August 27, 2009 Thursday Morning, Venture Fourth, Part 2
Q&A: Liberation; Stages of consciousness; Healing
Aaron has ended the meditation with the prayer, “May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be happy and find perfect peace.” D has asked, isn’t it better to state in the positive way, to focus on the experience of freedom and not to try to fix suffering? Aaron and D are talking about it.
Aaron: Once again, good morning… Let us begin at the beginning. Let us begin first with D’s question. I think you’re right, D, that, “May all beings be free of suffering” is the traditional blessing. But when we aspire to manifest something in our lives and in the world, it’s more helpful to envision the positive. I had not thought about the traditional blessing in that way before. How could we phrase it?
Q: Liberation…
Aaron: Liberation, “May all beings be liberated from suffering,” and envision the liberation.?
Q: “May all beings find liberation, find freedom”?
Aaron: There’s also a value in seeing the suffering in the world, acknowledging it, because it inspires you to do the hard work necessary in yourself and in the world to help to release that suffering. Is there a difference, do you think, between release of suffering, which I say is the gradual process of its being released, and liberation, which is freedom? So there’s a process.
“May all beings be liberated” speaks of the end but it’s also useful to acknowledge, “There is suffering and I visualize my own efforts and the efforts of my brothers and sisters throughout the world as helping to release that suffering.”
Envision yourselves disembarking from a train into a busy plaza, courtyard. Around that courtyard many beings are sitting huddled, cold, hungry, and in pain. You see some beings walking around that courtyard, knocking a piece of bread out of somebody’s hand and into a filthy gutter, kicking somebody else, even spitting on somebody. Hitting somebody who is wailing loudly. And you also see beings who are very quietly moving around the courtyard handing out some water, putting an arm around somebody’s shoulder in comfort. They don’t have much in material terms but they have love and the willingness to extend that love.
I know it’s very clear to all of you which group you’re going to join! The ground for that choice is the determination to alleviate suffering. You’re not trying in that moment to liberate beings so much as just to alleviate suffering. We need to hold both intentions, I think– the intention for liberation for oneself and all beings and a deep inner knowing that such liberation is indeed possible. And the intention in this moment to do what’s necessary to just give the sip of water, just the hug, the giving of which and the receiving of which by the other person are part of the pathway to liberation.
So I do understand your statement and your concern, and I think it’s very important to hold that active vision of a world, I don’t know how to say it in a positive sense, not just liberated but free from suffering. Free from suffering equates to liberated, and yet in a more mundane sense a world in which beings’ hearts are open to one another in love, a world– we sometimes contrast love and fear, I don’t want to say a world in which there is no fear because that’s just like saying no suffering– a world in which love predominates. Even though there is still fear, still pain, still confusion, love predominates. “May you be loved.”
Does that settle it a bit for you?
Q: So would you use both statements, meaning both a blessing and…
Aaron: Yes, I think we need to use both steps. One is the mundane and one is the supramundane. Part of what we’re doing here as a group is learning better to integrate the mundane and the supramundane, how to live both at the same time. Which brings us back to Venture Fourth.
According to the schedule, I’m to start with describing in a deeper sense what we’re doing here.
There is a transition of consciousness in your world. For great spans of your linear time you lived in a kind of magical consciousness. When I say “you”, perhaps not you as you know yourself now but the karmic ancestors of whom you are the present expression, lived in a magical consciousness in which they believed if they prayed to the right gods, certain things would happen. If they lit the right incense or did the right dance, there was the belief certain kinds of magic would be opened.
Eventually humans evolved to an understanding that there was no magic, that it was all about your effort and what opened was the natural result of conditions. But there was a misunderstanding there, that took this opening as “my” personal effort, not that I am connected to everything—human, spirit, and the earth—but a very rational, “If I do this, then that will happen.” This rational did not take the vast interplay into consideration.
This age of reason was an important response to what I would call an age of magic and pure passion, if I might call it that way, but it was still very unbalanced. Visionaries began to see the need to step beyond the rational mind without excluding the rational mind. To envision, as D has pointed out, a world of peace, a world of love, where the deepest connections between beings are known and lived, but to bring in the balance of reason and the power of the mind. We might call this the stage of vision logic consciousness.
We are going to go through all of this in much more depth in a future intensive, I think in Intensive 3, perhaps in Intensive 2, we have not worked out the details yet. You will be reading Putting on the Mind of Christ by Jim Marion. He talks at length about this transition of consciousness.
