What is love? | Ajahn Brahm

AB20010720_WhatIsLove Summary The first type of love we hear all about in our culture is romantic love, which involves an infatuation with one person. The second type of love is a detached love which is greater because it allows you to be at peace with separation, with death and with all the bad things that life can bring. In the loving-kindness meditation, you open the door to the present moment, to silence, and to the emptiness that allows you to connect with everything. It's a love which is happy to let the other person go. Buddhist love is a type of love that relieves people from suffering. It is a type of love that is selfless and detached. It is a type of love that grows over time. What is love at a Buddhist Perspective? Love is often misunderstood and mistrusted. It can be a very dangerous thing when it's based on ownership or attachment. In Buddhism, love is based on the simple principle of wanting someone to be happy. And the third type of love is the power of emptiness, the power of nothing. This is why all the great beings which I have met in my life, these are all monks who have that type of love. Transcription U1 0:00 This evenings dhamma talk. As usual, I try and get some inspiration. Just before I come in here to give me the subject for the dhamma talk, somebody mentioned an interesting topic which caught my mind fancy and the topic of what is love from a Buddhist perspective. Some of you know where that topic has come from and I'm going to be following this topic again in a Buddhist perspective. So it's not going to be an obvious talk. I'm going to go, I hope on avenues where you do not expect me to go because the subject of what is love? Is not an easy question to answer. Something as fundamental to our life as love is very hard for people to grasp. And of course you'd probably already in your life so far have many experiences of misunderstanding that to your great suffering and distress. So I'm going to talk and explore my Buddhist perspective from a monk's perspective, from a meditation perspective. What is this thing we call one? Now, the first thing, of course, is that people, especially in today's age, begin by assuming that life has something to do with romance. And I think even just a few days ago, I was talking with someone that even his story is quickly that which we call romantic love has an origin in history which can be very clearly pinpointed to roughly around the 15th century in Europe, when the trooperdores would go around singing the first love songs. Naturally, they created the culture of romantic love beforehand. There wasn't such a thing. Cavemen would just go out with their clubs and just go get whatever person they wanted. There was no romance. And of course, in some areas of our city that things haven't changed. However, that idea of a romantic love should be investigated because for many of us it seems to be a very important quality which we celebrate in our society, in our culture. And we should really examine it, because when we don't know it properly, again, it creates so much suffering inside of us. A lot of people really think they know love when they fall in love with another person. But so often that that type of love is, to paraphrase an article from Time magazine many years ago, when one falls in love, what one is really loving is the way that person makes you feel. You're actually loving a sensation inside of yourself. That's all. That if that person is around too long, so that's one develops a sense of. I know that feeling. It's like any other feeling inside the body. You get used to it and peacocks disappears. In this article on the chemistry of love in Time magazine many years ago, they were saying that when boy meets girl, when that happens, they can actually try erase the chemicals which are secreted into your bloodstream. And they're secreted when you meet each other, when you hug each other, when you kiss each other. But after a while, usually about two years, they say that the body develops a tolerance to those chemicals and they don't turn you on anymore. That's why a lot of romance only lasts that long. But a very interesting story about romantic love, which gives a good understanding where it really comes from, was from the Buddhist tale of one of the Buddhist chief supporters who happened to be one of the queens of this king in the time of the Buddha. And this queen was very well loved by the king. King Khanidi, his name was, for those of you who know the story. And she was called Malika. And one day she was in the palace looking out of the window, watching the Buddha go on arms around in the city. And she was watching with such a wonderful smile on her face that when the king saw her, she thought, this queen of mine, she loves a Buddhist more than me. You got jealous sometimes. Happens to the monks these days. It's happened to the monks in our monastery. Sometimes the husbands have come to complain when they see what food they offer to the banks. They say that my wife never cooks such nice food for me. I tell her how's she become a bank then. Anyway, she was watching. She was watching the Buddha on arms round and so he was watching she was watching the Buddha and arms round and he was watching her. And so he came up to her and confronted her and said who do you love more, the Buddha or me? Your husband? Those very tricky questions. She said she loved the Buddha more because of her face and her religious confidence. She got in trouble with her husband. She said she loved the husband pacific more. She got in trouble with her religious spouse. But she said something she managed to get out of a fix and she said I love myself more than both of you. That was not what the king expected. And it fascinated