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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Good evening. Welcome, welcome.

Nice to see you all.

Practice together.

So tonight I would like to talk a little bit about a simile that gets used a lot in Buddhist teachings.

But I like to look at a different aspect of it, a little bit different emphasis

and a little bit different perspective than on what we normally hear.

And you know what, Jim, can we have the volume go up just a little bit?

I'm sorry, I didn't ask you to do this

earlier. Let's see how that is. I guess I have to talk to see how the volume is. I think that'll

be all right. Thank you. So the simile is the simile of the raft.

And this is a loose translation.

It goes, imagine a person in the course of a journey arrives at a great expanse of water.

And the near shore is dubious and perilous, and the far shore is a sanctuary, free of peril.

But there is no ferry boat or bridge to take them across the water, so the person thinks.

What if I collected grass, twigs, branches, and

leaves, and bound them together as a raft? And then, supported by the raft and paddling with my

hands and feet, I should then be able to reach the far shore. There's more to this simile, but I'm going to

just stay with that, this idea that we are here

and we can see, oh, there's some water, that's going to be a trouble, and over there, not here,

over there is where it feels like it would be safe and comfortable.

...