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

Please visit our website at audioderma.org. Good morning and welcome and for this meditation.

And for this meditation I'd like to offer a simile.

Maybe some of you have had this occasion

to, maybe when you were young to learn to ride a bicycle and sometimes people learn to

write a bicycle with training wheels and imagine that you are customing yourself, getting used to you, riding a bicycle with big solid training wheels, maybe four of them, one in

two in the front, two in the back, and so you're really stable.

And it's great to ride a bicycle.

It feels wonderful. But then you're afraid of taking the training wheels off because then

gravity will have its chance on you and gravity is dangerous and how are you

going to be able to manage on your own and so then the attachment to the security of the wheels is quite strong.

Can't imagine anything else.

But then the training wheels go off and it's hard to write because this way that we

participate with gravity is confused and we don't know how and we're very strongly

identified as someone who's under the sway of gravity and it's an imaginable how we can

be free of gravity.

And then slowly we get the hang of keeping the balance as we pedal the bike and then at some point just

suddenly feel free and in a certain way we're still under the influence of

gravity but we've learned how to manage how to pedal have the right speed

how to stay balanced and it feels like now we're free now bicycling can just be like a free thing. It feels so delightful and

within time you know how to, you could even bike without holding the handlebar and be upright and it just feels so wonderful.

And now in a certain kind of way,

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