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Dana: The Gift of Generosity

Announcements and Introduction

Good morning. The first thing I'd like to mention is that tomorrow there's a special event here in person from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., which is for cancer survivors. If you haven't seen the flyer, it will be on the back counter there. I'll just read briefly: "Join us for a special gathering of cancer survivors at IMC. Whether you are newly navigating survivorship or many years beyond treatment, your presence is warmly welcome. There will be space for mingling, acknowledging, and celebrating the strength and resilience each of us carries." That's from 2:00 to 4:00 here with Ying and Sylvie. You're welcome to come to that.

Also, next Sunday, May 31st, is our potluck, so feel free to bring a vegetarian dish to share if you'd like to do that. And then on Saturday, June 6th, is our annual spring cleaning. In case no one noticed, it's looking a little grimy, so we could really use some people to help with that. There is a sign-up sheet which will be on the back counter. There's one person on it right now. There's room for about 25 people, but we can always add more. So, please go ahead and just sign up. It's from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 6th. Come for all or part of it, and then bring a lunch for some socializing afterwards. Thank you.

And I want to invite all of you to join the Earth Care meeting next Saturday. It's on Zoom from 8:30 until 10:00. Thank you.

Martha: And our teacher this morning is Mei Elliott. Mei, good morning, and thanks for coming back to teach us.

Mei Elliott: Thank you, Martha. Let's start with a sound check. Is the sound okay? I'm not hearing it. How about now? Test, test. Is it okay? Can you hear okay in the back? How about in the back? Yeah? And for those who are in the walking hall, there are seats up here if you do want to come into the main hall here to sit. It's also fine if you want to stay where you are.

So nice to see all of you.

A Story of Generosity

I've been reading the news lately and, no big surprise, it doesn't feel that great to read the news. But I've been finding these little stories that kind of brighten the mind, and I want to share one of these with you.

This article I saw is about a man named Richard from Tennessee, living with his wife of 50 years. Richard was retired, and his wife was working, but she lost her job. Because she lost her job, at the end of each month they really couldn't make ends meet. Once they paid for medical care and all their bills, they didn't really have anything left over. So Richard, who's probably around 80, went back to work. He got a job with DoorDash, delivering meals.

The problem was that Richard's mobility wasn't that great. One day, I think this was in March, there's a woman named Brittany who lived in Tennessee also. She ordered something from Starbucks delivered via DoorDash. She's sitting in her living room, and she can see on her doorbell camera the person delivering the order, and it was Richard. As he approached, he was taking little tiny, labored steps. They got to the couple steps up to the front door. He was holding the handrail, going up one step at a time. He carefully, kind of gingerly, got to the front door, set down the Starbucks order, and left.

It was really clear as Brittany saw this little video that this was very much pushing Richard's capacity. This was not really the job for him. She could have just let that go and enjoyed her Starbucks, but this kind of stuck with her. Sometime later, she decided to see if she could find this DoorDash delivery guy. She found him on social media to see if she could do a GoFundMe page for him. So, she set up a little GoFundMe donation page that had the little video from the doorbell camera and just a little description. I think the page was called Give Richard a Chance to Rest Again. It's actually still posted on GoFundMe. It has the little video explaining that his wife lost her job, and there was not a lot of money at the end of the month.

The reason I share this is because I was so touched by how much generosity came in from this little posting. Within 24 hours, $300,000 in donations came in. And since then—and this is kind of a ridiculous number—33,000 people donated. Strangers who probably never met Richard. They raised almost a million dollars. So, clearly, Richard went back into retirement.

[Laughter]

As incredibly minor as this one story is, for me, it reminds me that the goodness of the human heart persists. Little stories of generosity are occurring all the time out there.

The Principle of Simultaneity

So today, the talk is on generosity. And the Pali word for generosity—Pali being the language that the Buddha's teachings were recorded in—is dana^[1] (d-a-n-a).

My hope in talking about this theme is just to help you have a deeper understanding of why the Buddha thought that this teaching was so important. Why did this teaching have such an important place amidst all of the teachings? We see generosity in a lot of different places. Generosity was one of the Buddha's primary trainings for lay practitioners. It's one of the three bases of merit. It's one of the ten paramis^[2] or the ten perfections.

Who here is familiar with the paramis? Perfections, okay. Several of you, great.