answer so that if I love myself more than my husband or my teacher, So the king went to the Buddha and reported the conversation. And the Buddha said, that was a very wise wife you have, because for many of us, even though we think we love our partner, really we love ourselves more. The acid test, all this. If you really think you love your partner no more than your own life, then what would you do if your partner, if your wife, say, ran away with a milkman? He says ran away with the postman. If you really loved her, you really loved her, you should be so happy that she's found happiness and love, and she's with this marvelous postman fella, and you should feel so grateful that she's happy. If you really love her and you know what love is all about, you want her to be happy. Now she is happy. I love talking about this because it really challenges people if you. That is true, isn't it? We wouldn't be happy if our wife, if our husband, if our partner ran off like that, even if they were really, really happy with this. Lovely postman, fella. Why is that? Because, really, our love is like an attachment love. We love the way they make us feel. It's love which has attachment, which has ownership. And this is that first type of love which you want to talk about in the Buddhist context. The love which comes from the word mine. And many of you have been in relationships like that, which have been possessive relationships. A laugh which says, I'm very happy. I will love you as long as you are mine. And that's why I say my husband, my wife, my child, my parents, even my car, which I love. That type of love is what the Queen meant. That you love yourself most. Owning these things, possessing these things, having these things around. That's not a very lofty type of love. It's a very common life. But it's a love which creates a lot of problems. Problem, because in this life, the Buddha pointed out, we own precious little. In fact, we don't own much at all. If anything, we only rent it for a time. We only have our loved ones with us for a very, very short time. The days and nights relentlessly passing. Sooner or later, there has to be a separation. All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, said the Buddha. All that I love will one day become separated from me. That is an eternal truth which no one can deny. When we talk about religious beliefs, that is not a belief which you have to just take on faith, take on trust. That is something which we all know as an ultimate truth. All that is my beloved and pleasing will one day become separated from me. So that love which wants to own, which wants to possess, is doomed to suffering. It's loving yourself, but only creating pain and suffering for yourself when that parting happens. But of course, it's a much more wise and deeper love which will to in that little story or joke, if you wish to call it. I said, if your husband or your wife ran away with somebody else, you should feel very happy. There's a sense there that you can feel happy when somebody else, someone you care for, is happy. It's that happiness of selfless love that is quite soundingly rare in this world. The Buddha called it like the love of a mother to her child who gives her life for her child. What we mean by giving your life means you give everything you can let go. It's a love which sees the other person. I give my life, I give even my happiness. I give everything I own for the happiness of my child. Now, we can't even say that to a wife or a husband, because I'll give my happiness. If you want to go off the boat, go off. Enjoy. Have fun. Because that type of love is just wanting the other person to be happy but not having any concern about oneself. It is truly a selfless love which has no strings attached. It is detached love. At this point, I bring in one of those stories which many of you have heard several times. The story when I was 13, 1415. It's a long time ago now. My father took me aside and told me something which I remembered so much, so, so often. I've repeated it here very often. And it's something I repeat a lot because it informs my life as a monk. It's one of the great themes which runs through the way I look at the world. He took me aside and said to me no matter what you ever do in your life, son. The door of my house will always be open to you. That was his words. No matter what you ever do, the door of my house will always be open to you. Unfortunately, he was a very poor man. His house wasn't really much to speak of, even was in a house. It was an apartment for that owned by the local council, which he rented. But nevertheless, it was more than a house or an apartment in London, which he was referring to. It was that realization of what he really was trying to say which made a great impact in my life as a monk, especially my understanding of detached love. What she was saying was the thought of his heart would always be open to me no matter what I ever did in my life. That was a laugh without any conditions on it whatsoever. He was saying no matter what I did, no matter how I turned out, he would never take away his love. It wasn't a love which demanded anything back in return. And I've extended that idea of like, selfless love, unconditional love. There's so many other aspects of life to be able to love someone no matter what they do, even if they die on us. It's like running away with the postman, but even worse and no longer going to be around. So I love you so much that I can let you go. That's what we mean by a detached love. And certainly it may have been because those words of my father, which I didn't really understand at the time, why couldn't let him go. When he died on me, I was only 16 years of age. I could let him go. I didn't grieve at