WEBVTT

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[The Plum Village Online Monastery]

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(Bell)

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Dear respected Thay,

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dear beloved sangha,

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This morning

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we will share about our practice
of the Four Noble Truths

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and I though of a --

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When we talk about the Four Noble Truths

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immediately we think of the Buddha,

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because it is the first Dharma talk
the Buddha gave,

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and the last one.

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And I also think of Thay
because his whole life,

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what he has been doing is

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to show us the way to end suffering.

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Or we can say, the way to build
peace and happiness.

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I have written down the Four
Noble Truths on the board.

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And I thought while writing on the board,

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I thought: If I write only one truth,

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talk about one by one.

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And then I said to myself:
No, I need to write all four.

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I need to write everything.

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Because they interare,

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and it would be too difficult for me
to talk about one truth,

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like the first one, suffering,
without talking about the others.

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The Buddha said:

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'I teach about suffering,
and the way to end suffering.'

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Two things together.

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And they are together,
we cannot separate them.

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Somebody asked,

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somebody asked this question:

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'The Buddha already taught
that life is suffering.

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Why Thay always teaches about
living happily in the present moment?

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But the Buddha always taught
two things together,

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suffering and the way to end suffering.

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I don't think that the Buddha,
compassionate as he is,

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he only talks about suffering.

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I'm sure that the Buddha did not want
to make us depressed.

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(Laughter)

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The Buddha didn't want us
to be pessimistic.

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When there is suffering,

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there is always a way, a path,
to end suffering, or to lead,

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we can say, a path leading to happiness.

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But in our daily life, in our family
or among our friends

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from time time we see
somebody or some people

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who suffer, but they don't see
that they suffer.

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And they don't want
to get out of their suffering.

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It is like someone who is angry

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and you say: 'Oh, you are angry!'

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'No, I am not angry!'

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(Laughter)

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'I am not, you are! I' m not angry.'

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And the same thing,

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someone suffers

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and he or she denies:
'No, I don't suffer, I'm okay!'

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But when we suffer and we deny it,
we don't see that we are suffering

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and then there is no way for us
to get out of our suffering.

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So in the Four Noble Truths,

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there must be awareness.

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Suffering is awareness of suffering.

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If we want the way out,

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we need to be aware of our suffering.

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Without the awareness,

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it is impossible to get out of suffering.

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And awareness is Right Mindfulness,

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it is already in the Noble Eightfold Path.

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It is already in the way to end suffering.

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So in the suffering we already see

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the way to end suffering.

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Without the awareness, it is not --

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that suffering is not
the noble truth yet,

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it is not the First Noble Truth
that the Buddha taught about.

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So if we deny our suffering,
we are not aware of our suffering,

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it is like someone who is sick

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and who thinks that 'I'm okay,
I don't need to see the doctor,

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I don't need to take medicine,
I don't need to do anything,

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because I'm okay.'

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So suffering here, as a Noble Truth,

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means awareness of suffering.

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So that is already the path
to end suffering.

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I imagine there is a path,
a beautiful path.

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But there is no suffering.

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Is it possible?

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I remember when I was a teen,
the first time I came to Plum Village.

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It was in 1985,

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the year when that brother
received the lamp.

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I was a teen.

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My parents brought me to Plum Village.

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I often heard they talked about Thay's
books, Thay's Dharma talks, Plum Village,

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and when Thay went to Paris,

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when we had the practice center
Fleur de Cactus in Noisy le Grand,

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near Paris,

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when Thay went there
and gave Dharma talks,

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my parents also went
and brought me with them.

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So I often heard about Thay,
about Thay's teachings,

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about Thay's books.

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I saw how my parents admired Thay.

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And every time, I noticed that,

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every time when they came back
from a Dharma talk,

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they were much happier.

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They were much more in harmony.

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They stopped quarreling for a while.

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(Laughter)

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For a certain time.

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So I knew, I knew

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that there is a great teacher,
there is a beautiful path,

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but I felt that it was not for me.

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So I went to Plum Village to have fun,
to play, to run around with the other kids

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but I didn't practice at all.

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Until the day when my father
suddenly passed away.

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It was the first time in my life
I experienced deep grief.

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And deep suffering.

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I remember, at that moment
right away I thought of Thay.

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Because I remembered he taught:

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'When you look at your hand,

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you see your father's hand.

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You see your father in your hand.'

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So I did as I remembered
but still I suffered.

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And I wrote Thay a letter:
'I did like you say but I still suffer!'

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(Laughter)

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Then, with my family,
I came back to Plum Village.

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And that time I started to practice.

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And the more I practiced,
the more I appreciated the practice.

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For me, suffering is really precious.

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It is really a noble truth.

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Without the suffering

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I would never make good use
of the Noble Path.

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I only use it when I need.

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And what makes me need it is my suffering.

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Before, I heard about Thay's teachings
but it was just ideas.

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This noble path was only ideas, concept.