The paramis, it's a list of these ten qualities. The idea is that these are the ten qualities that we cultivate to become a Buddha. And in the paramis, generosity is always listed first. The word paramita, that's the Sanskrit for parami, same word. They both just mean perfection. But what I really like about this word paramita is that it's an ancient Sanskrit pun. It both means perfection, like the ten perfections, but it also means crossing over, as in crossing over to the other shore. This is a reference to the way that the Buddha used this metaphor of crossing over from the shore of delusion and suffering to the shore of awakening. Crossing the flood is a common metaphor.

There's an old story, not quite from the Buddha's time, where there's a student on one side of a river, and her teacher is on the other side of the river. She yells out to her teacher, "Master, how do I get to the other shore?" And the teacher yells back, "You are on the other shore!"

Something that's so wonderful about the paramis, as well as so many of the other teachings of the Buddha, is that the ends are in the means. When we practice with the Buddhist teachings, when we practice with the paramis, practice with generosity, we get a little foretaste of freedom here and now. When we practice generosity, we don't have to wait until full enlightenment to feel good. Generosity feels good here and now. We get that little taste, like, "Oh, it's a little taste of happiness here."

There's a term for this principle that the ends are in the means, that we can experience a foretaste of freedom here and now. That term is the principle of simultaneity. Simultaneity points to the way in which we don't have to wait until the end of the journey to get a taste of the fruit of practice. We can taste the sweetness here and now. And this is one of the reasons it's said that the Dharma^[3] is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end.

You've probably experienced this for yourself practicing generosity, that giving a gift feels good. It often feels really good to give something to someone that you know they'll enjoy. That's the principle of simultaneity, right? Happiness can arise in the practice itself, not just in the end result of this practice. We don't need to wait until we're on the other shore to feel that goodness of what we're doing here.

Generosity as an Antidote to Craving

It may be obvious to you experientially that generosity brings happiness. But what's that about? Why is it that generosity actually feels good? What's up with that? There are a lot of different reasons, but I'd like to share one with you specifically, and I'd like to say a little bit about how it functions.

Part of the reason that generosity gives us that little taste of freedom, that taste of happiness, is because it's a direct antidote to craving and clinging. To practice generosity is a form of letting go. That's a form of renunciation. The very act of giving functions as an antidote to clinging and grasping.

Let's just back up here a little bit to unpack that, because some of you may be wondering what the significance of clinging and grasping is. Why would it be useful to undercut that or to be an antidote to that? I'm going to go on a little Four Noble Truths^[4] tangent here.

Remember in the Four Noble Truths: First Noble Truth, there's suffering in this life. Second Noble Truth, the source of suffering is craving; it's unwholesome desire. On the other side of the same coin is aversion. Craving and aversion are two sides of the same coin. So, we could say the source of suffering is this unwholesome wanting and not wanting.

Why would that be the source of suffering? If you think about it, when we want something that we don't have, or when we don't want something that we have, we want to get rid of it. Whether that's an object, an emotion, a person, or an experience, the underlying message of that craving is "this moment is not quite right," or "this moment is not enough." That's the secret message of craving and aversion: "I need this moment to be a little different or a lot different. It needs to be more, or less, or better in order for me to be happy and content."

What this is pointing to is that inherent in the wanting and the not wanting is dissatisfaction. You can start to see there's a way in which our reaching and our pushing away of experience is embedded with this dissatisfaction. It's hard to be content when that craving and aversion is active in us. And then naturally, of course, when there's craving, once we get what we want, we cling to it. We want to keep it forever. It's kind of like a little baby that's reaching out for something that it wants. Craving, wanting, and then it sees the rattle. "Ah, that's it!" Clinging. Pulls it in, doesn't want to let it go.

That's often what we're doing all day long, every day. Trying to get what we want, trying to avoid what we don't want, and then trying to keep it that way.

Bringing that back to generosity, what's this have to do with it? When we're generous, we're actively practicing letting go. We're practicing releasing. We're practicing renunciation. We can begin to see how generosity functions to undercut that habitual tendency of craving and clinging. It functions kind of like an antidote.

