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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So, hello and warm greetings from the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City.

And here to give the fifth of these guided meditations related to the theme of the road less taken.

And one way I'm fond of understanding the potential of Buddhist practice

is that involves uncovering a treasure which is inside, that we have an

amazingly valuable jewel or treasure waiting for us, and mostly we're too distracted to notice it,

to know it, to know it.

And with the busyness of life, with the survival of life.

But in order to discover it, it's a matter of being quiet, being able to be quiet enough

to listen with a silent mind or to feel with a

silent space in the body, that this treasure in a sense is shy or it's soft and gentle. And so when there's a lot of force and agitation or distraction or activity,

it covers it over.

And so one of the reasons I think a contemplative life,

people who do contemplative practice,

like quiet and silence, is because it's only there that we can really kind of, maybe for the first time, tap into this treasure that we have inside.

And so to listen to this place of goodness that we have inside. And so to listen to this place of goodness that we have.

And one of the reasons that is so important is that this treasure,

part of its manifestation or part of its orientation is to avoid causing harm,

because to cause harm intentionally is to live in a divided world,

agitated world, a loud world, where this inner sense of integrity, wholeness cannot be known.

So to avoid harm, to avoid lying, to avoid confusing or clouding the mind or agitating the mind unduly.

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