This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Exploring Generosity ~ Kim Allen. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Exploring Generosity - Kim Allen

The following talk was given by Kim Allen at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 25, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation

If you haven't done so already, now is a good time to turn off your cell phone, even if it's in your bag. So, we'll begin our sitting together. And I'm just going to offer some very brief words of orientation and some instructions for those who are new or newer. And also even if you've practiced for a long time, it can be really sweet to hear some simple guidance. So it'll just be a few minutes at the beginning of our half-hour sit.

So let's find a posture for meditation. Having a sense of settling in. I know it can take some effort to arrive. It's kind of busy out on the road at this time of day. So, just allowing yourself to be here. You've arrived. You can be still.

Bringing the attention inward to the sense of the body sitting. Maybe feeling your seat against the cushion or the chair, the bench, legs or feet against the floor. Really connecting in with that stable support where you're sitting. Letting yourself be held up. Softening the muscles of the face. The jaw, the eyes, shoulders. Imagining the shoulder blades sliding down the back. [Sighs] Softening the belly, arms, and legs.

And then noticing that as the body softens, as much as makes sense for you, there can be a corresponding uplift, straightness to the spine. Almost as if that energy gets freed and there's a natural release upward. So we set the body at ease in some kind of balanced posture and then gently settling the attention onto the sensations of breathing. Breathing in, breathing out. Natural breath. We don't control the breath in this practice.

The breath is a great object because it's simple and yet it moves. Easy for the attention to rest on a gently moving object. And inevitably the mind will begin to think or react or worry or plan. But that's no problem when that happens. It's just what the mind does. So we just reopen to the sensations of breathing which will be waiting and settle back into that.

And if breathing and getting lost and coming back is all we do for 30 minutes, it's 30 minutes well spent. So be at ease. Let the body and the mind rest here in the present moment. Give yourself this gift.

Exploring Generosity

Well, good evening. It's nice to see everyone here. Delighted to have the opportunity to be here with you this evening, including those online. Hello to you also.

So I wanted to talk today about one of the most foundational topics in the teachings of the Buddha, which is the topic of generosity or dana¹. It's interesting, those of you who come to other teachings here, I heard that Gil said something about this in the talk yesterday, which was independent of my thinking of the idea. But then I thought it's actually good in that he talked about it at a fairly top level. And what I wanted to do was talk about a range of the teachings that the Buddha gave around this topic because they're somewhat nuanced. He doesn't always teach about it in the same way. Let's say it that way.

We usually translate this word dana as generosity, but it more closely means giving, or what is given even. And it's almost always first. I think it's always first in any lists that it appears in. Is that right? No, there's one where it's a little bit later, but it's pretty much at the beginning.

So, because it's so foundational, I don't think anybody's going to object if I say at a top level, giving is good, sharing is good. We probably know that. And yet there's quite a bit to unfold to really understand about this quality, especially if we take it on as a spiritual practice and as part of our spiritual path. Then it starts connecting into mindfulness, into wisdom. We need other qualities to make generosity into something that's onward-leading.

I think we sometimes don't look too deeply at it because it seems so fundamental. It's like, "Generosity. Yeah, okay. Check. I got that one. What's next?" But there's a lot to it. Simple on the surface, maybe we learned about it in kindergarten, but it's actually deeper when we take it on.

One of the spiritual dimensions of generosity is that it is a form of letting go. You have to release something in order to give. And so it's natural that when we take it on as a practice and we try to maybe do it more consciously or more often or in different ways, we bump up against places where we're holding on, where we can't give so easily. So that's interesting. Or maybe ways in which we're giving unwisely and we shouldn't be giving in the way or as much as we are. There are things like that in our lives also.

And then also if we look at generosity as a spiritual teaching, we will start to notice what we're doing is tuning into a beautiful quality of mind and heart, which is also something that we sometimes don't look at enough. Sometimes we don't notice the beneficial things that we do because we're so caught up in the things that are wrong that we have to fix, that we have to develop, that we have to cultivate, that we have to get rid of, that are bad. We're a little bit attuned to that side of things. And generosity is so beautiful and so wonderfully connecting, ethical-wise. We may not have really noticed that and given ourselves the credit that we deserve for bringing forth this beautiful quality.

