(The Plum Village Online Monastery)
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# May the day be well and the night be well.
# May the midday hour bring happiness, too.
# In every minute and every second,
# may the day and night be well.
# By the blessing of the Triple Gem,
# may all things be protected and safe.
# May all beings born in each of the four ways
# live in a land of purity.
# May all in the Three Realms be born upon Lotus Thrones.
# May countless wandering souls
# realize the three virtuous positions of the Bodhisattva Path.
# May all living beings, with grace and ease,
# fulfill the Bodhisattva Stages.
# The countenance of the World-Honored One,
# like the full moon, or like the orb of the sun,
# shines with the light of clarity.
# A halo of wisdom spreads in every direction,
enveloping all with love and compassion, joy and equanimity.
# Namo Shakyamunaye Buddhaya,
# Namo Shakyamunaye Buddhaya. #
(Bell)
#From the depths of understanding,
# a flower of great eloquence blooms:
# The Bodhisattva stands majestically
# upon the waves of birth and death, free from all afflictions.
# Her great compassion eliminates all sickness,
# even that once thought of as incurable.
# Her wondrous light sweeps away all obstacles and dangers.
# Her willow branch, once waved, reveals countless Buddha Lands.
# Her lotus flower blossoms a multitude of practice centers.
# We bow to her.
# We see her true presence in the here and the now.
# We offer her the incense of our hearts.
# May the Bodhisattva of Deep Listening embrace us all with Great Compassion.
# Namo 'valokiteshvaraya,
# Namo 'valokiteshvaraya. #
(Bell)
Good morning, dear friends.
I hope everyone can hear clearly enough.
I began the practice of mindfulness at the age of 16.
I was ordained as a novice monk at the age of 16.
And the first book, text of mindfulness,
contains a number of verses.
Each verse has 4 lines.
And each line has 5 words.
It was written in classical Chinese.
When I woke up in the morning,
I was supposed to read the first line of a verse
and then breathe.
When I breathed in,
I read the first line
silently, inside.
When I breathed out,
I read the second line.
Then, one in-breath for the third line
and one in-breath for the fourth line.
That is a verse that helps me to be mindful when I wake up.
The first gatha, the fist verse, goes like this:
"Waking up in the morning, I smile".
The first thing you do in the morning is to smile.
"Waking up in the morning, I smile."
You breathe in and you smile.
Then, when you breathe out you read the second line:
"I have 24 brand new hours to live."
That is a gift of life.
24 brand new hours to live!
That is a lot.
Then, when I breathe in again I read the third line:
"I vow to live these 24 hours deeply."
Each hour deeply, I will not waste them.
I don't allow anger, fear and jealousy
to prevent me from living deeply these 24 hours given to me.
And the last line is:
"I make the vow to learn to look at the people around me
with the eyes of compassion."
That is the first verse.
A novice has to memorize all these verses
in order to practice mindfulness.
"Waking up in the morning, I smile.
I have 24 brand new hours to live.
I vow to live them deeply
and learn to look at the people around me with the eyes of compassion."
There is no thinking, just breathing
and remembering to live in such a way
that you will not waste your life.
When you brush your teeth,
there is one verse for you to brush your teeth.
So while you are brushing your teeth you can be happy,
you can be mindful.
You appreciate the water,
you appreciate the time that you have in order to brush your teeth.
When you put on your robe,
there is one verse for you to practice.
When you sit down,
there is a verse for you to sit down.
A novice, before he sits down, he breathes and reads a verse.
You don't hear anything,
but a novice is supposed to practice
mindfulness of breathing while sitting down.
It goes like this:
"Sitting down here is like sitting at the foot of the Bodhi tree
and wake up like a Buddha."
I am sitting down and allow myself to be free,
not to be bound by afflictions like anger and fear.
I sit down as a free person.
So there are about 50 verses like that for a novice to learn by heart
so that he or she can practice mindfulness throughout the day
and enjoy every moment of his daily life.
We have translated these verses into English, French and so on.
You may like to use them
in order to practice mindfulness of breathing
so that you improve the quality of your daily life.
We have invented new verses,
like "Riding a Bicycle",
because the text is very ancient,
there is no verse for riding a bicycle.
(Laughter)
So I invented a verse to ride a bicycle.
It may be interesting for you to know
that I am one of the first Buddhists monks in Vietnam to ride on a bicycle.
(Laughter)
That is very modern.
(Laughter)
Now people drive a car,
use scooters,
but at that time, for a monk to ride on a bicycle
was something very new.
Now, we have also a verse
for you to use when you are about to make a phone call,
called "telephone meditation".
(Laughter)
You are holding the phone,
and you want to call him or her.
So you breathe in with one line,
and breathe out with the second line,
and breathe in with the third line
and breathe out with the fourth line.
And you are calm after that.
The quality of the talk will be better.
"Words can travel thousands of kilometers,
they can build more understanding and love.
I vow that what I am going to say
will promote mutual understanding and love.
Every word I say will be beautiful like flowers or embroideries."
