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

Please visit our website at audiodderma.org.

So good morning everyone from Spirit Rock, good day for those of you around the world.

The I met Spirit Rock, I'm teaching here for the week

Last time I broadcast from here I did it outside

But now it's a dark and so I'm in one of the meeting rooms in the meditation

hall, meditation building and next to me is Kwan Yin, a statue of the Bodiceva of Compassion, and who's holding a little

flask that is medicine, whatever medicine the world needs.

Kwan Yin has the medicine in that flask.

So, happy to be here and in preparing for the meditation today at the I want to kind of create an image for you or an image

or an image,

imagine that you, in the, you have two neighbors in the home you live in, one on each side, two sets of neighbors, and they both have children about the same age.

And you've grown up with these children.

You've known when they, you know when they were babies, you've been a babysitter for them. You've known them when they were younger kids and

sometimes they came over to your house when the parents couldn't take care of them and the parents didn't take care of them very well.

There was no love in the home and a lot of conflict and a lot of yelling and and maybe neglect of the children. But they would come over

to your house and play and feel safe with you and the only place they really felt safe and comfortable and

the only place they had someone who believed in them and who showed them that they were lovable and you loved having to

come over and because you were between these two their two homes the kids felt

like they were free to come over to you whenever they wanted to, you had invited them.

And they'd often come and play and go there as a refuge.

But as they became teenagers, and at some point, there was a huge conflict between them.

...