In today's talk, I want to maybe come more from this second perspective of recognizing generosity as a form of goodness and inspiration. But I'll also talk about the letting go side.

So maybe as sort of a small example, if you go on retreat or even if you come here for a day-long, there's often a cleaning period and everybody gets a yogi job, right? Or maybe at the end of the day, the teacher here says, "Here at IMC we all take care of the space," and everybody cleans the bathroom or whatever. Do we think of that as a form of generosity or do we think, "Oh, something we have to do," or, "To come on retreat I get assigned the pot washing"? Whatever it is, it's a form of generosity, a giving into making the community function. And by highlighting generosity, we can then see it more clearly in ourselves.

The Buddha even encourages reflection on our own generosity as a way of being inspired, which is something that is a little foreign to some people. It's like, "Oh, I shouldn't be reflecting on my own good qualities. That sounds very egotistical in some way." But interestingly, the Buddha says that if we reflect wisely on our own generosity and even if it's just the intention of generosity, we can become happy, tranquil, inspired, and eventually concentrated. He uses the word samādhi². This is a way of leading to samādhi. So, if you've been having trouble developing samādhi, maybe it's time to reflect a little bit on your goodness. It can be a pathway to concentrating the mind.

So, what is a gift? It can be physical things like money or gifts that we give, but also time, attention, care, a smile, wisdom, dharma—so many things that we can give. And there are also gifts that are in the form of letting go, like letting go of our opinion about something because we're having a conversation with somebody who thinks differently. So, we let go of our opinion. We let go of control in a situation where we decide to let somebody else choose. That can be a very nice gift. We can let go of prejudgments. We realize through mindfulness that our mind is making an assumption and we decide to let go of that, even if we think it might secretly be true. [Gasps] But we let go of it. Giving is operating on a lot of levels, right? It's an action that requires us to consider another person. It's inherently relational, and then it also operates internally on the giver.

So definitely giving is something that is not just about the other person and helping them in some way, but it's about our own letting go. At the mental and spiritual levels, we're opening the heart, cultivating many wholesome mind states. It even conditions the mind to get used to letting go. We start with simple things, like giving an apple to somebody out of our lunch, for example, and that's an easy, simple material gift. Then that conditions the mind to like letting go. If we're mindful, we will realize, "Ah, that feels good to do that." And then maybe farther down the line, we're able to let go of the hindrances during meditation and settle into a deeper mind state. Maybe eventually we're able to let go through insight of the belief in self and have a deeper spiritual experience. So by conditioning ourselves to let go in simple ways, I think we're setting up a pathway that goes toward eventually what the Buddha was asking us to do, which is to let go of clinging, let go of dukkha³, let go into freedom.

As I said, the Buddha gave a lot of teachings on generosity, and they're not all the same. They include different areas like, for example, what should we give, and to whom, and when, and in what manner should we give? All of these questions are talked about in many different overlapping suttas⁴ that he gave. But for the most part, it's not really philosophical or theoretical. It's often centered around very practical examples, and I think dana is really best explored in an experiential way if we want to take it on as a meaningful part of our practice. In particular, it's useful to start noticing the feelings that go along with giving or receiving. Both of those are important because it starts conditioning the heart to have an intuitive sense of what dana is.

I want to read a story about Pablo Neruda from someone who was writing about him. This is a story from his boyhood. Playing in the lot behind the house one day when he was still a little boy, Neruda discovered a hole in a fence board. "I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, uncared for and wild. I moved back a few steps because I sensed vaguely that something was about to happen. All of a sudden, a hand appeared, a tiny hand of a boy about my own age. By the time I came close again, the hand was gone, and in its place there was a marvelous white toy sheep. I looked back through the hole, but the boy had disappeared. I went in the house and brought out a measure of my own, a pine cone opened, full of odor and resin, which I adored. I set it down in the same spot and went off with the sheep. I never saw either the hand or the boy again. This exchange of gifts, mysterious, settled deep inside me like a sedimentary deposit. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being and it unites all living things. This is the great lesson I learned in my childhood in the backyard of a lonely house."

So, the gift of someone that we don't even know. Have we given something today to someone we don't know? It's an interesting practice to take that on, maybe as something to try to do every day. This practice of dana invites us to open into a larger space. Children can touch it naturally in some ways that adults have learned that they shouldn't do. But there is still also a need for clarity and wisdom. That's a lot of what the Buddha talked about.

