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

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The ancient teachings of the Buddha that I think are worth considering a bit, one is to become independent in the darma and the other is to not depend on anything in the

world. The second one is, appears in the Buddha's instructions on

mindfulness practice as a kind of culmination of mindfulness to not depend on anything in the world.

If it was, and if it was maybe if the Buddha was speaking in modern United States, he would say independent in the world,

but it's a little bit more refined and not dependent, anything in the world.

And then becoming independent in the darma is to have some depth or clarity around the practice to know what it's

about that now it's portable so you don't depend on anybody anything you know for yourself what how this works this practice many years ago. I asked a Japanese

and monk that you know, when does someone receive

Darma transmission, when they become authorized to be a Zen teacher kind of?

And he said, oh, and they can stand on their own two feet.

And I thought that was a nice interesting response.

But it's kind of related to this idea of, you know,

you know, being not depending on anything or being independent in the

darma for yourself. You can. And what this points to, or the reason I want to highlight this

today is that on one hand we have in the United States,

especially in Anglo-Saxon kind of culturation here in this country a strong sense of individualism which is somewhat problematic at times.

But it turns out the Buddha also, his teachings about the path to liberation was somewhat

individualistic in orientation in that, you know, if you're going to exercise for your sake of your help, you don't ask someone else to exercise for you.

I mean, it's a little bit of individualistic thing.

It's something you have to do for yourself personally.

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