(Half bell)
(Bell)
Nowadays, in Korea, many people feel lonely or sad,
so I want to do something for them.
I don't know: What can I do for them?
I wonder: In my country, in Korea,
there are people who have a lot of sadness
and loneliness in their heart,
and how can I bring healing to them?
The first thing to do is to heal yourself.
Because if society is sick,
we are sick at the same time.
Because we are in society
and the collective suffering of society
has influenced us.
And that is why we have to recognize that
we need the healing for ourselves.
If we can not heal ourself,
we can not help heal other people.
And the first thing is to organise our life
in such a way that we can protect ourself
from the kind of energies
that make you sick.
Like when you watch television.
The film may be full of violence and fear and hate
and if you allow yourself to watch that film,
you are getting more violence and fear,
and craving and hate in you,
and you are not helping you to heal,
but you are making yourself more sick.
When you eat,
if you practice mindfulness of eating,
and then you will not bring into your body
toxins and poisons.
And that is to protect yourself.
When you go to the market,
you buy only the things
that will not bring toxins into you
– into your body and your mind.
You will not buy the kind of magazine
that has articles full of fear, anger, hate and craving.
So, the problem is how to
practice the fifth mindfulness training
– mindful consumption.
Because our society is a society of consumption.
We believe that the more (we) consume
the happier we become.
We need money to buy,
but people are consuming a lot more,
and suffer a lot more,
because they don't practice mindful consumption.
You consume food,
you consume magazines, music, feelings,
books, conversation ... .
Conversation is consumption.
What the other person says
might be full of toxins –
may be full of hate and despair.
And if you listen to her for one hour,
you consume.
And if the other person says things
that have a lot of compassion and joy,
then you consume good things.
So, conversation is also consumption.
The Internet is consumption.
There are many good things, but
there are also many toxins ... poisons.
So, the first thing we're going to do
is to protect us from allowing these toxins
and poisons to enter our body
and our mind.
And by doing so, we heal ourselves.
And we are happy, compassionate, fresh
and we are in a situation to help people
of our generation, and other people.
And one person cannot do it.
You need friends –
you need another friend, two other friends,
three other friends.
You need a group of people – a group
of dedicated people who live in such a way
that can preserve health
and joy and compassion.
And as a sangha, you have more hope
of changing society.
And there are still many Buddhist
practitioners in Korea.
And many of them practice only devotion
– the Buddhism of devotion: to pray
to the Buddha, and ask Buddha to give us
health and wealth and things like that.
And many Buddhists ask for these things --
the things that the Buddha
has left behind – like fame, power –
political power, sex, good food.
And Siddhartha has left all that behind
in order to become a monk
and search for true happiness.
And now we are praying the Buddha
to give us exactly these things that
he had rejected.
There are those who ask the Buddha that
their son, their daughter will be successful
in their examination ...
asking the Buddha for these things.
And one teaching of the Buddha
is to help us to take care of our body,
to take care of our feelings,
to transform our suffering,
and to have true joy ... true happiness.
True happiness is not made of power,
fame, wealth and sex.
True happiness is made of understanding
and love and compassion.
So we need a community of people
who practice according to this
teaching of the Buddha – to become
a healthy and joyful community.
And as we have brothers and sisters
who are healthy, who are compassionate,
who are in harmony
– we can help.
We can help people to heal.
One person, even a buddha, is not enough.
The Buddha knows that, knew that.
And that's why after enlightenment
he began to search for a sangha.
Without a sangha, the Buddha cannot
achieve his career of a teacher.
So we, if we want to help society
to suffer less, to heal – we need a sangha.
And we should consider ourselves
as the first element of the sangha.
And then, we look for another person
that lives in harmony and compassion
and happiness. We do exactly what
the Buddha did after enlightenment
– build a sangha. Without a sangha,
you cannot hope to achieve
something important.
Even a buddha is not enough.
– We need many buddhas.
We need many bodhisattvas.
And when we build a sangha
with brothers and sisters who are dedicated
to the practice, there are many
bodhisattvas in our sangha.
And, then, we can effectively help society
to change.
So, you may like to go home
and look around – to recognize
people, maybe of your age, first,
who have the same kind of intention,
aspiration, and sit down, and discuss
about how to set up, how to build
a community of practitioners who are
happy, harmonious, compassionate,
healthy – and then there is hope.
So our hope is in the sangha.
Without a sangha, we cannot do much.
And we know that the Buddha was
an excellent sangha builder.
We have to learn from him.
It's not very easy to build a sangha.
We have to get a lot of love,
understanding, patience, in order
to build a sangha.
When I met Pastor Martin Luther King,
we discussed about sangha building.
I said that without a strong sangha
we cannot succeed.
And after King was assassinated
I was very sad, because he
could not continue the work
of sangha building.
So I doubled my efforts
and I tried to build a sangha in Europe
and in America – because at that time
I was in exile – because I had dared
to call out for peace, for the cessation
of hostility in Vietnam.
And that is why the warring parties, they
did not allow me to go home.
And I had to spend 40 years in exile
in the West.
I left my sangha in Vietnam, and I knew
that if I wanted to do something,
I had to build a sangha here, in Europe
and in America
– because I knew that without a sangha,
we cannot do much.
And here is my sangha!
My sangha is (living?) everywhere –
Europe, and in America and Asia also.
So, sangha is our hope.
If you want to be a bodhisattva,
to help the Buddha,
you need a sangha.
Sangha building is a very crucial thing to do.
And everyone of us should be a sangha builder.
After the retreat, when we go back to our city,
we have to look around and identify
elements of our sangha and build
a group of people practicing
walking meditation, sitting meditation,
dharma sharing and so on
that help us to continue the practice --
not to lose our practice – and that help us
to have a place for other people to come
and take refuge, and learn the practice.
So, sangha building is very important.
So that is what you are going to do
when you go back to your country.
(Half bell)
(Bell)