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

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With that reminder for me, there is a famous story in Buddhism of the Buddha supposedly when he was about six or seven. It was a springtime.

It was apparently a nice spring day. And his father was leading the ritual first plowing of the

season. So they were out in the field plowing. It was kind of a

little bit of a festival, maybe like we'll do next week. And then, but because everyone was

involved in the plowing, they left this little boy alone. And he felt safe, secure, comfortable being there.

And he was under, they say, a rose apple tree.

I love it that they remember the tree that he was sitting under.

So in the shade, watching all this happened in front of him.

And maybe he got a little bit absorbed in what was happening.

He felt content and happy.

It was engaging for his eyes, maybe, and he was following it.

And in the process of that, he got concentrated.

And entered into a relatively light samadhi.

But still, it was an inner state of well-being, of unification, of being settled and peaceful.

And that was nice for him, until he was about 36.

And then by that time he had spent years practicing as an aesthetic, about six, seven years,

trying to find a way to liberation in the systems of India at the time.

And none of it worked for him.

And so one day he was sitting, meditating, and probably because his tail end of his

aesthetic period, he was probably looked pretty emaciated. He was kind of extreme ascetic of sorts.

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