When I read the Digha Nikaya, it's a huge effort for me to not think literally.

I want desperately to escape this madness (read "New York City", or "America" even) with its culture of violence, poverty and greed. At the heart of my various "five-year plans," whether Ireland, Cape Breton, or my little Nova Scotian church is a desire to be alone, and - maybe - a cautious optimism for peace. I think I'll stay put. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places for the island:

"You should be an island to yourself, a refuge to yourself, not dependent on any other but taking refuge in the truth and none other than the truth. And how do you become an island and a refuge to yourself?

In this way. You see and contemplate your body as composed of all the forces of the universe. Ardently and mindfully you steer your body-self by restraining your discontent with the world about you. In the same way, observe and contemplate your feelings and use that same ardent restraint and self-possession against enslavement by greed or desire. By seeing attachment to your body and feelings as blocking the truth, you dwell in self-possession and ardent liberation from those ties.

This is how you live as an island to yourself and a refuge to yourself. Whoever dwells in this contemplation, islanded by the truth and taking refuge in the truth--that one will come out of the darkness and into the light."