That letting go is an antidote to the Second Noble Truth. And that means that generosity points us to the Third Noble Truth, that there's an end to suffering. The end of suffering is the end of craving. This all can illuminate that principle of simultaneity, that the ends are in the means. When we practice generosity, it leads to happiness because generosity allows us to cross the river, cross the flood that divides the Second Noble Truth from the Third Noble Truth. That divides craving (the source of suffering) from the end of suffering (the end of craving). That letting go, that releasing of giving a gift, of offering up, allows us to cross the flood. And that's what we're doing here, just over and over again in so many different ways, learning to cross the flood.

Dana and Chaga: The Act and the Attitude

I'd like to take a moment just to define some terms. Dana is the act of giving or what's given. So we might say, "I'm offering dana," or "I'm offering a donation."

But then there's this other word that doesn't get used quite as frequently: chaga^[5] (c-a-g-a). Chaga is the generous attitude. It's the generous mind state. Chaga is significant because embedded in that word it also means relinquishment and renunciation. Chaga includes this aspect of letting go that I've been talking about in a really complete way. It connects our generosity to the Dharma path.

What's the relationship between dana and chaga, and why do we have both those words? When we repeatedly practice giving—the act of giving—when we offer dana, it grows the generous attitude of chaga. It grows that inner virtue of chaga. It grows that generous outlook. Chaga really points to this aspect of letting go.

Here's another news clipping about someone who offers dana. They've also really developed this generous attitude of chaga to a profound extent:

From 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., Henry Darby works the overnight shift stocking shelves at his local Walmart in South Carolina. When morning comes, he heads to his day job as a high school principal. Every penny from his Walmart paycheck goes to his students, 90% of whom live below the poverty line.

This from Darby: "I get a little emotional because when you've got children, you've heard of a child sleeping under a bridge, or a former student and her child sleeping in a car," he said with tears in his eyes. "At my age, you just go ahead and do what you need to do."

Darby, not one to seek accolades, said, "I don't think I've done anything worthy of distinction to warrant the attention." He simply hopes his students, whom he calls his grandchildren, will pay it forward. He says, "It's quite simple. Just learn to help others. That is one of the greatest things that we could do in terms of being human."

Many people associate generosity with material gifts, but of course, this is just one type of generosity. Henry Darby offered his financial support, but clearly, he offered a lot more than that. He offered a whole lot of his time, his energy, his care, his love. These are all forms of dana. These are all forms of generosity.

Three Traditional Forms of Generosity

Classically, in the Buddhist framework, there are three traditional or classical types of generosity. First, there are material gifts. That could be food or money or anything that you could wrap up and put a bow on.

The second is the gift of fearlessness. We give people the gift of fearlessness when they can feel safe in our presence. In other words, when you live ethically, when you live by the precepts, when you live in a way that's committed to non-harming, you give people the gift of fearlessness. By following the precepts of not killing, not stealing, not harming through sexuality, and not lying, this is how we give people the gift of fearlessness.

And the third is the gift of the Dharma. The Dharma is considered the greatest gift that can be given because it's the only gift that can completely uproot suffering. That can allow people to meet complete freedom. This is from the Dhammapada: "A gift of Dharma conquers all gifts."

This is one of the reasons that the Dharma is freely offered by Buddhist teachers like myself and by centers like IMC and the sister center, Insight Retreat Center (IRC). The Dharma is such a precious gift. We want all beings to have access to it with no barriers. In offering the Dharma freely, IMC, IRC, and many of the teachers here are following in a really ancient Buddhist tradition. Back during the time of the Buddha, the monks would teach the Dharma freely with no charge. And then the laity, the lay people who would receive the teachings, would freely offer food, alms, robes, and shelter to the monks. It was just this reciprocal generosity that kept the Dharma alive for 2,600 years.

Which is a really exquisite thing to think, that generosity has kept the Dharma alive that long, and that now IMC and IRC are continuing in that tradition. Just by being here, you all are participating in this ancient lineage of generosity. Just by hearing the freely given Dharma, you're participating in this.

What a beautiful thing, a culture of generosity. This is not a common thing in our broader culture. And to think that everything in this room—the carpet, the cushions or chairs you're sitting on, the audio equipment—all of this was a gift. Everything was freely given. That's a pretty beautiful thing.

Practical Ways to Cultivate Generosity

In addition to these three traditional forms of generosity—material gifts, fearlessness, and the gift of the Dharma—I'd like to offer some small, tangible ways that you can bring more generosity into your life. Generosity is a little bit like a muscle, and to act on a generous impulse is a little like lifting weights. We want to strengthen our generosity muscle. Even if we don't particularly feel like giving, it's really useful to grow this muscle.

