The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.

There's a classic tale that I wanted to begin with and it's about two brothers who worked on a family farm together.

One was single and the other had a family wife and children.

At the end of the day they would share the proceeds of whatever they earned.

They shared everything equally.

One day the brother that was married with family said, you know, it's not fair that we're sharing everything equally.

I have a family to take care of me on my old age. My brother has nothing.

So he at the end of the day, at night time he took a sack of grain and he snuck across the field and dumped it in his brother's bin.

And this one on for years and both were very, very puzzled.

I was like, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that.

I was like, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that.

But the day after it was dark took a bag of his sack of grain and he brought it over through the field and dumped it in his brother's bin.

And this one on for years and both were very, very puzzled why their level of grain never dwindled until one night in the very darkness of the night they ran into each other, dropped their grain, their bags of grain and realized what was going on and embraced.

So generosity. It's really a quality, a very natural quality of our hearts when our hearts are awake.

And it arises out of a very simple sense of belonging together. We're connected.

So of course we're going to want to take care of each other. And in embudism the story of the Buddha's awakening was very distinctive that the very first of the spiritual perfections that the Buddha taught about in spiritual perfections, the expressions of the awakened heart mine, the very first one was generosity.

It basically, it's the act of expression of loving kindness. And so the Buddha talked about it and then also we have from the poet have faced. I thought I'd read you a very short little essay.

It says has a man talking to a face the Sufi poet about a profoundly enlightened experience and yet a vision of God and an experience emerging with light and love. And this question was, was it real? Did I experience reality, the ultimate reality?

And so have faced asked some questions. He said, well, do you have any goats? Do you have a wife, children, siblings, parents, friends? So we asked him these questions and with each one he nodded to said. And he said, the realness of your experience shows itself through the kindness you express with each being of your life.

The mark of a free and awake being is really the expression of heart, the quality of kindness that and generosity that is expressed and shared.

So many of you might be aware that there's a growing body of research now that points to something we intuitively know, which is that generosity when we're generous it goes hand in hand with happiness.

When we're being generous, when we're giving, there's a part of our brain that's correlated with positive emotion that lights up. And it's not only true for humans, it seems to be true for other creatures too. There's some studies last year on rats or remember where in this research they were sharing their treats with captivated companions.

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