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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. Hmm. So hello everyone and welcome to this Monday morning, meditation and I'm very happy to be back.

It's been a while and happy that you've had some wonderful teachers coming to be here while I was gone.

And so I want to turn my attention for at least the next couple of weeks

to what some people consider to be the foundation of Buddhism and

that is in English we would probably say it's ethics.

And virtue, living a,

living a virtuous life and if we think of Buddhism as a pyramid then virtue and ethics would be the foundation upon which the pyramid is built,

like the bottom layer of it, big, wide, strong base, upon which the higher points of the pyramid would go up to a point and the second layer would be meditation or

Somati or cultivating ourselves in a wholesome way and the third would be wisdom, the top of the pyramid.

So that wisdom is supported by meditation, spiritual practice,

and that spiritual practice is supported by ethics.

And ethics has to do with a lot to do with how we live our lives in relationship to other people. It can be in relationship to ourselves as well.

The, but the interpersonal world we live in is a huge part of a human life.

Some people as adults forget this because they've somehow become separated from others,

somehow become alienated, sometimes become isolated.

But a healthy way of being a human being is to be brought up by adults who care for them, who feed them and clean them as babies, who watch over them, protect them as they grow up.

The deep interpersonal world that human beings are dependent on

continues into adulthood.

If we have children or or there's children in our immediate

community then part of what potential for role for the adults is to care for them and help them grow up in ways

that are safe and allow them to grow into their full potential.

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