Dear Sangha,
We're very privileged.
We have an opportunity to practice sitting meditation.
Maybe the practice of sitting meditation is very, very ancient.
We don't know when it began,
but it's said that Buddha Vipaśyin who lived 91 kalpas away ...
That is a long time.
One kalpa is 3.2 billion years, so you can't imagine that 91 kalpas;
very long time.
But, he also practiced sitting meditation,
and maybe, in the place where you are sitting now,
all those millions of years ago,
somebody else was sitting
and practicing meditation
and maybe they made the deep aspiration, that in
millions of years to come somebody else would be
sitting there and practicing meditation
so if you like you can make that aspiration now
and this will ensure that in the future people also have a
chance to site in meditation, whether its in this lifetime of the planet
or whether its in another lifetime of the planet.
In the Buddhist teachings, we are able to
to expand our perception of time, so that it becomes very, very
very large.
Now days when people talk about the planet Earth, they talk in
terms of 4.5 billion years.
That is the time that the Earth is said to have been in existence.
We know that this is not exactly correct because that is the time
when the Earth manifested. But before that it had been
in existence, in different forms, it came together for that manifestation.
But, anywhere that is what we learn in school that the Earth is 4.5 Billion
years old.
And, we also learn that if
all the causes and conditions were good, the Earth will be there
for another 7.5 billion years.
That seems very little when you compare with 91 kalpas
of Buddha Vipaśyin