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

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This poem, The Facts of Life by Patrick Otouma.

But for me, when I first read this, it had an impact on me.

There's something, you know, so often like poetry is,

as I said earlier, that, that you know is a change in perspective or helps us to see things differently and I really felt like oh yeah this did

help me to see things differently.

One thing it helped me to see is that sometimes I have a bias

that poetry should just be uplifting and, you enjoyable or something like this but there's something

about this poem its directness seeing things that I feel like we don't want to say but feels like so much in

line with the darma. The first noble truth is, you know, there is dukah and in some ways this is what

Patrick Otumah is saying in this poem as well. And he's saying it in a way that feels relevant and feels for me touching.

And I'll talk about this. Or I'll talk about this or I'll just start I'm making this personal here but this one

sentence that you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg of two people who once were strangers and may well still be.

It's funny how, but when we think about time, well, yeah, most of us when we think about time,

we usually do it in relationship to ourselves.

You know, this was when I was young.

I guess this might be like when I'm older or somehow later or something like this, but this whole idea, a fusion of a sperm and an egg at two people who wants for strangers,

two people who wants for strangers

kind of like it transports us to another time

when we're not at the center of it.

Right? There's like, we don't even exist yet, but and yet there's still a little bit of a

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