So before you compose the number,
you hold the telephone
and you enjoy breathing in and out two times reading that.
And you are fresh enough to make the telephone call.
And when you hear the sound on the other end of the line,
you know that the other person is not answering you right away,
because she is practicing breathing also.
(Laughter)
Yes, in Plum Village, when you hear the telephone
you are not supposed to answer right away.
The sound of the telephone is considered to be
a bell of mindfulness.
Because if you don't practice,
the sound of the telephone may disturb you a little bit.
Who is calling? Good news or bad news?
But if you are a practitioner of the telephone meditation,
then, you stay where you are
you listen to the sound of the telephone
and you breathe in and out, you calm yourself.
So next time, when you call to Plum Village,
if you don't get an answer right away...
(Laughter)
you know that they are breathing in and out!
(Laughter)
If you know that they are breathing in and out,
you tell yourself:
"They are breathing in and out. Why not me?"
(Laughter)
So you don't wait.
You just enjoy breathing in and out again
until the other person answers the phone.
That is called telephone meditation.
There is a lay Dharma teacher in India, Shantum.
His mother was the president of the Supreme Court.
When we visited her, we talked about telephone meditation.
She found it very helpful.
So she uses the practice of telephone meditation.
Imagine, in the city of Barcelona,
everyone practicing telephone meditation.
There will be much more peace, happiness,
mutual understanding and love,
because we have the time to refresh ourselves,
to improve the quality of our talking.
By talking you can promote more understanding, love and so on.
In the Plum Village's Chanting Book
you can find a few dozens of verses like that.
If you want, you can memorize them
and enjoy practicing them in your daily life.
"Sitting Down", "Beginning to Walk".
There is one for you to wash your dishes.
Because it may be pleasant to do the dishes.
You can enjoy washing the dishes,
breathing and using a gatha.
Everything done in mindfulness can bring you joy and happiness.
Including starting a car.
There is one for you to start your car.
Of course, when an unpleasant feeling is coming up,
you have a gatha in order to practice
to take care of the painful feeling that is going up.
These verses are very helpful for the life of a practitioner.
The practice of mindfulness can be very concrete.
There are five areas of practicing mindfulness.
The first is to protect life.
Protecting life.
Because life is so precious!
You have to protect your own life.
Protect yourself.
Protect the life of the people you love.
And protect the lives of other living beings,
including animals, plants and minerals.
And to protect the planet Earth.
That is the first mindfulness training.
Reverence for life, protecting life.
(1. Protecting LIFE)
There are many young people
who kill themselves every day.
Because they do not know how to handle a strong emotion.
The practice of mindfulness can help them
not to destroy themselves like that.
I think that if schoolteachers and parents
know the practice,
they can transmit it to the young people.
In countries like Japan,
every year, about 30.000 people commit suicide.
30.000! That is a lot.
In Hong Kong, in the UK, in America,
everywhere, young people are killing themselves
because they don't know how to handle a strong emotion.
The practice of mindful breathing, mindful walking,
can help us to handle a strong emotion.
We should know how to do it
and tell the young people how to do it.
We would save their life.
When a strong emotion is coming,
we know it is coming.
We are aware that it is coming.
So we stop doing things
and we stop thinking.
Because if we continue to think, the emotion becomes stronger.
We go back to the practice of mindful breathing right away.
Whether you are in a sitting position or you are in a lying position,
you practice mindful deep breathing.
Bring your mind down
to the level of the stomach.
Focus your attention on the rising and falling of the stomach.
Breathing in, I know it is rising.
Breathing out, I know it is falling.
If you are in a lying position,
you may like to put your hand on your stomach
and breathing in you feel that your stomach is rising,
breathing out you feel that your stomach is falling.
Try to breathe as deeply as possible
and focus your attention only on the rising and falling of the stomach.
You maintain this insight:
that a strong emotion
is something that comes,
stays for a while and goes.
It is impermanent.
You are much more than an emotion.
An emotion is just a tiny thing.
But you are much more than an emotion.
You are made of body, feelings, perceptions,
mental formations, consciousness.
The territory of your being is large,
and an emotion is just a little bit of you.
Why do you have to die because of one emotion?
An emotion is like a storm.
If you know how to handle a storm, you survive very well.
That kind of insight should be maintained alive
during the time you handle the emotion.
(Bell)
The practice is easy enough:
stop the thinking,
bring your attention down to the level of the navel,
practice breathing in and out
and become aware of the rising and falling of your abdomen.
Maintain that insight alive:
an emotion is just an emotion.
I don't have to die just because of one emotion.
It comes and it will go away.
If you focus your attention only on the in-breath and out-breath,
the rising and falling of the abdomen,
you are safe.
Mindfulness is protecting you.
There is no thinking.
There is only the breathing and the calming.
5 minutes later, or 8, it will go away
and you will survive the emotion.
Next time, when the emotion comes,
you are no longer afraid.
"I know how to handle it. I'm not afraid."
But we should not wait until a strong emotion comes
in order to begin the practice,
because, naturally, we will forget to practice.