When asked where a gift should be given, one time somebody asked the Buddha quite directly, "Where should a gift be given?" And what he said was, "Wherever the mind feels confident." Wherever the mind feels confident. I thought that was interesting because it requires us to be somewhat mindful, to know, is this an initial criterion? That we should have some confidence in order to give. We can contemplate that and also explore it through action. We might watch our mind at moments where we might give and start to learn our patterns around feeling confident about giving.

Certainly in my experience, the quality of the recipient matters in how confident I feel. Does it seem like this person is really going to benefit from my gift? Or if I'm giving to an organization, does it seem like I trust that organization and its actions in the world? And then we're also learning about our predilections that are independent of the recipient, right? Because not everything depends on them. We might have just a natural tendency to be a little bit stingy in our mind, and we're always worried about, no matter who it is, is there going to be enough leftover for me if I give this? Or we might perceive ourselves as poor or not having enough, and then it feels like we shouldn't give because it's not in character for somebody who's poor. These are all ideas that we might have in our mind. Or we might be very judgmental, always holding the recipient to a very high standard. Do they deserve to have my gift? The example that we just heard of from Pablo Neruda's childhood is that he had a mind at that time that was not limited by thoughts like that. Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe we love to give and we feel joy every time we do it. We would give to anyone who asks us essentially. So check it out in your own mind. What are your habits around the act of giving, your patterns?

This is important because the Buddha talked about how the state of our own mind is actually a factor in how beneficial the gift is. You might think it doesn't matter that much. If I actually do the action and I give the gift, it's the same, right? It was given. What's the issue? But the Buddha gives a range of possible motivations or reasons that we might have going on in our mind when we hand something over. And it turns out that the overall quality of the giving depends somewhat on that.

For example, we might give a gift out of fear. Maybe we're afraid of displeasing someone in power if we don't give something. We can also give out of desire or even out of hatred, out of delusion. We can give as an insult to somebody. These are all not very wholesome motivations, but we can have all kinds of emotions going on. I have received a lot of solicitations from people looking for donations that really tried to play on my emotions without inspiring confidence, without inspiring the confidence that the Buddha talked about. I remember one time I got a phone call. I don't even remember what organization it was from. It was one of those solicitation calls asking for a donation. I perceived that the caller was very pushy and demanding about how they were asking for money. It was probably a good cause, but eventually I felt like I could hardly even get a word in edge-wise. They were being so pushy. And finally, when I did, I said, "I'm not interested in giving." You would think that would have been good enough, but the person pushed on and said, "Well, what would it be? What could help to make you feel more receptive?" And so I was very straightforward and I said, "Well, to be honest, I would be more receptive if your approach was less pushy." [Laughter] I think I said that in a skillful way. I was being very honest. They were a little taken aback. I could tell they weren't expecting such raw honesty, but I just didn't feel confident [laughter] in this approach, right? So it matters. It wouldn't have been good for me to give under that kind of pressure. I don't think it would have been healthy.

And we also give due to more complex social or relational reasons. Maybe we're giving to somebody to even the score because they gave to us earlier, and so we feel that we should. Or maybe we give in order that they will be in debt to us and have to give us something back, right? That can be going on in the background. Or we may be following just the tradition of our family. Our family donates to this or that, and this is part of my family culture. Or we might feel obligated to give because we have more than somebody else, for example.

There's all kinds of reasons to give, and they're listed in a certain order in the text that talks about this. You can imagine they probably go from less skillful to more skillful. But it's probably not so much that we need to judge various motivations, but more that the Buddha was pointing out that we should probably know why we're giving. This places it in the realm of mindfulness, to know what's going on for us in that action. Of course, there are very excellent ways to give also. We can give freely with no sense that we want anything in return. We can give even as what the Buddha called "as an ornament to the mind." I think that's where we're giving in a very pure way, just as a knowing that it is a beautiful thing. It's a participation in beauty, with no other aim, an ornament of the mind. I like that.

