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 and welcome to this eighth discussion of the eighth reflection.

And these are reflecting on things that are

invaluable for the development and growth of our spiritual life,

or if you prefer, rather than the word spiritual,

maybe our heart life,

the fullness of our hearts.

And so today's topic is kinship. And it goes along with yesterday's topic of community. And community has a lot to do with the relationships we have with people, the feeling of belonging, connection, the feeling

of friendliness with people. So it has a little bit more to do with the dynamics and relationships.

Kinship, as I understand it,

involves something deeper than our relationships.

It's a way in which our heart sees others. It's the way in which we feel that we're family.

And I was surprised when I was, probably I was 18

when I went back to meet

I went back to meet some of my aunts and uncles I hadn't,

I'd grown up with them a little bit, but it was the first

time I was maybe close to being an adult. And one of my aunts made it clear in some way or other that we were family that had a deeper roots than whether there was we were friends or we liked each other

or there was just kind of a raw basic acceptance of each other because we're a family and maybe a kinship, you know, a

family ship. And I was struck by that and reflected on that and that stayed with me in the

probably the first 10 years of doing Buddhist practice,

as it slowly grew the sense that there could be this kinship,

this family feeling for everyone, that we're all kin, we're all family.

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