And you allow yourself to be carried away by the strong emotion.
We have to practice mindful breathing every day.
The practice of deep breathing,
belly breathing, abdomen breathing,
a few minutes a day.
In a few weeks it will become a habit,
and when a strong emotion, a painful feeling comes,
we will remember to practice.
We will be able to survive the emotion very well.
Your little boy, your little girl, may get into a crisis
with a strong emotion.
You may like to hold his hand and say:
"Darling, breathe in with mummy.
Don't you see that when we breathe in, our stomach is rising?
And when we breathe out our stomach is falling?"
So you do a guided meditation for the child.
As you have the energy of mindfulness,
you transmit it to the little boy, to the little girl.
You train your little boy or little girl to breathe in and out
and to take care of the strong emotion.
This is possible.
Later on,
the boy, the girl, can do it by himself.
As schoolteachers,
we may like to do that for our students who are in trouble,
who have been carried away by a strong emotion.
We can also ask other children, other students, to help.
Suppose in the class there is a boy who is in crisis.
It does not seem that we can calm him down.
So we ask the whole class to practice to support the boy.
You can prepare so that you and your students
can practice mindful breathing,
generating that collective energy of mindfulness and peace
and help the boy that is in crisis.
He is aware of the love, the compassion of the whole group, the whole class,
and he will suffer less.
So parents and teachers should master the practice
and transmit the practice of deep abdomen breathing
to the young people. It is very important.
That is something that should be taught in school.
The second realm of the practice
is the realm of true happiness.
Practicing True Happiness.
I think a discussion on true happiness should be taken up
as a topic.
Because so many people believe
that happiness is made of fame, power, money
and sensual pleasures.
We know that there are many people who have plenty of these things
and they suffer very deeply.
Many of them commit suicide also.
So we should try to help the young people
to see that true happiness is made of understanding and love.
In fact, love is born from understanding.
If you do not understand someone, you cannot love him or her,
or make him or her happy.
So it may be helpful to ask the other person:
"Darling, do you think that I understand you?
Do you think that I have understood you enough?
If not, please, help me."
We know that understanding ourselves
will help to understand the other person.
We need to understand our own suffering,
our own difficulties,
before we can understand
the suffering and difficulties of the other person.
When you feel understood, you feel loved.
So what you can offer to the person you love
is understanding.
Understanding is something that can grow every day.
In true love, understanding is growing every day.
You have to feed your love with understanding.
You have try to understand the other person.
Specially the difficulties, the suffering in him or in her.
And if needed, you can ask that person to help.
A father may be motivated by making his son happy,
but if the father does not understand
the suffering and the difficulties of the son,
the more he tries,
the more he makes his son suffer.
Because understanding is very important.
That is why the father should ask the son:
"My son, do you think I understand your problems,
I understand your difficulties?"
And the son, in order to be able to love his father,
should do the same:
"Father, do you think that I understand you,
your suffering, your difficulties?
Please, tell me."
So understanding is a practice.
Last night we have talked
about the practice of deep listening and loving speech
that can help us to understand the suffering
and to restore communication.
So to love means to understand.
Understanding is the other word for love.
If you don't understand someone
you cannot love him or her.
Cultivating understanding
and creating love and compassion,
that is the true element of happiness.
A person without understanding and love cannot be a happy person.
With plenty of understanding and love,
even if you don't have a lot of money, fame, profit,
you are a happy person anyway.
That is why
mindfulness is a kind of practice that can help us to understand
what is true happiness.
True happiness is not made with the objects of craving,
like fame,
power, wealth and sensual pleasures,
but with understanding and compassion.
The Kingdom of God is a place
where there is a lot of understanding and love.
We can contribute into generating more understanding and love
and make the place a real Kingdom for all of us.
The third area of practice of mindfulness
is the practice of True Love.
(3. Practicing True Love)
We learn
that sexual desire is not true love.
People mix up the two, love and sexual desire.
Sexual desires very often destroy love,
and create a lot of suffering.
Most young people don't know what is true love.
As schoolteachers, as parents, we have to help them.
Girls and boys in high school,
they suffer a lot.
Because they do not know what is true love.
They are losing the most precious thing within themselves.
They continue to suffer for all their lives,
because they do not know exactly what is true love.
A boy asked his girlfriend
to send him a picture of her nude.
And the girl did not want to do it.
But she was afraid
that the boy would abandon her.
So she had to send him her picture,
taken with her own telephone.
And the boy showed that picture to his friends.
Small things like that happen everywhere
and make the young people suffer very deeply.
That is what is going on with the younger generation.
They don't know exactly what is true love.
That is why
teaching True Love to the young people is very important.
Tell them that sexual desire is not love.
Tell them that true love is made of compassion,
loving kindness, joy and non discrimination.
Maitri is the Sanskrit word for loving kindness.
(maitri: loving kindness)
It is very much like friendship.
Maitri is the first element of true love.
That is friendship, brotherhood, sisterhood.
It has the power to offer happiness.