We’ll be exploring states and stages of consciousness in oneself, because as you can identify it clearly in yourself in meditation, you can better understand it in the world, and how to bring balance in those places where consciousness is out of balance. How to invite—I don’t want to use to term bring, you’re not doing, you’re inviting.
So the world is moving toward a new and higher consciousness. When we talk about Christ Consciousness, this is not specifically a Christian thing or about Jesus. Jesus was a great example of the Christ consciousness and we can thank Him for his courage to come and express this Christ consciousness on the earth. The Buddha also expressed Christ consciousness, awakened consciousness. The Buddha was a Christ and the Christ was a Buddha, if we can say it that way.
This is about finding that highest level of consciousness in yourself, about awakening, which all of you have been working toward for many years in your vipassana practice. But it’s about a fuller level of awakening where one is aware that the whole world is waking up. It’s been sleeping and suddenly waking up and looking at the dawn, literally the dawn of a new age, rubbing its eyes and looking around. And becoming aware, “This can be the Eden we’ve been promised. This beautiful Earth that we have, with its gentle clean rains and its beautiful lakes, the trees, the blue sky (or gray sky, as it is today), the beauty of all of these. This earth that when treated with kindness bears fruit enough to feed every being on the earth. This earth that has the potential that nobody will thirst. This consciousness that has the potential that nobody shall lack for love.”
When we envision a world in which there truly is peace, in which there is no terrible physical need of hunger or thirst, in which a growing awareness of the energy bodies and/in the physical body leads to the eventual extinction of illness—I’m not exaggerating, the eventual extinction of illness. These bodies don’t have to break down in this way. When you understand why the bodies break down, you can learn how to heal the body.
Last summer Barbara broke her big toe. It swelled, it was very painful, turned blue and black and purple. The doctor said in 6 to 8 weeks it will heal. So she came back to her cabin rather miserable, sad that she was going to miss walking in her woods and her long swims and be incapacitated for the summer and in pain. I said to her, “Why do you envision it’s going to take 6 to 8 weeks just because he said it would?”
Now I’m getting out of order here, I see Barbara has created a plan whereby I talk about Venture Fourth and then I talk about moving beyond limits, but instead I’m going to use the whole morning and to mix it all up a bit.
She elevated the foot; she put ice on it. She also soaked it in the special high vibrational water she had brought back from the Casa. And Spirit said to her, not me but a wise and loving being who was quite aware of healing, said to her, “Sing to it.” Sing to it? “Just the syllable OM, that sacred syllable, in any tone that the toe seems to want.”
She has a set of tuning forks so she struck a tuning fork. She decided on the heart chakra at first. (Tones OM in F) And she could feel this vibration going down into the toe. She sang for several hours. When it seemed more suitable to use a different tone, she changed tones. She listened to the toe.
Human bodies are made in such a way that yes, a bone can break. If you hit a sharp piece of glass, the skin is going to break. It doesn’t have to be stitched up and take weeks to heal. If you hit something hard, a toe can break or a leg can break. But you believe in the limited progression of healing. You think that’s how it will be so of course that’s how it is.
So Barbara sang to this toe many hours a day for 3 days. She slept quite fitfully at night; it was throbbing and painful. But the third night she was aware that she slept soundly. She awakened feeling refreshed and there was no throbbing in the toe. She looked at it. The discoloration was mostly gone. And spirit said to her, “It’s healed. You can remove the tape.”
When she went back to the doctor to ask him to X-ray it, the X-ray only did not show a healed toe, it showed no break. He looked at the X-ray and he couldn’t believe it, there was no line where the break had been. There was no scar tissue. It just had completely healed.
Your bodies are capable of this, if you understand that you can work with your bodies from this higher level of consciousness, inviting healing for the highest good.
Now sometimes it’s a slower progression. Barbara asked me after that, “If my toe could heal in 3 days, why do I not yet hear?” For whatever reason, there is a slower progression. The hearing is beginning but it’s small as yet. Perhaps because she does not yet fully believe that she will fully hear. Who knows, this is her work.
Your work is to look at the places where you hold limiting beliefs about yourself and about the world and challenge those beliefs in a loving way. In this way we support this move of the whole earth into a higher vibration and a higher consciousness. You look at the beliefs that no matter what one does there will be war in parts of the world, there will be famine in parts of the world. For now, yes, there will be floods, there will be droughts. For now.