all. Haven't grieved since. Actually, at the end of this retreat period, I've been invited to give a little talk at a seminar on grieving. And I was looking at some of the symptoms of the presentations. And I think I'm going to stir a few people up because they're all talking about the universality of grief. And I was living in a culture in northeast Thailand for nine years, which hadn't been Westernized. Many of the places I actually went to, I was the first Westerner they ever saw. I remember a couple of times there's a monk going on, arms round with my bowl into the village, and some of the people waiting and waiting for the time. And so they saw me, and they were just so taken aback, they dropped their rice way outside my bowl. They were looking at me, not looking at what they're putting their eyes. Never seen a Westerner before. So I was very fortunate to go into a remote part of north east Thailand, not North Thailand, Chiang Mai, where all the tourists go to a flat, poor backwater part of Thailand where Western culture just had not reached so for many years. Is I saw Thailand as it can no longer be found. The old culture, and in particular that monastery where I spent most of my time, was also the local cremation ground. It was where they brought the dead bodies of people in the villages around with getting wood from the forest and put them on the fire and just burn them right there. Not only did I help the villagers get the wood, but also stay up at night to make sure the body didn't off the fire because the dogs were hanging around, but also you'd see the villages afterwards. And, you know, for those nine years, I think the cremations would have been once a week or once every two weeks. Only once towards the very end did I see one person cry. Only just one tier. Then they start very quickly. What I actually saw there was that the grief, especially the Western grief, wasn't part of the culture. They actually looked at death in a different way. And part of that was this selfless love. They could say, I love you enough to let you go. When you cry for someone who's dead, what are you crying for? You're not crying for them. You're crying for yourself. You want them around now they're no longer there. It's not a selfless love. It's a self love reef. And so when we're talking about this loftier type of love, we say lofty love which overcomes the suffering of control. I want to control life and death. I want all the people I love like to be around all the people I don't like maybe dropped there this evening. That's what people think, isn't it? Why did you drop dead? But all the people I really love and care for, I want them around for a long, long time. It's terrible being a monk. Whenever I even get a small illness, people give me all these medicines. Some four months, they don't even let them die. I have to keep them going on. The point is, the second type of rubber door of my heart opened. No matter what you do, even if you die, that type of love gives you peace. It's a love which embraces reality rather than what's the opposite of love? Ill will. A lot of the suffering in life is ill will anger. That's why whenever there is a loss and grief, if it's often associated with ill will anger as part of the symptom of grief, it's the opposite of life. It's fighting reality, fighting the world. This shouldn't be, this mustn't be. I'm not going to let this it's controlling again. It's coming from me, mine. This is my son, my daughter, my husband, my wife has died. When it comes from me and mine, the ownership, it's not a detached love, it's an attached love that's always going to lead to suffering. When we can understand this loftier type of love, the detached love, the love without a self, not only can we accept things like grief, like death, and allow it to disappear. We can also let go of one of the other great problems the self grief, the guilt. I shouldn't have done this. Why did I do this? A lot of the ill will towards one self, the opposite of selfless love, can be overcome just by saying, look, the door of my heart is open to me no matter what I've ever done. Just the way that my father said to me. I've learned how to say that to myself. And I encourage other people to please try that. Say that to yourself no matter what you've done. Can you say to yourself, the door of my heart open to me no matter what I've ever done in my life? If you can do that, it's called forgiveness. It's called letting go is being selfless. There's always that aspect of us which is divided never feeling whole, never feeling at one with oneself. Sometimes the goal of religion is that sense of oneness that's contemplated that a lot. And one of the reasons why that sense of oneness wholeness is absent in many people is because they don't let themselves into their own heart. They keep part of themselves outside the part which they're not proud of, the part which they feel guilty about, the part which they simply don't like. They say, this part of me can come in. I can like. This part of me I can accept and embrace this part of me. But the other part no keep out. Trouble is that that's part of you as well. Your past, your mistakes and your successes, that's all of you. So it's only when we can embrace all of ourselves we really find that selfless love, that detached love which says the door of my heart that's open to me no matter who I am, what I've done, all of this come in. That's the only way that you can truly express love to another. When you say to your husband, your wife, your partner, your friend, doesn't matter who you are, what you do or what you've done, the door of my heart is wide enough to accept all of you. I love you no matter where you go, no matter what you do, no matter what you say. There's something