You can generate joy and happiness,
you can help generate
a feeling of joy and happiness in him or in her.
That is maitri.
True love should offer happiness.
Not the intention to offer happiness.
Because you may have a lot of intention to make someone happy,
but the way you do it makes him or her suffer.
So it is not the intention to love, but the capacity to make someone happy.
If you practice mindful breathing, mindful walking,
and restore your freshness,
your beauty, your calm,
you can offer these elements to him, to her.
That is maitri.
You are so pleasant,
you are so fresh,
so pleasant to be with,
you can generate joy, happiness and peace
and you can help him or her to generate joy, happiness and peace.
That is maitri.
That is true love.
And that is a practice,
that is possible as a practice.
The young people can do it.
The second element of true love is karuna,
which is compassion.
(karuna: compassion)
Karuna is the capacity to help someone to suffer less,
to remove the suffering in him or her,
to transform the suffering in him or in her.
We know that the practice of compassionate listening
can make a person suffer less.
You understand the suffering in him or in her,
you help him or her to empty his heart
and suffer less.
If you know how to help a person to suffer less,
you have the element of karuna in your love.
True love should have karuna.
The capacity to help someone to suffer less.
With the energy of mindfulness and compassion in you,
you can do a lot of things.
You can help a person to suffer less
just by sitting close to him or her,
or just saying something full of compassion and understanding.
Just show her the way to restore joy and happiness.
We can do many things
in order to help a person to suffer less.
The third element is mudita,
which is joy.
(mudita: joy)
If when loving someone you make him or her suffer
and cry every day,
that is not true love.
True love should offer joy.
Joy is a mark of true love.
True love should generate joy,
for yourself and for him, for her.
If you make him or her cry and suffer,
that is not true love.
The joy is of both of you.
The fourth element of true love is upeksa.
Upeksa is non discrimination, inclusiveness.
Equanimity.
(upeksa: equanimity)
In true love, there is no longer any frontier
between you and her, and him.
Your suffering is his suffering.
Her happiness is your happiness.
You cannot say: "Darling, that is your problem."
No.
Your problem is my problem, darling.
In true love there is no longer discrimination
between the lover and the beloved one.
Your happiness is her happiness.
Your suffering is his suffering.
No discrimination. You include everyone.
You include each other.
If it is true love,
it continues to grow every day.
The moment when love stops growing,
it begins to die.
We have witnessed the death of love several times.
Love turning into hate and anger
because you don't know how to feed your love.
The Buddha said that nothing can survive without food.
Our depression also.
If our depression continues,
it is because we keep feeding our depression.
If we know how to stop feeding our depression,
our depression will have to die,
it will go away.
The same thing is true with our love.
If we do not know how to feed our love daily,
it will stop growing,
it will die, slowly.
That is why
to practice in order to help our love to grow every day
is to guarantee happiness, continued happiness.
With the practice of upeksa, inclusiveness,
your love continues to grow every day.
It begins with two persons,
but as you are happy in that true love,
your love very soon includes a third, a fourth person.
You don't discriminate anymore.
You don't love a person
just because she comes from the same country,
because she follows the same religious belief.
There is no discrimination whatsoever in true love.
Everyone will be included in your love.
Your love continues to grow and embraces everyone,
not only humans,
but also animals, plants and minerals.
That is the love of a great being.
Including everything, that is upeksa.
The practice of true love has to be taught in school.
Schoolteachers should embody true love.
(4. Practicing Loving Speech and Deep Listening)
The fourth area of the practice
is the practice of loving speech
and deep listening.
This is the fourth mindfulness training.
Yesterday we spoke a little about that practice already.
If we know how to use loving speech,
if we can talk lovingly and compassionately to another person,
that person will open her heart
and tell us about the suffering, the difficulties that she has.
If you know how to listen with compassion,
then you can restore communication
and bring about reconciliation.
In the case of schoolteachers,
this practice should be done with the people in the family first.
When we have succeeded with the members of our family,
we can bring the practice to the school.
If we have difficulties with our colleagues,
then we can restore communication and reconcile.
Finally, we can bring that into our school.
Without these practices,
teachers can make students suffer
and students can make teachers suffer.
There is a gap between the two generations.
We can imagine
teachers and students sitting together,
talking to each other about the suffering they have gone through.
Teachers have to be able to tell the students:
"I know you have suffered.
I know you may have difficulties in your family."
And so on.
"If you don't make much progress in your studies,
it is due to these difficulties.
So please, tell me, tell us."
The whole class can sit and listen with compassion.
That will transform the students.
Because other students may have the same kind of suffering.
It would be lovely
if schoolteachers can sit down
and listen to the suffering of their own students.
We should have the time to do it.
Last week, in a retreat at Madrid,
during a session of questions and answers,
a boy of 11 came up and asked a question.
He suffered, he begins to have difficulties in sleeping.
He blamed everything on his mother.
I believe that all mothers want their sons and daughters to be happy.
They have a plan,
they have ideas as how their sons and daughters can be happy.
