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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

Welcome, welcome. Hello. Good evening.

While we were meditating, the thought arose like, oh, why didn't I do this earlier?

I don't know.

I just love sitting with you guys and just saying like, oh, I should just spend the whole day here at I'm seeing, whoever shows up and sit with them or something like this.

Excuse me.

So last week I introduced this idea, the simile of the raft.

Many of you might be familiar with this simile.

It's a well-known one.

It gets interpreted in a number of different ways and different emphases put on different parts of it.

And last class, well, maybe I'll introduce the idea what it is first.

So this is part of Majima 22, the Alagatupamasa.

Kind of heard to say, simile of the snake.

So it's in a suta that has a number of different similes. But this one is simile of the snake. So it's in a sutha that has a number of different similes, but this one is

simile of the raft. And it goes something like this. Imagine a person in the course of a journey

arrives at a great expanse of water, whose near shore is dubious and perilous, and the far shore is a sanctuary free of peril.

But there's no ferry boat or bridge to cross the water.

So the person thinks,

what if I collected grass, twigs, branches, and leaves,

and bound them together as a raft?

And supported by the raft and by paddling with my hands and feet,

...