about that love which is greater. And all of your mistakes, you can always already see that that type of love is going to a different level. The unconditional selfless love. It allows you to be at peace with other people in the world. It allows the Palestinian to say to the Israeli no matter what you've ever done, the thought of my heart is open to you. I can live at peace with you. Allows the Buddhist to say to the Christian, even though I just do not agree with you about this god business, never mind, I can still be a close friend. The door to my heart is open to you as well. It stops wars, it stops arguments, it stops separations, and it stops the biggest war in the whole world, the war inside of you. The door to my heart is not open to the lie. This part of life is not right. I'm going to kick out death, disappointment, not getting my own way. Old age sickness. That's why sometimes that type of love, sometimes you ask people, do you love life? Put your hands up. If you love life. They all put their hands up and say, you only love half of life. The nice part, how can you? You love the other part as well. Once you make that jump, to be able to have that selfless detached love, it's amazing just what you can bring into your heart. The second type of love, the detached love can actually love death, can love separation, can love things going wrong, can love mistakes. It embraces them. It embraces death. There's this wonderful sunset ending the day embraces it like the semi, I say, of the ending of a concert. I don't go to concerts anymore. I'm a monk. I remember the concerts, the recitals of bands. Remember when you went to concerts last time? You stand up, get an ovation, shoot to the band or the orchestra, you shout for more, you scream. You feel so good at the end of the recital. Isn't that the best part of the concert? This is what we do in Buddhist funerals. We give a standing ovation to the person who's died. What a wonderful life be. Such a wonderful concert. So great knowing you. Thank you so much. The doors of my heart is open to you. As someone who comes for a short time and whoever my heart is open to the reality of life and death. The fact that all the people I like and love and I will only be with you for a matter of days, months or years. That's wonderful. It's like a concert. When you go into that concert hall, you know it's not going to last forever, but you still go in there and enjoy every moment. There's another recital coming next week. Might not be the same band, maybe even a better one. That's life. You might not be the same wife, the same husband. There's always another one coming. You know what I mean? There. But this is actually a love which embraces life. The second type of love, and it's a detached love. It is a love which can let go. The other type of love is a love based on control and craving. Based on self. This type of life is self less. It accepts. Not only does it accept, but in its acceptance, in its embracing, it is letting go. It solves problems, it lets go of business. It frees the mind. The love which leads to freedom rather than a love which leads to possessiveness, which type of love to seek is really worthwhile. The love which leads to freedom frees the partner, it frees the child no matter where you go. Again, my parents were very had a good understanding of that type of law because they told me if you want to become a mother, we'd rather you just stay at home and become a doctor or something. But if that's what you really want to do, you have our full support. I think it's from them that I learned a similarly that the way to love a person is a way to look after a bird. The bird needs a cage. You should always leave the door of the cage open. Just make sure that the bird stays in that cage, because it's a very beautiful cage and the food is very delicious. And they get lots of love and care in that cage. Then they want to always come back to that cage. They may fly off a few days, but they always come back again. It's the best food in town. And the people are just so nice and kind. All the pets in our monastery, all the kookaburras and kangaroos, we don't put them in cages. They keep coming back because it's a nice place in the sale. If you put everyone in a cage, if you put your loved ones in a cage, first time that door is open, they will run away. They'll never come back. It's a love which has freedom. It's the only love which will actually really give you what you truly want. If you control and possess, people always escape. They run away and they'll never come back again. So my parents are very good like that. They gave me that freedom. That's why you always keep going back. So a love which has freedom is a love which solves problems. If frees, life if frees, the mind freeze it from what? Last week I was mentioning freedom freeze it from desire, not freedom to indulge desires. It frees from control, from the need to control. That's why when you follow this high love, this selfish love, this love of detachment, you let go. And freedom, you get letting go, you get emptiness. You know, it's very fortunate in the English language that the word for the word love has two meanings. The second meaning of love is zero, empty, nothing. Bye. Because this is what that second type of love inclines towards. But when you have a love which doesn't possess, which lets go, that all these things which you think you truly need to be happy, all these possessions which is so important to you, you can free them and you realize you don't need anything, it's an inclining towards the emptiness in this world. This is the third type of love, the empty love. When I say that empty love sometimes people think that's very scary and very cold. But the emptiness type of