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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So, um, So if you go back to these ancient texts, the ancient

teachings of the Buddha. There's a metaphor, image, symbol, reference point that the Buddha comes back to over and over again for doing this practice.

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And that metaphor, that has to do with water.

And sometimes it's a metaphor for the mind, sometimes for the heart, sometimes for the

how practice unfolds. And the way that sometimes this metaphor is used is that somehow

were held by the water. Sometimes it's used that the water is nourishing us, filling us. And

they could take one example is that taking back then they had kind of like making bread with dry flour.

Apparently they made soap in the old days with with powdered soap plant or something

and you would sprinkle in water and let the water like with flower

saturate all the flower so then it all stick together and so as we practice mindfulness and this practice we're kind of moistening ourselves

to all of who we are and kind of as each we breathe, we're kind of massaging this delightful, nourishing, life-giving water

so that all of us can be held together as a whole, as opposed to being locked on to particular fears or

particular desires, particular beliefs and judgments that narrow who we are, but

to open up and just kind of make it all, moisten it all, you know, fill it with this

the beautiful mind, the beautiful heart of attention of awareness. And then there's the idea that as we do this and the water sometimes kind of

rises and fills and it's no longer that we're moistened by water but we're being

Everything is water we are we become the lake and the inside there's a beautiful spring, natural spring that's bubbling up from the inside and refreshing us and inspiring us and moving us.

But to allow this,

and the lake and the spring are all supported by the lake basin.

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