[Shinegayboyx]

It was insight into the human condition (rather than culture) which gave rise to the metaphors.

Agree Element, this is my take on the issue. Metaphors are different from tales and allegories. Metaphors are means to bring facts into understanding. Into insight.

Buddha uses thousands of them along his suttas: the arrow, the raft, the water boiling, and many others along many suttas.

Also he uses symbols as means to embrace a complex fact of reality into a well understandable unit to reach everybody understanding. Furthermore, a coherent system of symbols can lead to a metaphor.

For example the Simsapa Leaves Sutta: Each leave is a sort of teaching. The important ones are in the hands of Buddha being offering for us.

This is a deep teaching given through symbols. A few leaves are a few teachings enough for quenching Dhukkha.

Anybody can bring someone to a park or to a forest, can take some leaves and tell the same thing that Buddha told 2500 with the exact same symbolic content and leads to that same understanding.

Culture did not that gave birth to that early teachings, but insight into the true nature of things.

The teachings used symbols and metaphors well understood for any given culture at any given time.

Metaphors, like music, has that kind of universal understanding. Every human being has been exposed to a some kind of boiling water.

Thus when the metaphor is used to point toward a mind that is under stress, everybody can figure to where the teaching is pointing.

True nature of things -impermanence, non self and unsatisfactoriness- are beyond cultural conditioned believes.

At least this is where my understanding goes.