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Sowing and Watering the Seeds of Awakening
Every species in nature cares for the future by sowing seeds: the oak tree scatters its acorns every autumn, the century plant spends sixty years preparing to nourish its flower and fruit and then passes away, the butterfly lives only about a month but manages to transmit its lineage to its descendants. This observation teaches us that the function of survival is to sow, nurture, and transmit seeds.
Humans are the same: the “holy seed” lineage needs the seeds of mindfulness, concentration, and insight to continue on the path of awakening. In daily life, parents transmit to their children both through genetics and through their way of living, their words, and their actions; in the sangha, each elder brother and sister, through body, speech, and mind, sows the seeds of the Dharma. Receiving the precepts or the lamp transmission ceremony is only a formality; the essential thing is to sow, water, and nourish—hour by hour—the seeds of compassion and wisdom so that the stream of the Dharma is never interrupted.