They just deliver that kind of message.
The boy suffered,
even when his mother said goodnight.
Why do you suffer when your mother says goodnight?
Because your mother may mean by "Goodnight":
"Don't stay up late,
don't play electronic games!"
There is a blaming in that kind of things.
The relationship between mother and son has become difficult.
So he came up,
and in front of 600 people he asked the question:
"Dear Thay,
I start having difficulties in sleeping.
My mother is always like that,
imposing things on me."
And so on.
The mother believes that she is acting out of love.
She is prescribing the right thing for his son to do.
Like a teacher.
But the way she does it,
did not work.
Because she does not feel well in herself.
So I answered the boy:
"You know that mothers have their own difficulties and suffering.
You believe that you are the only one who suffers.
But you don't know
that your mother has difficulties and suffering also.
You have not had the time
to think about the difficulties and suffering of your mother.
You have not helped your mother to suffer less.
In fact, you have reacted in such a way
that makes your mother suffer more.
Please, think about her, her suffering,
and not just your suffering.
You should go and ask your mother
what kind of suffering she is undergoing,
what kind of difficulties she has in herself.
Maybe she does not know
how to handle the suffering in herself.
That is why,
the way she tells you what to do and not to do
makes you irritated."
Why I was giving that answer to the young men?
Many mothers down there were crying.
Because we, mothers, we also have our own suffering.
And our sons and daughters do not know that we suffer.
They just blame us.
Your students, they suffer.
They have difficulties with their mother,
their father and so on.
Talking to them showing them the practice,
can help them to suffer less.
And you can do better.
Because these young people,
when they have overcome the difficulties,
when they have understood the suffering of their parents,
they go back and help their parents.
We have organized retreats of mindfulness for young people.
In Europe, in America, in Asia.
And many young people
get transformation and healing during the retreat.
When they went home, they helped their parents
and they were able to restore communication with their parents,
and many of them are able to invite their parents to join a retreat.
Schoolteachers can do the same.
We can help students to suffer less,
to understand,
to suffer less.
And that student can go home
and help his parents to suffer less also.
This has been possible with the practice of mindfulness.
(Bell)
A retreat of mindfulness usually lasts 6 days.
Our retreat has only 2 days and a half.
During the first 3, 4 days
we learn how to water the seeds of understanding and compassion in us.
We learn how to calm down our emotions and feelings.
We try to touch the wonders of life, refreshing and healing,
to heal ourselves.
And that is why
on the 5th day we can put into practice
the teaching of deep listening and loving speech.
The miracle of reconciliation always takes place in our retreats.
If the other person is in the retreat
that will be easy.
Because he or she has been exposed to the teachings and the practice.
The seeds of understanding and compassion have been watered
by the Dharma talks,
by the practice of mindful breathing and looking deeply.
But if the other person is not in the retreat
you can use your portable telephone to practice.
Usually, we encourage the people to do it
before the end of the retreat.
They have until midnight of the 5th day in order to do it.
Many people have used the telephone
and it works very well.
Many people report on the last day of the retreat
that the night before have telephoned their parents, their partner,
using the techniques of compassionate listening and loving speech,
restore communication and reconcile.
So the miracle of reconciliation always takes place in our retreats.
And this can be done in the classroom.
I believe that, as schoolteachers,
we have to tell our students
about our difficulties and our suffering.
Schoolteachers do suffer
and we have the right to tell our students about that.
We can begin our class by saying
that in order to improve the quality of the teaching and the learning,
so that the teachers enjoy teaching
and the students enjoy learning,
we have to do something.
Otherwise, both sides will suffer.
So would you agree that we do something
in order for the schoolteachers enjoy the teaching
and the students enjoy the learning?
Because the suffering in us prevents us from doing so.
So I should tell you my suffering, my difficulties
and you should also tell me your difficulties, your suffering.
We should understand each other.
And after we have mutual understanding,
we don't blame each other any more,
we don't make it difficult for each other any more,
and we can go more easily and quickly
on the path of teaching and learning.
There are many things that we can do in the classroom
in order to help students to suffer less.
Like schoolteachers leading sessions of total, deep relaxation.
Because the young people have tension in their body and in their feelings also.
A good student can also learn
how to lead a session of total relaxation for the whole class,
lying on the grass
and so on.
If you notice
that a boy or a girl suffers in the class,
she seems to be very upset, her mind is not there,
how can she learn?
So we can address her
and ask what is wrong.
And she may say:
"My mother was hospitalized this morning,
and I don't know if she can survive or not."
With that kind of feeling, how can she learn?
You cannot impose your will on her.
So the teacher can address the whole class and say:
"We have a student whose mother is hospitalized
and she worries much about that.
Shall we, the whole class,
practice breathing together, mindfully?
We will send this energy of mindfulness and compassion
to her mother."
Using that kind of collective energy of mindfulness
generated by the breathing done by teachers and other students,
you can help calm down that student
and she may be able to follow the class.
There are things like that
that schoolteachers can do.