love is far from being cold. It is the emptiness that the sky which could accept everything, which embraces everything, which surrounds everything. That type of emptiness is a type of love which is surrounding each one of you right now. Spaces between people in this room. That emptiness type of love is what connects everybody and everything. As I used to say when I gave a simile of going to Central America and climbing up the great pyramids of the Mayan civilization and realizing why it was that those pyramids were supposed to be religious. It was because as soon as you got to the top, you were above the tree line of the jungle and you could see in all directions. Emptiness allowed you to see to infinity. Whichever direction you chose to look, things, possessions hinder you. Seeing the awe, embracing everything, this emptiness which becomes a beautiful letting go. When you say the door of my heart is open. No matter who you are, it in just the whole emptiness, the universe. You experience these things when you follow the path of inner Love meditation. The Inner Love the door of my heart is opened to the present moment. Come in. The door by heart is opened to silence. Come in. The deeper you get into these meditations, you're embracing the moment. You truly embrace the moment. There's nothing to say. All words come from discontent. The contentment of true love. Basically, there's nothing to say. You look into the eyes of your loved one and you go speechless. Yeah, you're looking into the eyes, the heart of you and basically there is nothing to say. How much speech, how many words are really complaints? I've listened to people when they talk. I've sat in buses and trains and airplanes, sitting behind people, fascinating myself instead of watching a movie or reading a book, just listening to people's conversations, getting data from my talks on a Friday night. And it's incredible just how many people they break into speech only when there's something to complain about. When is the problem checking out in your home? The people who talk to you at your home too many times, they're talking to you because there's a problem, there's a complaint, there's a mistake. At your work, on the radio, on the TV. It's a lot of times. Complaints, ill will create in a speech, contentment. Happiness creates silence. Love, you will always give silence. That warm, embracing silence where there's nothing to say. That's why, that type of loving kindness. The door to my heart is open to this moment. You can cough, you can come out, you can complain, do whatever you want. I'm not going to say anything. Silence, it's okay. You can do that. Allow that. When you allow things, then business stops. So the silence comes from that embracing, from that love. That's what love is. It's an embracing, accepting. It's a deep contentment. With what is. If you follow that type of love, the whole mind empties out. People think that emptiness is cold. The truth of the matter in meditation, that emptiness is the most fullest experience you can ever imagine and the most blissful. When you have nothing, you're actually not obstructing just the beauty and the bliss of emptiness. You're allowing these things to arise in the mind. The more you let go, the more you have. In the past of meditation, the more you let go of the world, the more happiness, the more peace, the more power you have. Strange, isn't it? Most greatest powers are the psychic powers developed in deep meditation. You have to let go of the ego itself to get those sorts of powers. People in the world, they want to wield power by becoming rich, becoming CEOs of big companies, becoming politicians. That way of wielding power. You don't get much power that way, but you let go. Indeed, meditation. You get immense power. There's a power of that mind, the power of emptiness. Just the energy of that emptiness, the bliss of nothing. So this is the third type of love which comes when you fully let go and embrace things. It's the power of nothing, the power of zero, the power of emptiness. Nothing can sully or ma or dirty or put a mark on that emptiness. That's why it is power. It is invulnerable. This is why, as a man, you follow this path and you have a great time. And everything you ever wanted in the world you can find right in the heart, in that deep emptiness. That's why that someone who practices in such a way that practices practice is empty. Practice is not having anything. Practice is just giving, not expecting anything in return. Empty. That you might call is the highest type of love. If I try and give you something, I want something back. That's not the highest type of love. That type of generosity is not full as you can go, the full letting go, the full empty love that is something of a completely different level. You might call it that's. The aspect of love. The beautiful, silent emptiness which never judges other people, which can accept other people, which can accept oneself, which can accept even life, where all the business is done. One of the descriptions of the fully enlightened person is someone who's done what had to be done. To finish the job. Sometimes we look at our life and we always try to catch up on the jobs which need to be finished. Either jobs in the house or the jobs in our life, the jobs in our family. Whenever are we going to finish the business of life? Whenever. Is it possible that we can relax and say, we've done our job, we've done our work. So only when we learn how to do that letting go, learn how to do that loving, learn how to do that emptying of our self, a full selfless love when everything empties out. That's why all of the great beings which I have met in my life, these are all monks who have that type of love. This is nothing there to