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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. You're not going to see. So continuing this theme of corals and disputes,

that topic the Buddha had a lot to say on and he came across a situation where or report that

there was a group of religious teachers, philosophers, who are arguing

philosophically or metaphysically about the nature of the universe,

nature of life, things like the universe is forever,

the universe is finite, infinite,

that, infinite,

that human beings live forever in multiple rebirths. There is no rebirth.

The nature of what happens after death, so all kinds of things that are not really

about the here and now, but about these big existential questions that people ponder.

And these people who are having opinions about this were arguing, quarreling about who was right.

And then the Buddha described them with an analogy,

analogy which in some ways is pretty apt for how people can be, but also it uses maybe an analogy that is not really, maybe it itself offers a kind of bias or kind of stereotyping that we don't

want to live in.

So it's an example of what not to do. And so what he said was, or what he talked about or what he suggested

to a king who was questioning about this was to have a group of

blind people come and to with her hands to touch different parts of an elephant and then report what they were touching.

And those who touched the legs,

said it were a solid column.

Those who studied the torso said it was a big round barrel. Those

it touched the ears said it was a winnowing basket. Those that touched the tail

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