There are difficult elements in the class.
If we look deeply,
we will see why that young man, young woman
behaves in that way.
If we have enough compassion to inquire,
we find out
and the whole class may come and help.
So listening to each other
and understanding the suffering of each other
we can calm down the feelings, the emotions.
We can promote mutual understanding
and we don't make each other suffer any more.
We make it easier for everyone
in the task of teaching and learning.
Henri, who was a professor of mathematics
in the French school of Toronto,
after having spent three weeks in Plum Village,
he went back to his school
and practiced mindfulness with his students.
He walks slowly and mindfully into the class.
He begins to erase what is on the blackboard mindfully
and they say:
"Dear teacher, are you sick?"
(Laughter)
He says: "No, I am not sick.
I just practice mindful walking,
mindful...
I enjoy that.
I feel a lot of peace.
I am very relaxed because I have learned mindfulness.
Would you like me to tell you what I did in Plum Village?"
And they listened.
They agreed that every 15 minutes,
a boy would clap his hands,
because they did not have a bell of mindfulness,
and every one, including the teacher,
would practice mindful breathing and relax.
Stop the thinking.
And that helped very much in the learning.
In the beginning, it was like a play,
but finally it worked very well.
Transformation and healing took place
and the class made a lot of progress.
Other classes followed their example.
And when he came to the age of retirement,
the administration asked him to stay for a few more years.
He was able to bring the practice of mindfulness into the school
and improve the quality of teaching and learning in the school.
So the practice of loving speech and deep listening
should create an atmosphere of mutual understanding in the class
and the students will not make it difficult for teachers.
The quality of teaching and learning will be improved.
Mindfulness can be practiced in the realm
of mindful consumption.
(5. Practicing Mindful Consumption)
Our society is a society of consumption.
We believe that happiness is to have enough money
to buy whatever you want to buy.
That is an idea about happiness.
But we already know
that true happiness is made of understanding and love.
You cannot buy understanding and love in the supermarket.
You have to generate these two things by the practice.
This, again, should be taught in the school.
The first...
The kind of...
In the Buddhist tradition,
we speak about the four kinds of nutriments.
Four kinds of food.
Four kinds of consumption.
First of all,
there is the edible food.
(edible food)
That is the kind of food
that we consume by the way of the mouth.
Your health depends very much on what you eat.
We should eat in such a way
that can preserve compassion in our heart,
helps living beings to suffer less,
and helps to protect our planet.
The consumption of meat and alcohol
has destroyed much of our environment and our health.
We have learned that eating meat is more polluting than driving a car.
The meat and alcohol industries have caused a lot of damage
to our environment.
We have learned that the amount of grain used to make alcohol
and feed the livestock is huge.
Tens of thousands of people die every day
because of the lack of food.
The Buddha told the story of a young couple
who tried to flee from their country
to take refuge in another country.
They brought their little boy with them.
They had to cross a desert
in order to go to the other country to take political asylum.
But they did not calculate well.
Half way to the desert, they ran out of food.
They knew that the three of them were going to die.
So finally they made a terrible decision:
to kill the little boy and eat the flesh to survive,
hoping to get out of the desert.
So after having killed the boy, they ate one morsel of that flesh
and preserved the rest on their shoulder, to dry.
Every time after having eaten a piece of that flesh
they asked: "Where is now our beloved little boy?"
They pulled their hair, they beat their chest,
they suffered quite a lot.
But finally they got out of the desert and were accepted as refugees.
The Buddha must have heard that story directly from that couple.
He told the people listening to him:
"Dear friends,
do you think that the couple
enjoyed eating the flesh of their little boy?"
And they said: "No, dear teacher.
It is impossible for you to enjoy eating the flesh of your own boy."
The Buddha then said:
"In that case, my friends,
let us eat in such a way
that we will not eat the flesh of our sons and daughters."
The 40.000 children who die every day because of the lack of food and nutrition,
who are they?
They are our sons and daughters.
The amount of grain that is used to make alcohol and meat
should have been used to save the lives of these children.
So practicing eating and drinking mindfully
we can preserve our compassion, protect life.
If there is no compassion in our heart
we cannot be a happy person.
Our students can understand this.
We learn that if we can reduce the eating of meat
and the drinking of alcohol in the developed countries,
we can already transform the situation of the Earth.
So stopping eating meat, stopping drinking alcohol,
or reducing it significantly,
we can save our planet, we can save lives,
we can preserve our compassion.
That is the first source of nutriment:
edible food.
(senses impressions)
The second source of nutriment is the sense impressions.
You consume not only with your mouth,
but with your eyes, ears, nose, body, mind.
When you read a newspaper, you consume.
When you watch television, you consume.
When you listen to a conversation, to music, you consume.
And what you consume every day
may contain a lot of poisons, toxins.
That is not good for your health.
Our children consume television several hours a day.
Many boys and girls spend 5 hours or more with electronic games.
There is a lot of violence, craving fear and anger
in what they consume.
So consuming that amount of toxins and poisons
will not be good for our physical and mental health.
