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Dear Sangha,

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We're very privileged.

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We have an opportunity [br]to practice sitting meditation.

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Maybe the practice of sitting [br]meditation is very, very ancient.

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We don't know when it began,

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but it's said that Buddha Vipaśyin[br]who lived 91 kalpas away ...

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That is a long time.

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One kalpa is 3.2 billion years, [br]so you can't imagine that 91 kalpas;

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very long time.

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But, he also practiced sitting meditation,

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and maybe, in the place [br]where you are sitting now,

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all those millions of years ago,

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somebody else was sitting

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and practicing meditation

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and maybe they made the[br]deep aspiration, that in

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millions of years to come[br]somebody else would be

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sitting there and practicing [br]meditation

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so if you like you can [br]make that aspiration now

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and this will ensure that in the[br]future people also have a

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chance to site in meditation, [br]whether its in this lifetime of the planet

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or whether its in another lifetime[br]of the planet.

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In the Buddhist teachings, we are[br]able to

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to expand our perception of [br]time, so that it becomes very, very

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very large.

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Now days when people talk about[br]the planet Earth, they talk in

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terms of 4.5 billion years.

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That is the time that the Earth[br]is said to have been in existence.

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We know that this is not exactly[br]correct because that is the time

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when the Earth manifested.[br]But before that it had been

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in existence, in different forms,[br]it came together for that manifestation.

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But, anywhere that is what we learn[br]in school that the Earth is 4.5 Billion

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years old.

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And, we also learn that if

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all the causes and conditions [br]were good, the Earth will be there

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for another 7.5 billion years.

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That seems very little when [br]you compare with 91 kalpas

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of Buddha Vipaśyin