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

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One of the most repeated teachings of the Buddha.

Is that of living a life of non-harming, non-violence, ahimsa.

And sprinkled throughout the teachings, all kinds of little quotes in this regard.

And if we ask ourselves why the Buddha emphasized this, we could maybe get a clue

in the way he described himself before he was awakened.

And this is a description where you get a sense of the Buddha's own dismay,

challenge, the way he was troubled by the state of the world, his time.

This is from a discourse called the Discourse on Being Violent, Atadanda Sutta.

And it's in a book that I've, the teachings I've translated in a book called The Buddha Before Buddhism,

The Book of Eights, chapter 11, chapter not 11, it's chapter 15.

So The Buddha states,

Violence gives birth to fear.

Just look at people and their quarrels.

I will speak to you of my dismay and the way that I was shaken,

seeing people thrashing about like fish in little water,

and seeing them feuding with each other, I became afraid.

The world is completely without a core, everywhere things are changing.

Wanting a place of my own, I saw nothing not already taken.

I felt discontent at seeing only conflict to the very end.

Then I saw an arrow here, hard to see embedded in the heart.

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