This is from the Buddha: "Monks, if beings knew as I know the results of giving and sharing, they would not eat without having given, nor would the stain of selfishness overcome their minds. Even if it were their last bite, their last mouthful, they would not eat without having shared."

My partner, Kodo, pointed out to me that we can actually take a practical approach to this admonition rather than just a theoretical one. He inspired me to look into some different organizations that donate food, just to see how much it would cost to literally donate a meal for every meal I eat. I found several organizations, one of which is the Global Food Banking Network. They can donate 14 meals for every dollar. Pretty good!

So, I did a little math and I thought, "Okay, if I eat three meals a day, that's about 90 meals a month.^[6] Okay, that's about 1,100 meals a year." For a whopping $78, I can share a meal for every meal I eat. That's a little over $6 a month. "If beings knew as I know the results of giving and sharing, they would not eat without having given. Even if it were their last bite, they would not eat without having shared." So, this is one way we can give.

Kodo and I are currently teaching a five-month program for people in their 30s and 40s, and the theme is the three bases of merit: dana, sila^[7], and bhavana^[8]. Generosity, ethics, and mental cultivation (meditation practices). For the session on dana, which we'll have this afternoon, for the homework I made a generosity scavenger hunt. The invitation is that people take in this long list of different ideas and then just go out and do as many as they feel inspired to do.

I'm going to read a few to you, and maybe you'll be inspired to do some also:

• Feed someone's parking meter that's about to expire.
• Invite the person behind you in line to go ahead of you.
• Write "help yourself" on a bottle of laundry detergent and leave it in a laundromat.
• Write a glowing online review for a small local business or service person you appreciate.
• Send a voice message or text to a friend or family member telling them something you appreciate about them.
• Stock your car or backpack with canned food, snacks, or clean socks so you have something to give the next time you see someone on the street asking for help.
• Listen to someone wholeheartedly.
• While driving, let someone merge ahead of you in traffic.
• And lastly for now, compliment a stranger.

These are all just different ways we can keep lifting weights. We can keep growing that muscle of generosity, flexing that muscle of generosity.

Mindful Giving

I also want to say it's totally okay if we don't have much to give. The Buddha was really clear that it wasn't the size of the gift that matters. It's much more about the wholesome intention. It's about how we give. And that's really important. So, if we're going to engage in the practice of generosity, we really need to consider how we give.

I'd like to say a few words about the actual practice of generosity, how to practice with that act. The invitation is just to be really present, to be really mindful of the act of giving. If you're going to give a gift—whatever type of gift that is, material or otherwise—see if you can be mindful of the giving before you give the gift, while giving the gift, and after giving the gift. You're tracking your experience through that whole cycle.

Beforehand, being mindful of your intention. "Oh, I really just want this person to be happy, or I want them to be healthy." Or maybe the gift is coming from a place of like, "Oh, I want them to like me, or I want them to think that I'm really generous." Just to see what sort of intention is behind the giving.

And then, before, during, and after, what's it feel like in the body to give a gift? What's it feel like in the heart? What's it like in the mind to give the gift? What I've noticed is often there's a nice little sparkle in the heart, a little delight, a little feeling of joy in that process of giving a gift. And if I'm not being mindful, I'd miss that. I wouldn't see that. So, we really want to be present to that.

And when we are, when we're really present for that whole process, really getting to know that whole process, it helps to cultivate chaga, that generous attitude. We grow that attitude of chaga when we're really present for dana, when we're really present for giving.

I remember a few years ago, I got really excited about a gift I was going to give somebody, and I kept thinking about it. There was absolutely no mindfulness present. I remember I went into my closet to put on a sweatshirt, and I came out wearing my bathrobe.

[Laughter]

I have no idea how that happened. I was just totally lost in thought about this gift I was going to give and how great it was going to be. So, no mindfulness present. Don't do that. Please be mindful of your generosity before, during, and after.

Being Generous with Our Stinginess

Shifting gears just a bit here, I want to acknowledge that hearing a talk on generosity sometimes might bring up all the ways that we haven't been so generous in our life, or times when we've felt stingy or tight-fisted. I want to say just a little about that, because it can be really easy to judge ourselves or to be frustrated with ourselves, or to feel like we're bad or wrong or something's problematic if we're not feeling generous.

