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

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So building on that guided meditation that we did, but the assimily of the raft,

you know, the story is this enduring story that, I mean, I've heard certainly so many times

as part of the drama teachings, and it shows up in little different places in the

sutas in different settings.

And the story is, as I said, at the beginning of the guide meditation,

is there's this traveler who comes to a big flood,

a big body of water, and they feel like where they are

is not where they want to be, but they could see on the other side of the water, this idea

that over there it would be better.

And then how do they get there?

How do they get to the other side of the water?

And part of the reason I think that why this simile of the raft, there's a number of reasons,

but one is why it's been preserved through all these years, because I would say it shows how

practice really works. It's not about we have these beautiful, shiny, electric power tools, and we go to the lumber

yard and get fantastic, you know, whatever one builds a raft out of, some type of lumber

or something that's like the perfect ones, right?

We don't have the perfect tools.

We don't have the perfect materials.

We work with whatever's here in our life.

And in the simile of the raft, he's twigs, branches, leaves.

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