Eventually I think that you as humans will learn to co-create with the world. If one can sing to a broken toe and co-create healing, could not a whole world sing to a place where the earth is unstable and invite the earthquake not to happen? Invite the earth ridges to settle in a smooth way, gently? One can invite the earth to co-create for the highest good.
There are in fact groups who are working in that direction. There was a large group of which Barbara was a part with thousands of members in perhaps 60 or 70 countries, and by email they sent out urgent requests for prayers – for physical violence that’s going on in the area, for some earth trauma that is expected, for example a place where the waters are rising and bad floods are predicted. So people from all over the earth, not all meditating at one time, it was not set up that way, but just the attention was brought to this area that needs love, and thousands of people sent love out into that area.
There’s no way of telling how effective it was. It has not been attempted to say, “We’ll send love here but not there, and see what happens.” There’s too much that there’s no ability to gauge. Why did the earthquake happen here and not there? But very often in the areas where attention was called to this urgent need, the need was resolved without violence of humans or the earth. It’s very powerful to watch this.
So these light centers throughout the world are simply beings who are each working as you are working, to bring yourself into a higher level of consciousness and learn how to use your own energy in such a way as to co-create the peace and well-being for sentient beings and for the earth itself, which you begin to know is possible.
There are two parts here, the knowing of it and the intention to help it manifest.
You’ve all heard me talk about densities and that the earth is presently a 3rd density plane. We’ve described 1st as gas and mineral, 2nd density as vegetable and lower animal consciousness. Some of your more mature animals, like the personal pets, are at the lowest level of 3rd density, and many humans presently are at 3rd density although some are now 4th density. We use the term density simply to describe the density of your energy field. An energy field that is of a higher density can vibrate faster and higher. It can hold a higher vibration.
The whole earth is emerging into 4th density. Most of you have heard me speak of this before. It’s going to happen regardless of whether you support it or not internally and in the world. The world IS moving into 4th density. The question is, is it going to be a smooth transition or a very ragged and unpleasant transition. You have a lot to do with that choice.
Venture Fourth, then, was chosen as the name to speak of this venture into 4th density.
Many changes will happen as the earth becomes a 4th density planet. Already many of your children are taking birth as 4th density beings. Let me explain further by what I mean by 4th density being.
There is a physical component, a mental one, an emotional one, and spiritual one. For the most part these young 4th density children have reached a level where they were not called back karmically into incarnation in the earth but chose to come to support this earth transition. I do not mean that there is no unwholesome karma to be resolved; certainly they will have work to do. They are not arahats. But the level of work they had to do could have been done on another plane other than the material plane.
Let’s go back one step and let me explain this more fully. I’ve said to you repeatedly, you are not incarnate to stop emotion from happening but to shift the relationship with emotion and not build self-based stories on it. If anger arises, it’s the result of conditions. If anger about the anger arises, it’s just more anger. But when you are able to see that anger and note how it arose out of conditions, how it’s impermanent, not to build a self, an ego, around it but just make space for it, it will resolve. The same is true with greed, fear or any other strong negative emotion. It will resolve.
Fourth density beings by nature are telepathic. For most of you there is still shame about your own negative emotions and discomfort with other people’s negative emotions. If I asked in this room right now, “Is it okay with all of you, at the click of my fingers, that you become fully telepathic, knowing that everybody can read your thoughts and you can read everybody else’s, is that okay with you?” Is there anybody comfortable with that? A few. Good. At the end of 2 years I hope you’ll all be comfortable with it.
So the beginning of the work, which you’ve been doing for many years, is to watch the arising of negative thought and not create these self-stories around it. It just has arisen from conditions and is impermanent. You must take care of it, you must be responsible to it, but you don’t have to be afraid of it.
When there is no longer shame around negative thoughts but simply the willingness to attend to negative impulse and negative thought, you stop feeding energy to the negative patterns of thinking. Negative thought may still arise but it’s not being fed, and eventually it will die out. Meanwhile, in the time it takes to die out, and that may not happen in this lifetime, you’re no longer feeding the impulses with more negativity. At that point, if you are telepathic and you picked up another person’s negative thought, “Oh, I don’t like her white shirt,” or, “She should’ve gotten her hair cut,” or whatever the thought might be, the person reading that thought would just smile inwardly. They have the same kinds of thoughts. This is what comes up to mind. It’s okay.
