religious doctrine beliefs, but rather depending on what we can know and see directly for ourselves.

And in doing so, the second theme, not clinging to sensual desires,

because we know and see the downside of that.

We know and see for ourselves how we're limited by the attachment to sensual desires.

So again, it's not because someone tells us there's a rule that you should let go of sensual desires,

but it's to really have understood for oneself, seen and known for oneself,

that sensual desire being caught in them is not beneficial. And it's actually better not to be

caught in them. So it's not a doctrine here that is presenting authority like this is what you should do.

It's a teaching about developing your own capacity to know and see for yourself.

And those two verbs, knowing and seeing, are the most common kind of description of the practice that is in this text.

And then the description, the third theme was the descriptions of this age. And those descriptions, like for example, of

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