But what if, instead of rejecting or judging stinginess, what if we cultivated generosity with the stinginess? What if we met our stinginess with generosity?

Being generous with stinginess doesn't mean that we enact our stinginess. It doesn't mean that we're hijacked by our stinginess or that we do whatever it tells us to do. Rather, to be generous with stinginess is to meet it with our loving awareness. It's to meet it with our mindful attention.

Can we be patient with our stinginess? Can we tenderly notice the pain of stinginess? Notice the clinging in the stinginess? If we can do that, if we can notice the pain and see the clinging, then we're being mindful of the First and the Second Noble Truth. We're seeing suffering and the cause of suffering. The Buddha said that it was really important to understand the Four Noble Truths. So, if you can see that, you're growing your practice in a really powerful way.

This is how we can cultivate generosity in relationship with stinginess. Generosity can be cultivated even when its opposite is present. Just meeting it with our kind awareness. Mindfulness is an act of generosity.

Generosity and Boundaries

Along these same lines, I want to say a word about boundaries. Generosity also doesn't mean that we're giving beyond our means.

I've seen a lot of spiritual practitioners over the years who hear about this wonderful practice of generosity, and then they really give beyond their means, and it can actually cause harm to themselves. It makes sense, for those of you who are familiar with the Bodhisattva^[9] vow of later traditions: "Beings are numberless, I vow to save them." It's a pretty tall order. So, it makes sense that people would feel like, "I should give, give, and give, and just use myself up and deny and reject my own needs in service of the greater good." Isn't that what we're doing here? It's kind of a kill-the-ego approach.

I've found that doesn't work so well. It doesn't always go over so well. Instead, what often happens is burnout. Feeling used up and feeling resentful. In other words, feeling harmed by over-giving.

There might be times in our practice where the sense of self is very thin or absent, and we really do have a radical capacity for giving in ways that we might never have had before. But in the meantime, if we're not there yet, we need to be really attentive to what wholesome giving looks like, to what skillful giving looks like. Being generous doesn't mean that we have to overstep our boundaries. In fact, we can practice boundaries and generosity at the same time.

We might do that by being very generous with our own need for boundaries. Or we might be generous with others' need for boundaries.

This is from the author and freedom worker Dr. Jaiya John^[10]: "Your boundary need not be an angry electric fence that shocks those who touch it. It can be a consistent light around you that announces, 'I will be treated sacredly.'"

So, our generosity needs to be for the well-being of others, for the well-being of ourself, and both.

Conclusion and Meditation

I'll close with a poetic rendition of Shantideva's^[11] verses. And in it you'll notice that Shantideva isn't in a big hurry to get himself from the shore of suffering, the shore of delusion, to the shore of awakening. He's much more interested in helping others cross the flood. The Dalai Lama recites these every morning as part of his practice. So after hearing it, maybe you will, too. It goes like this:

May I be a guard for those who need protection. A guide for those on the path. May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge for those to cross the flood. May I be a lamp in the darkness. A resting place for the weary. And a healing medicine for all who are sick. For as long as earth and sky endure, may I assist until all living beings are awakened.

So, may you, too, be a boat, a raft, a bridge to help all beings cross the flood. Thank you.

Now, let's just sit for a moment together. Let's take a few breaths and let the words settle.

Thank you again for your kind attention.

Q&A

Mei Elliott: We have just a little time now for any questions that may have come up for you during the talk. Or any comments about your own practice of generosity or reflections on the topic. We do have one in the back here. We have a microphone that will get passed back to you. I just ask please say your name before you share.

Lakshmi: Hi, I'm Lakshmi. One of the thoughts that came up for me during this talk on generosity... I personally feel that one of the ways that I could be more generous is when I interact with people and maybe something doesn't go right the way I'm expecting, to not automatically judge them. Because I've just become aware that then I put them kind of in a box. There's no room for reinterpretation of anything, and it's like we label people and kind of objectify them sometimes through our own filters, right? So, I just wanted to share that and see what you thought about that.

Mei Elliott: I think that's a fantastic example of generosity, and what I would call that is being generous with our views and generous with our perceptions. It's really easy for us to get into fixed views, to have fixed views about other people in our life. Also with ourselves, we have fixed views of who we are. And those perceptions can be very ungenerous sometimes. To be able to let go of those fixed views is an act of generosity, right? To let ourselves be really open, to allow new information and new data points to arise and go, "Oh, maybe this person is different than I thought they were." That's great. Thank you for bringing that in, Lakshmi. That looks like another question. Please just share your name.

