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I start tonight with a very classic teaching story.

The way it begins is a man who falls from a precipice and he finds himself perilously hanging

from a limb and there's a tiger just kind of pacing above and jagged rocks below and

he calls out frantically help as anybody there and he hears a resounding yes and he goes,

God? Yes, booming. God, can you help me? Yes, you need to do only one thing, anything. Let go.

And he says, he's anybody else there?

So I've been sharing this particular teaching story for as long as I can remember because

it's the very last thing we want to do when we're feeling threatened is to, you know,

we're caught up in protecting and grasping and the last thing we want to do is let go of control

to let go. Ajahn Chah is a great Thai meditation teacher. One of the stories used known for

is he'd walk around the monastery when different monks were meditating and when he'd see somebody

who was struggling who seemed to be really suffering, he would say to them, oh, must be very attached.

Knowing, and this is what we're going to look into, that when we're suffering, we're holding on

really tight at that time to the sense something's wrong, something's wrong with me or defenses or

our judgments or in control mode in a deep way. And so the teaching, and this is an integral part

of any spiritual path, is that the freedom comes when we learn to loosen the grip, when we learn to

let go some. And from Ajahn Chah, these are his words, if you let go a little, you'll find a little

piece. If you let go a lot, you'll find a lot of peace. If you let go absolutely, you'll find

absolute peace and tranquility. So this talk and our next one, the Soviet two-part series,

...