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Dear Sangha,

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We're very privileged.

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We have an opportunity 
to practice sitting meditation.

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Maybe the practice of sitting 
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
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, 
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 
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
deep aspiration, that in

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millions of years to come
somebody else would be

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sitting there and practicing 
meditation

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so if you like you can 
make that aspiration now

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

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

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or whether its in another lifetime
of the planet.

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In the Buddhist teachings, we are
able to

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

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very large.

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Now days when people talk about
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
is said to have been in existence.

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We know that this is not exactly
correct because that is the time

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when the Earth manifested.
But before that it had been

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

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But, anywhere that is what we learn
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 
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 
you compare with 91 kalpas

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of Buddha Vipaśyin