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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. So, um, um, You know I've been involved in Buddhist practice for and teachings for my adult life for a very long time.

And one of the conclusions that I've come to

is that in an understated way, so maybe it's not always noticed that Buddhism or the Buddha has a very positive view of human beings and their potential. And, you know, there's not a celebrating of it, because maybe that's too easy to reinforce

our attachments to self.

And sometimes this emphasis on non-attachment

and sometimes this teaching on not-self

is interpreted maybe or seen through the lens of other cultural views that somehow

we're not supposed to count or were bad or something like that.

But the view is very positive that there's a very positive orientation

towards people's potential and their value and their importance and so to offer teachings

that the Buddha gave because the only reason he would give those teachings is he cared for people and cared for the potential.

I love this particular teaching he gave where he uses an analogy of a wood, a forester who goes into the forest to work and discovers traces of an ancient

road in the forest and then he goes and finds some ancient city that's been

long buried and then he comes out and he tells the king and

queen of the realm about what his discovery was and they come and clear the ancient road

and just clear the ancient capital and everyone lives there happily ever after.

But the kind of, but this idea that he, the Buddha didn't invent the teaching, his teaching,

he discovered a path that this ancient

path that's kind of overgrown that we all have overgrown in ourselves. But in

this analogy, this metaphor, when he comes to tell the king and queen of the realm about it,

the king and queen is an analogy for us.

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