Genie: Hi, my name's Genie. I had a teacher once and he used to say, "Can you give a good feeling to others?" And I was so hurt that I was like, "What are you talking about?" But he said you just walk up to somebody that you maybe just meet—maybe it's a cashier at a store or whatever—and you look at them in the eyes and you say, "Hello." You know, and you give that feeling to them. And it really works. It's really positive.

Mei Elliott: Thank you, Genie. Yes. I think there's a lot of ways to promote good feelings for others. And one of those is being friendly, be kind. Joni, yeah.

Joni: Hi. Thank you so much for this teaching. I am struggling an immense amount at the moment, specifically on the topic of generosity. My son from college asked if his friend could live with us for the summer. We have so many more means than his friend. And so, we generously, with an open heart, enthusiastically said, "Of course." Since the friend has been here in our home for two weeks, we've been giving and giving and giving. The birthday of the friend happened to come, giving every gift you could imagine, providing everything. And there has been zero thank you. None. There's been a whole lot of, "I need this. I need this. Get me this. Get me that." And my generosity has turned into stinginess and resentment. There's self-loathing involved in "I shouldn't be expecting a thank you. What's wrong with me? My ego is taking over." But I love what you're saying about being generous with my own trouble giving. So, I'm really curious about this idea of something feeling wrong if there's no thank you.

Mei Elliott: Yeah. It seems really reasonable to me. It's really reasonable that you might start feeling resentful or not feeling so good about that. Who else here might feel a little resentful in that situation?

[Laughter]

Mei Elliott: So, I don't think you need any extra self-loathing. It's a really reasonable response that you're feeling some discomfort to say the least around that. So, what do you need to take care of your own heart during this? What would be the most respectful way to be with your own closed-fistedness or that feeling of stinginess? What's a way that you could be kind with that or generous with that feeling?

Joni: It's tough. The stinginess is so painful that I just feel like what would be best for me is to be able to happily keep giving. It just feels awkward and strange because it's so unconventional.

Mei Elliott: Would you ever feel comfortable having a conversation with this young person?

Joni: Yes. I don't know the young person very well, so maybe over time in the coming weeks. Possibly.

Mei Elliott: It might be an important lesson for this young person to learn how to say thank you.

[Laughter]

Mei Elliott: Yeah, that could be an act of generosity.

[Laughter]

Mei Elliott: Absolutely. That could be a different form of generosity for that young person, and also a generous act for that part of you that feels overextended. So, you might consider that.

Joni: Thank you.

Questioner: May I ask a question?

Mei Elliott: Let's use the mic, please. And this is probably our last one here, but I'm happy to stay after if anybody has extra questions.

Questioner: I'm just curious. Again, none of this is your responsibility, but do you think there's a chance if you engaged him in the act of giving—bought some things that he really appreciates, whatever that is—and said, "Let's go to this support center today, and I would like you to be up front and donate these things." Or whatever the particulars are, and just let him experience it. And that may have no effect, but at least he could feel the circle of generosity, at least observe in himself what it might feel to give. But I don't know if that's more of a gimmick than it is helpful.

Mei Elliott: Yeah, I mean, it totally depends on how receptive this young person is to learning, and a willingness to do something like that. I think that's something that a lot of us with kids, you want to raise a child with a value for generosity. So taking one's child to go do things like that in the world... I mean, I think that's a lovely way for somebody to start to get a taste of that, like, "Oh, there's some value to offering here, to giving."

Questioner: If you go not insisting you know what the outcome is, just let him, and if nothing happens, nothing happens. Then you at least have the sense of saying, "There are two sides of this." And he can't always just receive. But again, I don't know if that's reasonable or it's almost manipulative, maybe. What do you think?

Joni: Oh. Yeah. I know it takes longer. I'll try to be brief. As soon as you mentioned the GoFundMe page, I thought that maybe we could make it a morning ritual that we go on and take turns choosing something, and maybe that would be a good start.

Mei Elliott: Yes. That's great. Thank you. So, I think we need to close the morning together. But if any of you have questions after and you want to come and ask, that's totally fine. Thank you so much for being here and for valuing your practice in this way.