To take giving on as a mindfulness practice, we could ask questions like, what is happening in my body when I give? What's happening in my mind? Is there a sense of ease or openness or loving-kindness or compassion, some other wholesome quality? Or is there more depletion or weakness or sort of a contraction in the giving? Am I caught up in some kind of ideal? That's another issue once you take it on as a spiritual practice, it becomes, "Am I doing it well enough? Am I doing it spiritually enough? Am I doing it like I'm supposed to be doing it? And what if I didn't?" All of this can start coming in. Then we can recognize, oh, there's a lot of thinking happening along with this giving instead of just making it simple or complexifying it in unhelpful ways.

Mindful attention can also help us know how much to give. Are we giving an amount that is appropriate? We might be giving not quite enough, giving the bare minimum or giving the thing that I would have thrown out anyway. Or we might be giving too much and stretching ourselves in ways that aren't that helpful. Sometimes the most generous act is actually to step back and let the person work it out for themselves. There are times when that's a gift to not interfere in some way.

Just as a real-life example, I'll tell a story from a friend of mine that she told me some years ago. She's an older friend and she has a granddaughter who wanted an Apple MacBook Air. This felt like an expensive gift to the grandmother, but she noticed that over the years she had gotten into the habit with her granddaughter of not disappointing her. This is a trap that grandparents can get into. She was very mindful of her pattern of "I don't want to disappoint my granddaughter," because she wants to be seen as generous. She wants to be seen as the wonderful, generous grandmother. There's a self coming in there. Even if it is wonderful and generous, there's a little extra there. So I thought that was pretty self-aware of her. Her granddaughter sent her an email that had a list of attributes that compared the Mac Air to a PC with checkboxes in each column, but it didn't include the price. [Laughter] It just explained why the Mac was so much better. And so the grandmother wrote back and said, "Could you please put the price on this?" It felt like it was getting complex, a little too many emails going back and forth. So in the end, what she decided to do was write her a check toward the computer, but not for the full amount. She realized, "Even if I splurge and get her this thing so as not to disappoint her, it's just going to create another desire." Desire never ends through getting a desire fulfilled; that just opens the space for the next one to come in. So I thought this was wise also. Generosity also has a side to it of how do we deal with other people's possibly outrageous desires and wants, so we're getting into the realm of wisdom.

One of the other teachings that the Buddha gave in this nuanced set of them is that we should give a gift without injuring oneself or others, without harming oneself or others. This is really worth reflecting on deeply. Is there any harm that's going to come from giving this gift? Maybe we can't always see all the complex unfoldings that are going to come from something, and you don't need to try to figure out all the karma that comes from it. But there are times where giving in certain ways would be maybe not the best thing for that person or for ourselves. And it's okay to realize that.

The mind has a lot of intentions and giving is a complex act with a lot of repercussions. After hearing all this dharma talk, you might be thinking this is making you more confused. But I think it comes back to just looking at the ecosystem that's going on around the giving and having a sense of, "Okay, I might have mixed intentions. I want to give and it would be a generous wonderful thing, and I kind of want to look like a generous person, or I kind of want to not disappoint this person." If you find mixed intentions, it's not that you have to say, "Oh, my intentions are mixed. It's not pure. I'm not going to give." You can still give, but lean toward the ones that are more skillful. Lean toward the giving that feels like it's coming from a good place and that's doing the least amount of harm, and then deemphasize the more self-serving motivations that we might have.

It's also good to know—this is an insight I had at one point—that giving doesn't have to be logical. I'm a logical person and I've maybe explained this like, "Oh, this should all make sense. There's wisdom, there's mindfulness, there's balance, there's ecosystems." In the end, it doesn't have to be completely logical. You can just do it on an intuition. Even if you can't explain why, maybe later you'll figure out why you had this intuition that you really should give this. It doesn't have to be logical to others or even to ourselves. We can give because it makes the mind tranquil and happy to do so. That's a spiritual reason to give.

Finally, let me say a little bit about the manner of giving, how we actually do the act in the moment, because that matters too. It turns out we can give casually or with a clear focus. We can give directly or we can give indirectly in various ways. We can give respectfully or somewhat disdainfully in how we give. And we can give in a way that's timely. "This is the moment. The person needs it right now. I give it right now." Or we can give in an untimely way. We miss the moment, or we give too early, too late. These are all dimensions to be aware of. It's useful to be aware even in the moment of how we're giving and what we're doing.

