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

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Hello and welcome to the second talk on a ten-part series on the Polly Word is translated into English as the Protectors.

That which we can rely on or call upon for a certain kind of protection, safeguarding, support.

And these things support and safeguard our inner life and our outer life.

And it's a way of living in the world protected from harm, inner harm that we cause ourselves and outer harm.

And those are interesting lists that the Buddha came up with for this purpose.

Yesterday it was a virtuous conduct that if we live with a life that doesn't harm others or harm ourselves, there is a kind of protection.

We're protecting something that is protect worthy in ourselves, the sense of compassion, care, respect we have for ourselves and others.

And also we tend to lessen the anger, hostility, and even violence that others will harm that others will do to us.

So today the second tunnelist is to be well learned.

And the ancient language, the literal meaning is to have heard a lot.

And why it's worded that way is in the old time of the Buddha.

There were no books, there were no people weren't reading.

And so the only way for learning something, information was to hear it.

So to have heard a lot means to be well learned.

And so for people who are doing Buddhist practice, I think this implies that learning about Buddhism, learning about the Dharma.

And this can be, you know, benefits and be distractions to do this.

Too much learning, too much studying about Buddhism.

And it's a distraction and it becomes sometimes an abstract exercise and philosophy and doctrine.

But there are many ways in which learning about the Dharma teaches us where to be oriented.

The values we want to have, the practices we want to do, the ways of being in the world that protect us from ourselves and protect us from mitigating the possibility of harm from the world around us.

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