obstruct. Someone once described it years ago, and I felt this. So many of these great monks, they described it like this. All people. They said alike. They have spikes coming out of their bodies. Most people's spikes are just average leg. There's a few people whose spikes are very long and very sharp. You know those types of people even walk in a room and you feel like you've been scratching. They're the very negative, angry people. Most people have got average leg spikes. You can be friends with them. You can have coffee with them. If you get too close to them, then you get scratched. This is far enough. Some people have hardly got any spikes at all. You can come up to them and you feel safe. But some people have just got no ill will in them at all. They've got no spikes. No matter who you are, you feel they are like your father. Few times that's happened when I've been close to such monks. You've gone up to them, you know they can read your mind. Please don't read my mind. Please. Please. If you do, don't tell anyone. I've gone up to such powerful beings with great fear. But as soon as I've met such powerful beings, the sensation was that all that fear completely vanished. I felt they had no spikes. If I was a murderer or a rapist, if I was a terrible being, I'd realized they would never criticize me, reject me in any which way. I felt completely accepted and embraced. It was a non judgmental selfless. I could merge into their emptiness, fear that for the first time you talk about therapeutic. That was powerful. To feel that there was someone there was some being, some possibility, some emptiness which could accept me was something which changed the way I looked upon love. To realize that there could be such nonjudgmentalism. And it worked. Because what that did was to think that if people could accept me as I was if they could accept me why can I accept myself? If they could love me like that why can I love myself? If they could be so nonjudgmental why can I be nonjudgmental? If they could let go, why couldn't I let go? And so all that struggling to perfect myself all that struggling some idea, all of that wanting to please others. Which I live my life following for so many years. Isn't that what you do with trying to please the person you live with? Or trying to please a monk? Or trying to please this person? Or trying to please that person? What are you doing this for? Instead of that could really let go. Okay? What it was is let go of attachments, cravings, views, all that sort of stuff. Emptying, emptying, emptying, emptying. And I realized what I was really, truly striving for anyway. You really realized? In the non striving in the nonjudging, in the emptying of all of that, that sort of happiness, that contentment reaching the goal. You already are at the goal. Just let go. Stop trying to go somewhere else. Stop trying to be someone else. Art. If you really want happiness, you really want fulfillment. And don't go somewhere else. Go into the moment. Go into you, go into here, into the mind. There you'll find all the happiness you want. It's letting go the door of my heart. It's open to this. When this comes in, you realize it's all you ever wanted. So it's a love which empties the whole universe. Empties a whole universe of good and bad, of success and failure. In saying this to a lot of people, if you have difficulties or disappointments or pain in life, call it growing pain, all the bad times of life. It's things to learn from all the good things in life that's holiday time. The pain is where you do the work. The pressure is where you take a break. Both are necessary. Both. It is so useful. Like my old meditation teacher. My first meditation teacher used to tell me there is no such thing as a bad meditation. No such thing in the world. No matter if you think you can't meditate at all, that's really useful. We learn from everything. We accept everything. We make use of everything. We embrace everything. We love everything. Let go of everything. Every experience you had in life, you may be suffering from it in this moment which has never, ever happened to you. But I will guarantee you one thing. The time will come when even this experience which seems so hard and so difficult to bear, you'll say, thank you. I grew, I learned. I knew love because of that experience. So that's why nothing needs to be rejected. Nothing inside of you, nothing outside of you. When you can do that type of love, then that's the end of all your business. That's where you've learnt. So when we talk about Buddhist love, three types of love self slush, the attached lush, the ordinary lush, which leads a lot of problems. The second type of love, the detached love, the selfless love, which says the door of my heart is open to whatever. That's why I can talk with any of you. I never throw anyone out of this place. I never sort of excommunicate anybody, even if I had the power to do so. You can all be my friends, no matter who you are, no matter what you say about me, no matter what you do. Not only that, but the next type of love is the empty love. When you fulfill that second type of love so much that everything stops, emerges into emptiness. Gone. Finished. So let's Buddhist love in a nutshell. So there we go. Talk this evening is all you're getting any questions or comments on the talk on what is love? Yeah. Got a question? Yes question. Any question on what is love? Hopefully it was not what you expected. Hopefully it was stretched a little bit. Hopefully it made you mind start looking in different directions. Because that's the whole purpose of these talks. Not to tell you what you already no, but a challenge to make the mind grow and also to relieve people from suffering. Any questions? Going going okay.