Even psychotherapists, they are supposed to help patients.
But they spend a lot of time listening to stories of suffering,
a lot of despair, hate and sorrow.
If psychotherapists don't know how to practice
generating joy, happiness, compassion,
they will lose their balance
and they will get sick.
We should know our limits
so that we can continue for a long time
in our efforts to help others.
A conversation can also be highly toxic.
What the other person tells you
may be full of anger, despair, violence.
During the hour you are listening to him or to her.
you consume.
That is not healthy for you.
The young people are consuming a lot of poisons and toxins
including violence, fear, despair and anger.
That is why,
in the family and in the classroom
we have to discuss about the practice of the fifth mindfulness training:
mindful consumption.
Mindful consumption is the way out.
To ensure a physical and mental health
you have to practice mindfulness of consumption.
When you watch a film,
they stop the film from time to time for advertisement.
You consume advertisements.
They want you to buy.
That touches the seed of craving in you.
You don't need to buy,
but they urge you to buy.
And they think that if you don't buy it,
you don't have happiness.
They make you believe
that happiness is possible when you have money to buy things.
But that is not a right view about happiness.
True happiness is made of understanding and love.
Our students, our children have to learn about true happiness.
We should sit down as a family, as a classroom,
to discuss about right, mindful consumption.
There are articles in the magazines, in the newspapers,
that are full of anger, fear, violence.
And journalists don't report enough about the healthy things,
like this retreat.
(Laughter)
It is not sensational the breathing in and out,
walking peacefully.
The stories they cover and the stories that we read
always contain a lot of anger, despair, violence and so on.
That day was the day to commemorate the death of Mahatma Gandhi.
I was in New Delhi,
and a newspaper, The Times of India,
invited me to be guess editor of that day.
A peace edition.
So we brought a number of monastics
to come to the headquarters of The Times of India
and prepared a peace edition.
That morning bad news came.
There was a bombing in a city nearby.
We and other editors of The Times of India
were sitting around a big table.
They asked:
"Dear Thay, what journalists should do on a morning like this?
Terrorist attacks, bombing."
I advised everyone to practice mindful breathing
and calm down.
We should not say something right away.
We have to say it with calm inside.
After a few minutes of mindful breathing, I said:
"Of course, we have to report the news.
But we have to report in such a way,
that we will not water the seeds of anger, fear and violence.
That would be destructive.
We report about the truth,
but help people to understand
why people do things like these.
They are victims of misunderstanding.
They are motivated by anger, fear
and the desire to punish.
They don't see
that people do not need punishment.
They need help.
We should report.
But there is a way of reporting
that can water the seeds of understanding and compassion
in the heart of the readers.
So in that day,
we tried to write a report on the terrorist attack in such a way
that helped people to know
why people have done such a thing to their own countrymen.
When you read it you can see
that we water understanding and compassion in you.
If we consume without mindfulness,
we get a lot of toxins and poisons
and we get sick.
Our family will get sick, our city gets sick,
our country gets sick.
And we can easily involve ourselves into a war.
(volition)
The third kind of nutriment is volition.
It means our aspiration, our deepest desire.
Each one of us wants to do something with his life.
Each one of us should have the time to sit down
and ask himself:
What do I want to do with my life?
What is my deepest aspiration?
Because there are those who think
that their deepest desire is to have a lot of money,
to be number one
in their business.
To have a lot of power, fame, and sex,
sensual pleasures.
But running after these objects of craving
can bring destruction to our body and mind.
So that is not my deepest aspiration.
The terrorists,
what they want to do most is to punish.
They may believe that they do so in the name of justice, of God.
But it is motivated by the desire to punish,
to destroy.
That is not good food.
When you are motivated by anger,
by the desire to punish,
your nutriment is not healthy.
But if you are motivated
by the desire to help young people to suffer less,
that is good nutriment.
If your desire is to change the world in a better direction,
that is good food.
If your desire is to help people to suffer less,
to know how to practice true love,
to promote mutual understanding and reconciliation
that is good food.
When you have that block of energy in you,
you are strong enough
to overcome whatever obstacles on your path.
So the third kind of nutriment
is... (Vietnamese)
The third kind of nutriment is a source of energy.
We have to find it out.
If our deepest desire is to protect the environment,
to protect Mother Earth,
that is a good desire, that is good food.
You have a good motivation.
What you want to do with your life
is the third nutriment, volition.
We have to help the young people
to have a good aspiration,
finding the meaning of life,
making their lives meaningful,
giving them a lot of energy
so that they have something meaningful to do with their lives.
If schoolteachers have it,
have that source of energy in themselves,
they can transmit it to their students.
I am also a teacher.
Every day I transmit to my students,
monastic and lay people,
that kind of energy.
My students
have a very simple life,
specially the monastics.
No one of them
have a bank account.
No one of them have a salary.
No one of them have a private home, private car.
And yet, they are happy people.
They spend time building brotherhood, sisterhood,
a community of practice.
They have organized retreats to help people to suffer less.
