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