When you have such thoughts, you know that others will not condemn you for them and you will not condemn others. Here we are changing the vibration so that what arises is viewed with love. It’s a very powerful shift. You’ve all seen this happening in your vipassana practice, and while it is not yet completed, you all know you are on this path and how powerful it is. Shame still comes, I know, and discomfort with emotion, but I think for all of you it’s much less than it was 10 years ago. So you’ve learned to trust the path of practice.
So 4th density beings are telepathic, and in order to be telepathic with comfort, in order to invite such telepathic ability, there has to be a reconciliation with the emotional body and spaciousness with it.
As this change happens in the emotional and mental body, the physical body has a corresponding change. Fourth density babies being born today have a different DNA structure than most of you were born with, a more evolved DNA structure. This takes us back a bit to some Earth history.
I’m going to give it to you in a brief capsule. There’s more complete material available on the website. In the ancient time of Lemuria, Lemuria was more or less a crystal-based land and beings had a crystal-based body, a more crystalline structure. Everything was of a very high vibration. Everyone was telepathic. Everyone was in deep communication not only with each other but with the Earth itself.
If one wanted a fire for cooking, wanted not to rub sticks together or strike a match, one simply invited the wood to pile up, and envisioned it alighting with energy. Then again, back in that time, if one wanted to cook, one would simply envision the food cooked! But let’s say you wanted the comfort and beauty of the fire.
If one was working with giant blocks of stone to build a structure, one did not need tools and leverage, one simply lifted a stone energetically. Blocks of crystal, let us say. Lemuria had great towers and buildings formed of many large blocks of crystal that were simply levitated into place energetically.
The fatal flaw with Lemuria for beings who desired growth was that there was no catalyst that brought forth any kind of negative response. So there was no catalyst for compassion to grow. So it was a heavenly realm of sorts but it also was stagnant. There was the strong intention among the Lemurians for the growth of compassion but there was nothing to catalyze that compassion.
Beings then began to work with imagined scenarios and the form of drama to try to create stories that might evoke compassion. I’m drastically capsulizing here, but the result of this new direction eventually was the creation of Atlantis. There was an overlap between Lemuria and Atlantis.
Atlantis had a lower vibration. There was a mixed crystalline and more carbon based structure to it. Atlantis was still a very evolved society but beings began to shift into the whole delusion of a separate self and get caught there, which idea was impossible in Lemuria.
It’s as if you came out, you played a role in a stage play repeatedly for many centuries, playing the same role until you began to not only act the character role and understand the character, which is necessary for such good acting, but to truly believe you were that character. So people got caught. And this was where the karma began to grab at people.
This is a whole different talk. I’m not going to go deeply into karma and how that shift happened in Atlantis, not today, or not now. But if there’s no sense of a separate self, if everything knows its full connection with everything else, then there’s no karma. When people move into the illusion of separation, then whether it’s wholesome or unwholesome karma, there’s a delusion of a self, and that self experiences the effects of karma.
You’ve heard me talk about resting in rigpa, resting in pure awareness, and how in that moment of resting in pure awareness, one is free of karma. But since you don’t stay there, the everyday mind returns to its involvement in the karmic field! So for the Atlanteans, there was the experience of increasing karma and yet these beings still had the ability of telepathic thought and of the immense power to energetically manipulate their environment. I’m using that word specifically: no longer to co-create their environment but now it was to manipulate the environment.
There was much discussion of this among the Brother/Sisterhood of Light, who were and are simply a guiding and not a governing body, spirit plane beings. These are ones to whom your spirit guides relate. This Brother/Sisterhood of Light and humans of the time, the Lemurians, the Atlanteans, decided that as this progression came forth and people got more and more caught up in the drama, the personal drama of being, that they needed to carry that drama through. They couldn’t just say, “Whoops, let’s leave this path. Let’s go back to being Lemurians.”
This consciousness shift, in a sense, is the apple from the Garden of Eden, the forbidden fruit, the fruit of knowledge. Until you have knowledge of your power to do harm or good, there cannot be personal choice to choose the good, and personal responsibility.
This is part of your evolution. So in some ways the Lemurians were children. Can you see that? They were very immature in some ways. There was no choice given them, they simply followed the course of a flowing stream of energy, a loving stream, but there was nothing to challenge.