We operate not as individuals,
but as a community.
Joy, happiness, compassion,
are possible with a simple life,
provided that you have a source of aspiration.
That is the third nutriment:
the ideal to serve and to help people to suffer less.
So teachers should, first of all,
have that kind of aspiration.
And then, they can transmit to their students
the same kind of energy.
When the students have that kind of energy,
they suffer less.
They know where to go.
In what direction to go
and not to destroy their body and mind
looking for sensual pleasures and so on.
The last source of nutriment is consciousness.
(consciousness)
We consume our own consciousness.
There are good things in our consciousness to consume.
In our consciousness there is a Hell.
There is also a Paradise, the Kingdom of God.
In Buddhism, we speak about consciousness
in terms of seeds.
(seeds)
There is a seed of love.
There is a seed of compassion,
the seed of joy, of happiness,
the seed of brotherhood, sisterhood,
forgiveness,
there are many good things in our consciousness.
If we know how to water the seeds every day,
they will grow.
The Paradise,
the Kingdom of God will be for us to consume.
When you listen to a talk like this,
when you have a discussion about compassion,
how to help people to suffer less,
you water the good seeds in you.
It means that the Paradise,
the Kingdom of God is in you.
You help it to manifest
for yourself and for your beloved ones.
But there is also Hell inside.
The suffering transmitted to us
by our parents and ancestors.
Suffering that has not been understood,
that has not been transformed
and that has been transmitted to you,
to us.
If we know the practice,
we can transform them.
Otherwise,
they are always there, in our consciousness.
The sufferings of our ancestors are still there, in us.
We continue to suffer the suffering of our ancestors.
Their frustration, their anger, their fear,
are still in us.
Also during our childhood we may have suffered.
We may have been abused
with violence.
Many of us tend to go back
to that dark corner in our consciousness
and experience again the suffering of the past.
We know that life in the present moment is wonderful.
The blue sky,
the beautiful trees.
Flowers, children.
But we are not capable
of being established in the present moment.
Because we have a painful past.
Many of us are drawn back to that dark corner of the past
and watch again and again
the projections of the films of the past
in order to experience again the suffering of the past.
That is a kind of prison.
If the other person,
if your partner uses to do that,
you have to help him or her to get out.
"Darling,
life is beautiful out here in the present moment.
Why do you go always back to that dark place?
That is only the past.
The past is already gone."
With mindfulness, with joy
you can help bring him or her
out of that dark corner of consciousness.
Because there is a Paradise,
there is a Kingdom of God in the present moment
for you to enjoy.
Why do you have to go back to the past,
to that corner?
Of course,
psychotherapists are trying to help us to do the same.
But if psychotherapists can do it by themselves,
then they can help their patients to do the same.
Then,
there is the collective consciousness.
As food.
We know that there are very angry groups of people.
Full of despair, and violence,
and anger.
There are neighborhoods like that,
where children are born and grow.
Everyone in that neighborhood is generating hate, anger,
fear, despair and violence every day.
And as you are born and grown in that,
you consume every day.
You cannot be a happy person
if you consume that collective energy of hate, anger, violence.
If you happen to live in that neighborhood,
you should wake up
and know that this is not a healthy environment.
You have to pull out as soon as possible
and look for a healthier environment
to heal yourself and help heal your children.
Because you do not want to consume
that collective energy of anger and hate.
After having practiced and healed ourselves
we can come back as a community to help.
But not before.
I think that as a minister of environment,
a minister of education,
taking care of urbanism,
we have to meditate on these matters.
How to transform these violent neighborhoods,
full of fear and anger.
What kind of practice can help to heal.
This is a very important issue.
To create a community
where there is brotherhood, sisterhood and joy,
is to create a healthy environment.
That is the most wonderful thing.
If you put yourself in that atmosphere,
if your children have the opportunity to live in such a healthy atmosphere,
they will grow up as happy people.
So community building is very important.
Belonging to a group of people,
we try to practice in such a way
that shows the people how to consume.
We should not allow ourselves
to consume the collective energy of anger.
That is not good for our health,
for the health of our nation.
We should have compassion and understanding.
That will heal us
and help heal the people whom we think to be our enemies.
We know that if we have enough peace, joy and compassion,
we can serve many people.
We don't need
to think of divorce, separation, anymore.
We don't need to establish a separate country anymore.
Because there is enough compassion, understanding and happiness.
If we are thinking of divorcing, separating,
setting up a separate nation,
it is because we do not have enough compassion,
understanding, brotherhood and sisterhood,
joy and happiness.
With the practice of mindfulness we will have enough of these things
and we don't have to think about other things.
So the five mindfulness trainings
are the very concrete expression
of the practice of mindfulness.
If we ourselves, and the young people
live according to the five practices of mindfulness,
then happiness is possible, compassion is possible,
healing is possible.
A schoolteacher should embody
that kind of mindful living,
that kind of compassion and understanding.
They will help the young generation tremendously
in their transformation and healing.
We will continue tomorrow.
(Bell)