"We cultivate joy because it helps us get the nourishment we need in order to be stronger and go further in the practice. The Buddha encourages us to relax our bodies, to embrace our pleasant feelings, and to create joy and happiness for our nourishment. Cultivating joy means to strengthen our happiness and nourish ourselves.

"Deep in our consciousness there are many wholesome, positive seeds. If we know how to touch them and water them, they will manifest themselves on the upper level of our consciousness — the mind consciousness. We have to practice looking deeply to recognize our wonderful seeds — the seeds of mindfulness, enlightenment, understanding, joy, and loving kindness. We might think that we cannot love because we have not been able to touch the seed of love within us. Through our practice, and with the support of a brother or a sister, we are able to touch our seeds of love, forgiveness, compassion, and joy. Some people say, 'I don't know what joy is. I have absolutely no joy within me.' That is because that person has not been able to touch the seed of joy within himself. The practice is to touch it and recognize it. This is the practice of cultivating joy.

"We need to organize our daily lives so that the positive seeds are watered every day and the negative seeds are not watered. We all have seeds of suspicion, despair, and anger. In one person, they are stronger; in another person, they are weaker. We do not want the people who live around us to water our negative seeds. Every time a negative seed is touched and watered, we suffer.

"But we can do better than simply not watering our negative seeds; we can water our positive seeds of happiness, loving kindness, forgiveness, and joy. We call this the practice of selective watering. We water the flowers, not the weeds, so that the flowers will bloom in the other person. When we make the other person smile, we benefit as well. It does not take long to see the result of our practice."