As beings progressed, the choice was made, not individually—let me say this differently. The choice was made to limit the DNA structure in humans, to cut certain strands of DNA in such a way that there was no longer the ability to levitate giant rocks or change the course of underwater streams, or move the earth in these ways, or other people, because that power was too dangerous. The Earth would have been destroyed.
Those who chose then to incarnate chose to do so willingly knowing that the now-human body they would incarnate into, going through all the historical phases of humankind, that this new body would have this more limited DNA structure.
Now, new children being born are being born with those DNA linkages completed, and many of you are experiencing a shift in your own DNA; perhaps over a period of a year or two, it happens. It’s something we’ll talk more in detail about at another time; today I’m just giving you an overview.
The shift in DNA can be very disorienting both physically and emotionally. The vipassana practice is a strong platform from which to address this shift. Such shift is never done TO you, it is something you evoke in yourselves as you feel ready. In other words, you see that you are ready to hold more power because you have tamed the emotions, the personal relationship with the emotions. You are no longer afraid of your power and because of the strong intention to do good in the world, you invite whatever shifts are necessary—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—in order to do the work that you came to do. To move beyond the limits of the small human and into this large, can we call it Self with a capital S, that aspect of you that is totally connected to everything else.
In a sense you’ve come full circle but you’re no longer the innocent that the Lemurian was, but you understand both power and responsibility and you are ready to take responsibility for that power because of the strong commitment to the highest good, and because of your strong sense of the interbeing of all that is, and knowing that if you do harm to another, it’s harm to yourself. It’s harm to all.
We come then to the idea of the bodhisattva. A number of you have expressed concern about taking a specifically bodhisattva vow and said, “I don’t feel ready to do that.” Well first, this is a traditional terminology; let’s drop the traditional terminology of bodhisattva as the one who vows to return until all beings are liberated. Second, it’s not a vow, it’s a statement of intention.
A vow cannot be taken unless you know that you can give what’s needed. Taking the vow can inspire you but it may also be too daunting. It’s fine to simply say, “This is my intention,” and gradually the intention deepens into what might be thought of as a vow. We don’t need to use the term vow; there can just be stronger and stronger intention, inner promise, deep commitment.
The traditional bodhisattva in Buddhist terminology is the being that while already a non-returner, that is, already within 4th density and not needing to return to Earth to personally resolve karma, that being resolves to return to Earth because it sees the suffering on Earth and to help alleviate that suffering in whatever ways are possible.
It’s a useful idea but I think we need to go further here. This is just one meaning of the term bodhisattva. Let us call this an intention to service to all beings for the highest good, and also because this is the path for the resolution of one’s own personal karma. What you do to serve others also leads to your own liberation.
I think you’ve all done the practice of tonglen. Anybody here who has not done tonglen? (one) You bring in light and send it out to where there is suffering. We take that suffering into ourselves, into our hearts, and then release it.
As we practice this in a place of deep suffering, we see that there’s some fear. People have asked me, “When I’m doing this with somebody who’s ill, what if I take that illness into myself and it clings to me and I become ill?” Of course, one has to release the energy. One brings the illness in and then releases it. One doesn’t think, “Oh, I’m big, I can carry it.” No. “I am just the vehicle. I bring it in and I release it.”
But one sees how the ego steps in and says, “I’m not sure I want that.” Or bringing in that which is good, “I’m not sure I want to give it away.” Liberation asks us constantly to address this ego with kindness, with love, with patience. This is the whole reason for this 24-step, program with, shall we call them character traits? You’ve seen in your work just with humility, with respect, with honor and responsibility, how you are challenged, looking at the small ego self and finding that which is radiant and beautiful and strong and clear. That balances the small ego. You don’t stomp on the small ego; you hold it with love.
But your self-identity shifts from the small ego to that which is radiant and beautiful. You start to know, “This is what I am in my essence and I can trust this in myself” because you begin to experience if just for a moment what true humility feels like, what true respect feels like.
The taking of this statement of intention to service for all beings does not necessarily a certain kind of service. It could simply mean to get up in the morning and make eggs for your family for breakfast. That’s service. You watch the part of you that says, “Oh, I want to meditate another half hour. The children can pour themselves cereal…. No, I’ll get up and make some eggs. Everybody would appreciate that.” That’s service.
