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

Namaste and welcome.

I'll begin this talk with a short story, a woman described some years ago that a tired

old dog had come into her yard and walked in her door and followed her into the house,

down a hall and jumped on her couch and took a nap for an hour.

She left the dog be because it didn't have tags, but had a collar and it looked well-fed

and it was a nice dog and her dogs didn't mind.

So it was fine.

Dog after an hour left and the next day the same thing happened.

The dog came, walked in the house, jumped on her couch, took a nap for an hour and this

went on for a week.

So the woman got curious and she pinned a little note to the dog's collar and she said,

your dog's been coming to my house every day and taking a nap and I don't mind, but

I just want to make sure it's okay with you.

The next day the dog came back and it had another note pinned to its collar, to her.

The note read this.

It said, he lives in a home with three children and he's trying to catch up on his sleep.

May I come with him tomorrow?

So I wanted to start off with that story mostly because I found it when I first heard it,

it's just so kind of heartwarming, the sense of we're all in it together.

There was a kind of feeling of empathy that crossed species and it was sweet in that

way and so many of us are aware from an evolutionary perspective that empathy, this capacity to

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