I remember being on a retreat that was very nice. The teacher of that retreat gave a brief and lovely teaching around interacting with the dana box, I think is the phrase that she used. I had never really thought of it that way. I knew that I was going to give dana at the end of the retreat and I had prepared and thought about how much, but I never thought about the actual interaction with the dana box as a moment to be there for. She said, "When you drop the envelope in, if you choose to, you could have the thought: 'May this act of giving be a cause and condition for the realization of Nibbana⁵.'" I thought, "Whoa, but why not?" It's a letting go. It's a giving. I said earlier that we're conditioning ourselves to let go in some way. Could the interaction with the dana box include a wish that it be a condition for realizing Nibbana? Why not? Beautiful.

So I think maybe to move toward wrapping up, we could say that all of these different considerations that the Buddha is inviting us to is how can we kind of align, or if you don't mind the word, purify our act of giving. It's not an abstract idea or some kind of prudish purification, but I think it's a real feeling we can have in our mind and heart. We know what a clean act of giving feels like, where the moment arises, the intention arises, and we just give it. We know what that feels like. And we know what it feels like when we make it really complicated and when it gets hard. There's no regret from a clean act of giving. There's no residue, except maybe the happiness that it leaves us with can be nourishing, can be vitalizing.

I think if we give in good ways for a long time, whether they're seen or unseen by others—that's another interesting dimension, right? Can you give such that nobody would ever know that you gave? You still get the happiness. [Gasps] These are interesting things to play with. But I think if we do this over time, we develop a mind that has a proclivity toward generosity. It's more likely to come into a situation with the question, "What can I give?" instead of, "What can I get from this?" A very different attitude. "Oh, I'm at this party or I'm going to this place or I'm meeting this person. What can I get or what's in it for me?" How about, "What can I give? Can I make sure that by the time I leave I've done something useful for this situation, this person, this place, this event?" It leads to a lot of everyday happiness. It's a great way to improve our happiness.

And there's a beautiful teaching that says before giving, the mind is happy. I think while giving the mind is uplifted, and after giving the mind is made peaceful. Wow. All three times it's helpful.

So I feel pretty happy just having talked about generosity for a while, and I hope it was beneficial to listen to it. Maybe there's a way in which you know we can just trust that whatever about this whole exploration of the topic felt juicy for us or landed for us. That's what you needed to hear. And the rest, if some of it didn't quite resonate or you can't remember, doesn't matter. That one thing that you heard, that's what's up for you right now around this topic. See what you can do with it because this is really meant to be an experiential teaching. Something landed. See if you can practice with it in the next week. See what comes. Plant a seed. Thank you.

Q&A

Kim: So, are there any questions or comments? Thanks.

Questioner 1: It would be generous to offer some wisdom or kindness. When I think about giving, I think about giving time and attention. While you were talking, I was using those examples in my head. It made sense to me that sometimes giving time and attention in a certain situation is maybe harming myself. I don't know how to describe that, but anyway, it was interesting. I also thought of this little interaction I had in the drugstore today where the lady working there was right next to me in the aisle and I couldn't find what I was looking for, and we just kind of gave each other time and attention and had a lovely little interaction.

Kim: Yeah, it was sweet. And I'm guessing that in an interaction like that, there wasn't any sense of rushing or needing to say, "I just want to interact with her enough to get the information I need." It sounded like it was a little more easeful than that.

Questioner 1: Well, she was giving too. That was the thing. She was telling me, "Oh, yeah. I use this product because I have this condition." And so we had this short little interaction. It can be that simple.

Kim: Yeah. But I notice also in myself I'm more stingy. You talked about the stingy thing with money, [laughter] but with time, I'm...

Questioner 1: Yeah, that's so—that's something useful just to know about yourself and to be curious about how that is for you. Yeah. Anyway, thank you. It's thought-provoking here.

Kim: Thank you. Anybody else? Is there one back there? No. Okay.

Questioner 2: Thank you for your talk, Kim. It reminded me just this afternoon, I was sitting in this little park near my house and there was a grandfather that had brought his three-year-old son to play and he had one of those little scooters. As they were leaving, the boy wouldn't leave until he turned and he waved to me. I went, "Oh, that's nice." And then I realized he wanted me to wave back. And so I waved once. He didn't see me quite enough. So I waved again and said goodbye. And then he was happy and he left. And the grandfather looked at me and smiled and said, "Gracias." And I responded with "De nada." And so in some ways it felt like all three of us gave and all three of us received in a way that was pretty spontaneous. I wasn't thinking about, "Well, should I wave?" but it just stuck with me.

