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

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Good morning, everyone. Welcome here.

Let's see. I have a little bit of an allergy or something.

So this morning, my wife read me headlines from a new site that she was reading.

And the headline said something like,

to have a happy life, don't be frightened.

Stop being frightened.

Well, that sounds nice.

But I also thought, that's great.

That that's maybe what my topic is today,

because that topic is a very buddistic topic,

and it's the topic of refuge. And so those of you don't know much of Buddhism, it'll become

clear, well, you know, how central it is. And refuge, and the idea is to, often we talk

about going to refuge or going in refuge, going to some place that's safe or some place

that's protected. And that can be both inspiring to some people to know there can be safety to be had in this dangerous world we live in.

And for some people, they could seem kind of off-puting because it seems like it's withdrawing,

that's pulling back into some place that we're going to be all safe and comfortable and not really in the world how it is. So I'll tell you a story from some years ago.

That just delighted me when I understood what was going on. It think I could get all turned on a moment.

So I was in a training,

and we invited a trainer to come.

And as a way of beginning our time together,

...