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

Please visit our website at audiodarma.org.

So welcome to the this meditation and as an introduction to it I'd like to

mention that I have a particular very special relationship, maybe even

reverence to places in the natural world where that are untouched or off bounds

for human beings.

There's a place near here in the San Francisco Peninsula that's a water district that they have

as big reservoir for water for San Francisco and other cities.

But some of the land around it,

no one is supposed to walk on, it's off limits.

And I'm sure that some people in the water district

have occasion to go on it but

occasionally but it's basically off limits and it isn't like I feel like it's

private property exactly but I feel like it's private property exactly, but I feel like it's protected from human encroachment.

And I feel I'm so happy that there's a place where in the natural world that's

inaccessible to me. It's just there. It's a kind of sacred place, special place,

where the natural world can just kind of be itself, be its own thing.

And the animals there, the deer, the mountain lions, they can just be outside the influence or outside the desires and preferences

of humans.

So I'm sure there's other ways of understanding this water district land.

But there are these places in the world that are considered sacred,

that some people, you know know you don't visit you can leave you stay away

...