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

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Welcome. So welcome, everybody.

everybody.

So it's kind of the tradition near the starting of the year.

You know what, actually, can I have the volume just a little bit louder so I don't have to project my voice as much? I think that's better. It has the volume for you guys, is it okay? Yeah.

So it's the tradition near the beginning of the year to talk about some of the foundational teachings.

And so I thought I would do a little bit of that today,

but I want to talk about them in a different way,

not the usual way.

I'm often, I'd like to do this, not the usual way,

somehow.

I don't know what that says about me exactly, but,

and maybe I'll just start with that the Buddha used a lot of similes and some metaphors and part of that's what's the fun of some of the suit does is reading them is really

how the Buddha brings things to life with these similes.

A simile is a way in which you know something is like something else.

So a simile starts with something presumably that you know and that you're familiar with.

And then this new idea, whatever the Buddha's teaching,

he's saying, oh, it's like this thing you already know.

But for us, thousands of years later,

we're having to imagine kind of what it was like, you know,

for them back then, but I think we can.

...