Kim: Nice. Yeah. And you've highlighted something that I maybe implied but didn't say so explicitly, which is that receiving can also be a form of a gift to somebody. If somebody is offering us something and we don't receive it well, it mars a little bit the interaction with the gift, right? So there's a way in which just generously receiving keeps that flow going. Sort of like the way Pablo Neruda did. There's this marvelous toy sheep and so he gives his prize pine cone in return. Very sweet.

Questioner 3: Yeah. You're making me think. That's good. I like [laughter] it. Yeah. Sometimes I just talk to people on the street. Sometimes they look kind of lonely and I thought, "Oh, geez." You know, I just chat with them for a few minutes to try to lift their spirits. And then the other day I go to Peet's Coffee in Menlo Park because I live in Menlo Park. And there was this man who, pretty obvious he didn't have a lot of money. And I had this Clipper card which I haven't used. I thought I got to give this to him. I don't know what it's worth. Probably $20 or something but just give it to him because I'm not going to use it. And he was thrilled. Great. And so I thought that made me feel good. I don't know how he felt but it certainly helped me.

Kim: Yeah. Nice. I try to talk to people whenever I can. It depends. Unfortunately, at coffee places, oh my god, their noses are glued to their phones and their computers and all this stuff, which is annoying to me, because I'm there hoping to talk with people, but they're just... You're laughing. It's happened to you, too. [Laughter] I want the good old days, so to speak. We used to talk in coffee places, right? You know that for sure. We need more of that. I realize we need more connection with other people a lot more than we have going on right now.

Questioner 3: But I guess they go to a coffee place because they don't want to be alone. So they go there to do their work.

Kim: Well, wait a minute here. What are they benefiting? How are they benefiting from that? Just to be in a coffee place and not talk to anybody and just do their work... I don't know, I don't get it. Well, this is certainly a practice, right, to see the way these social interactions are changing. I do agree that these simple interactions like the ones where you say, "Oh, I just want to speak with someone for a few minutes," or like the exchange we heard about here, they add a lot to social life and the fact that they aren't happening as often I think contributes to the feelings some people have in society being lonely or feeling disconnected in various ways. It's an interesting challenge for all of us to think about ways that we can change that. We're not going to be able to change every coffee shop, but luckily we have IMC here and those of you who are online, perhaps there are ways in which you too can help gather people together. This simple form of giving, of just having a conversational exchange, is quite beautiful and it's becoming an art form, let's say, that I hope continues on. Next comment? It's okay. We may be winding down. Ah.

Questioner 4: I want to say thank you Kim for this lovely talk. I really appreciated hearing all aspects of giving. I think there's this other sphere that comes with giving is the expectations, and I think maybe it would be great if you could speak about that in yet another talk. I think giving is one act which you've spoken today, but the act of not having any expectations or what are the right amount of expectations.

Kim: Ah, so you mean on the receiving side, is that you're expecting to receive?

Questioner 4: Yeah, like most people I feel that they're happy giving but they also have this expectation. There's an expectation of getting back and if it keeps going in the right cadence, people are happy, but say someone drops the ball and then that's when things get tough.

Kim: Yeah, this is a call for mindfulness also, right? Because there are no guarantees about other people magically knowing how we want them to respond to what we're doing. So it's an internal practice then to give in a way that has fewer expectations attached to it because there's dukkha³, right? There's contraction or suffering in those expectations. It doesn't mean that we just give willy-nilly and give everything away. That's unwise. But to give with a little hook attached to it, we start to feel the pain for ourselves and then we can look for ways that we'll be able to release that tendency. It's a long-term practice. I agree. It would be a whole different talk to address those issues. But it does come down to mindfulness, to being aware of our body and mind as we're giving and realizing that expectation has a signature. It has a signature contraction that goes with it. And if you don't like that feeling and squeeze on the heart, we have to find a way to release that.

Questioner 4: Thank you.

Kim: Yeah. But you bring up a good point. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for a lovely evening. May our practice be of much benefit. I hope you know that even just coming here and sitting and listening was a gift. It was and it's rippling out already. So, may it continue. Thank you.