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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So hello and welcome to this second talk where I'm reading from my translations of the poems of the ancient

Buddhist nuns, the early first disciples of the Buddha.

And as Polly, it's called it Terry Gata.

And the, and so for this poem, this is a poem of Kisa Gautami.

And it's a very touching poem and it involves a conversation between Kizagotami and Patachara.

And I think in the modern west, a fair number of people know about Kiso Gautami.

And not so many know about Patachara, but we have a beautiful statue of Patachara at the IRC and there's

about five different photographs that was

cycle through on the IMC homepage

and one of them is of Pata Chara,

of a beautiful wooden statue

that was given to us, made for us and given to us.

And so these are two famous early Buddhist nuns.

So Kizogotami is known as for the mustard mustard seed story kisa means frail so it's

frail gotamy and so maybe she's not that well, she's maybe somewhat weak or sick maybe, or she's certainly poor.

And she has the circumstance of being married into a family, probably in her arranged marriage back then.

And her status was very low.

In ancient India, the status of a bride, you don't just join a husband, you join the husband's family often, and the status is quite low and difficult and often you expect to kind of be a servant almost.

And so we don't know exactly what the circumstances are, but she then had a son, and that changed her status.

Then she had a place in the family.

She has a status because, and back then male prodigy

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