(Bell)
Dear Thay, Dear Sangha
I have two questions.
So my first question is:
I am the last child from the lineage of my ancestors.
And so there is a lot of suffering to transform,
but I was also very lucky to have enough conditions to encounter the Dharma,
and not to be running after survival.
So I could practice.
Now, I just come back from a long journey,
and because I have been far away, as I come back I can see very clearly
how the suffering was built up in our family,
generation after generation through historical conditions.
So I am trying to share with my elders, so that they might also find relief.
But some of them are very hardened.
They have a lot of anger.
They become very mean and very desperate.
And even though I have some understanding,
I know I am also not stable enough in certain situations,
and I do not know anymore what to do to help them.
And I am very worried, because I have seen some of them,
from this generation of my parents, who escaped from the war,
become completely insane and really destroy themselves.
So this is my first question.
And my second question is:
Why is it in the Buddhist tradition, that even until today,
there is still so much discrimination against women?
Thank you.
(Sr. Pine) Dear Thay, our friend is asking two questions.
The first question is a little bit like
the question of the young man about helping his father.
So our friend here is also saying that she can see a lot of suffering,
not only in her parents' generation, but through her ancestors' generations.
She wants to help them, but she sees that they are very hard,
because of the great suffering they have been through in the war.
And they destroy themselves because of the suffering inside.
She wants to know how she can reach them,
how she can help them to go in a more healthy direction.
And her second question is:
Why is there still today so much discrimination against women in Buddhism?
Do you think that in Plum Village, we discriminate against women?
The nuns and...
the female practitioners in Plum Village,
play a very important role...
in organizing the life and the practice of the Sangha
and the practice of the larger Sangha.
And the tradition of Bhikshunis still exists in many countries.
There are countries that have lost the Bhikshuni Sangha.
That is not because of Buddhism, but because of Buddhist practitioners.
They allowed that kind of discrimination from society
to penetrate into the community.
In Thailand, in Sri Lanka...
they do not have Bhikshunis anymore.
And many of the people in these countries try to restore the order of Bhikshunis.
So Buddhists are not practicing well enough.
That is why we have to do better than the former generations.
And Thây is one of those who try...
to restore...
to restore the spirit,
the initial, the primitive original spirit of Buddhism,
because the Buddha...
removed all kind of discrimination.
He received all kinds of people, all kinds of race, all kinds of caste
into his community.
And he welcomed...
women to become Bhikshuni.
He was a real revolutionary in his own time.
So difficult, but he was able to do it.
So we who are the continuation of the Buddha,
should practice well enough in order to maintain his heritage,
to preserve his heritage.
No discrimination!
Suffering is overwhelming.
And there are those of us...
who came out of the Vietnam war,
full of wounds.
We have seen our brother, our father, our mother, our sister
killed and destroyed during the war.
We have seen many of them imprisoned
and tortured during the war.
Foreign ideologies, foreign weapons
had been brought in from all over the world
to destroy us, to kill us.
And we were forced into a situation like that for a long time.
And each of us, each Vietnamese of the new generation
carries within himself or herself that kind of suffering.
And after forty years of exile,
Thây has been able to go home for a few times,
organizing retreats in order to help heal the wounds of the war...
in people, in the younger generations.
He tried to do his best,
and he tried to do it as a Sangha, not as a person.
Thây went back to Vietnam not as an individual,
but as a community.
300 practitioners went back to Vietnam with Thây
for the first time after forty years of exile.
That was in...
2005... right?
2005.
We had hundreds of monastics and lay practitioners coming with us.
And our practice was very solid.
Imagine...
a hotel in Hanoi,
where we stayed.
Secret police came and observed us, because they were afraid of us.
Everywhere we go, they follow us.
They want to know what we are telling people, what we are doing.
They are forced to allow Thây to come home,
but they are afraid...
that we may say something,
that we may urge the people in Vietnam to say something against them.
And several hundreds of us practiced with solidity.
And the way we walk, the way we breathe the way we eat our breakfast,
the way we encounter the people in the hotel
and those who come to see us, including secret police men,
reflect our practice.
And the hotels where we live look like a practice center.
There is mindfulness. There is peace, brotherhood, sisterhood.
And they were very impressed.
And one time we did walking meditation around Hoan Kiem Lake.
It was the first time the people of the city saw
such a large number of people walking with peace, joy and happiness.
They were very struck by the sight.
It had a very big impact on the population.
They saw solid practitioners.
And we were able to share the practice with so many people...
in our public talks and in our retreats.
And after that we organised...
ceremonies of prayers.
We prayed for the many millions of people that died during the war.
And thousands and thousands of people came and practiced with us,
and prayed together.
And we promised each other that never ever again
we would accept such a war of ideology,
and kill each other with foreign weapons and foreign ideologies.
And that was possible.
So we practiced to help with the healing of the whole country.
So my answer here is:
In order to succeed...
in your attempt to help
you have to...do it with a Sangha.
You have to belong to a Sangha.
You need to have brothers and sisters in the practice.
We have to be powerful enough to be able to handle the suffering.
There is a lot of garbage.
And since many of us do not know how to transform garbage into flowers,
making good use of suffering in order to create peace and healing,
we need a Sangha to support us to do so.
So practicing alone, self transformation is already difficult,
let alone the transformation of others.
That is why...
we have to know, we have to see that we should try to build a Sangha,
to be with a Sangha, to contribute to the building of a Sangha.
Without Sangha, you cannot do much work of transformation and healing.
Even the Buddha could not do much without a Sangha.
And that is why, after Enlightenment, the first thing he thought of,
was to go and identify elements of his Sangha.
You have to do the same.
And Thây is very aware of that.
Thây knew that if he went home alone, he would not be able to do anything.
So he put forth a condition:
"I will go back only if you allow me to go with my Sangha."
So with the Sangha we will have a collective energy powerful enough...
to take care of our suffering, transform our suffering.
Good luck!
(Bell)