So we’re not specifying the kind of service you’re going to do but the expression of that service as coming from a loving place that’s empty of self-centered fear. Or, if that self-centered fear has arisen, simply to touch it with kindness.
Barbara has a story in the new book that has not yet been publish that she has written about going down to her basement to meditate one morning, and she asked her children first, “Do you want breakfast?” One was playing a video game and one was reading a book and they said, “No, no.” So after a few minutes of meditation, a little hand tapped her shoulder—this was many years ago, the children were young, and said, “Mom, where’s my bagel?” She said to him, “You said you didn’t want any. Now I’m meditating.” I think she was writing in her journal, not meditating, but, “Now I’m working.”
So he left a bit despondent. She said, “Go make it for yourself,” but she saw she needed to do it for him. This was perhaps an 11-year-old boy but he’d been home sick for the week and was feeling a bit needy and wanted some love and she recognized that. So she went up and made him a bagel.
She asked the younger brother again, “Do you want a bagel?” No, still playing a video game. Five minutes later, though, he came down and said…
(beeping) I don’t know what I’m to do with this—we’re an hour into my talk and I suppose that means I’m supposed to stop. I’ll continue (lost to group laughing) if you’ll indulge me for another 10 or 15 minutes. You’re probably needing to stretch.
The second boy came in, having finished his video game and said, “Where’s my bagel?” Again, up she went. Do it with love or not at all. I have told her that a hundred times. Do it with love. She could see the resentment coming up. Make space for the resentment and find that which is loving, right there with the resentment. She made the bagel, poured him a glass of milk, set it out on the table for him. This one was a 6 year old so he really couldn’t slice the bagel himself.
She went back downstairs and just as she was about to start down the steps, the oldest son came in and said, “Do you have a bagel for me?” And she got his bagel. She went back downstairs. Her husband came in and saw the boys sitting around the table with their breakfast and instead of slicing himself a bagel, he came downstairs and said, “Will you make one for me too?”
She could have said no to her husband; she could compassionately have said, “No, I’m working right now, please make your own.” That would be a loving thing to do. She could also go up and make the bagel for him; that would be a loving thing to do. It’s not about which she does but with what attitude. Do it with love.
If resentment comes up, attend to the resentment. This is the work of the being evolving into 4th density. Now I’m coming back to the DNA shifts. As these shifts happen in you—first, they will not happen until you feel the maturity to invite them. Second, they will progress at whatever level feels appropriate to you. Not faster and not slower. You are in charge. Third, you will find yourself being offered greater and greater responsibility and find with each incremental step that you feel strongly capable of making wise and loving choices. That you feel capable of holding this power, of moving beyond the limitation in which you previously have perceived yourself, moving beyond this small self and coming to know your full power in the world.
The bodhisattva intention is simply a statement of your inner readiness to move through this progression at the speed to which it feels appropriate to you. All of you know how to drive a car. If I said to you, “There’s a racetrack down the road and I need some people to drive some of these cars at 120 mph on a rainy day, to test drive. You all know how to drive a car; who volunteers?” Well, no one. You know you’re not ready to do that.
If I said, “It’s a sunny clear day and they desperately need a few drivers willing to drive these cars at 60 mph,” are there a few of you who might say, “Well, that sounds interesting, I’ll try that”? Then a month later, “We need somebody at 70 mph.” A year later we’re up to 90 mph but you’ve been doing it gradually. You’ve learned, “I can do that.” You will never be pushed beyond what you can do.
I’m curious, I know a number of you have talked to me about this kind of DNA shift. How many of you have experienced even a little bit of it personally? (many hands raised) Many of you. Okay.
Q: How does one know?
Aaron: We’ll talk about that later… You have! We’ll talk about it later.
So this is what the bodhisattva intention is about. It’s about finding that within which is deeply intentioned to attend to suffering in your immediate world around you, in the extended world around you, for sentient beings and for the Earth, in whatever ways are most appropriate, which may be simply, I can’t say watering your thirsty garden on a day like today but on those days when it’s been very hot and dry, simply seeing the plants wilting and watering the garden. This is a way of alleviating suffering. This is a form of service.
There is so much to cover here but I don’t want to knock you out with too much material and too long a sitting period. Let’s break here for 10 minutes and when we come back I will hear your questions. Thank you.
(break, remainder of Q&A not transcribed)