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It was not really a Noble Path.

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Until I practiced, until I really wanted
to get out of my suffering

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and I practiced.

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That is why I cannot write down
just suffering, number 1,

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suffering and then talk
about suffering. No.

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I had to write down everything,
because they are together,

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they mingle, they interare.

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We cannot separate them.

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So there is no Noble Path separated

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without suffering.

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There is no path leading
to happiness without suffering.

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For me, it is my own experience.

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If I do not need it, I don't --

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Until I suffer, then I feel the need
and then I find that path.

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It becomes a path for me.

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Maybe the path is for other people
but is not for me

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until I really experience
the pain, the suffering,

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and then I really feel the need.

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But when I look around, in my family,

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I also see people who suffer a lot,

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but who cannot make good use of the path
the way out of suffering.

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Even though we show them:
'There is a path.'

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They cannot make good use,
they cannot get profit from it.

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And why?

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Because this person is totally desperate.

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When the suffering
is so deep and overwhelming,

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we lose all our energy,
we don't have energy,

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we can fall into depression
and we don't believe in anything else.

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We lose faith, we lose trust,

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and we don't believe in the fact
that there is an end of suffering.

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I was very lucky

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because I received many beautiful seeds

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and I saw people, I saw models in my life,

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I saw people, how they lived
their daily life,

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how they helped other people suffer less.

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How they helped people
generate happiness and joy.

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How they can make people happy,
how they can make people stop crying.

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Because I see it, I experience it,

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because I see it, I know that it is true.

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It is something real, it is true,
so I have trust, I have faith,

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and when I suffer I know that
there is a way out.

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There are many people in the world

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who need to see environments

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like I did in the past,
to have faith, to trust.

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The first day when we gathered together,

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when I came in this hall
I was so touched, I was so moved,

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because I see that
we all are the continuation of Thay.

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Thay has spent his whole life
building something.

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Even though there are many people
who don't know Plum Village,

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who do not come here,
who are not here yet,

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but just the fact that we maintain such
an environment, we maintain this place,

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we maintain the practice,

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I am sure that in the future
there will be people,

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people who suffer deeply,

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they have a place to go, to return.

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They have something to grasp
not to get drowned in suffering.

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Just the fact that you come here,

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I don't talk about your practice,
you just come here,

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and you are participating in Thay's work.

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You are continuing Thay's work,
Thay's life, Thay's teachings,

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Thay's practice.

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There are people who suffer,
who know the path,

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who have listened to Dharma talks,

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who know about the Eightfold Path,

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but when they suffer so much,

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they don't have enough energy

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to practice.

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And they need friends,
they need a sangha

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who can help them.

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It is very easy for us

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just to flow with our habits.

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It is much more difficult

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to do something different
from our habits.

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Thay often talks about habit energies.

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When we do something

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or when we think in a certain way,

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in our brain the neurons fire together

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and wire together
and they make a neural path.

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Neuropathways.

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And the more we repeat

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this neuropathways become
deep, and clear, and deep,

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and that is why it is so easy
just to follow these patterns.

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When we practice, we have to --

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Sometimes, we do something
very different from our habit,

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we have to create new neuropathways.

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That is why it is more difficult,

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and we need friends, we need sangha,
we need the energy of the sangha

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to have more energy, 
to have more strength to do it.

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In our daily life,

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some sufferings we think
that they are unnecessary.

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Because they are just misunderstandings.

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We just need to go
and check with that person

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or communicate with that person
and we can solve the problem right away.

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And if we don't communicate,
if we are not open enough to check,

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to talk, to clear that misunderstanding,

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then our friend will say:

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'You! Why you let unnecessary suffering
invade you like that?

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It is unnecessary.'

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It is so easy to transform
those wrong perceptions.

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Then there are other sufferings

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when we see other people suffer,
we understand: Yes, of course.

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When their lose their parents or
their beloved ones they suffer, yes.

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It's normal. And we have lot of sympathy.

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We share their suffering.
They have the right to suffer.

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It is one of the deepest sufferings,

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when we lose someone we love.

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We have the feeling that some suffering

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we can control.

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Other sufferings we cannot.

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They are out of our hands.

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If somebody passes away,
it is out of our control.

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But still the Buddha shows us

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the way to end that suffering,

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It is Right View.

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Because we are so used
to a certain way of thinking,

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we think of birth and death,

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so we suffer.

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But when we have Right View,
there is no birth, no death.

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It is just a current,
a continuation of all phenomena.

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After my father passed away,

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one year later I became a nun.

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A few months later
I came back to Plum Village

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and learned to practice.

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Then, months after months,
I asked a question:

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'Oh! The practice is wonderful.
Why don't I devote my whole life in it?'

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Because I am the second youngest
member in my family

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and I knew that -I thought-

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I would see my older brothers,
my older sisters, my mum,

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they would pass away and I would be
second last one who bore all this grief,

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this losses.

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(Laughter)

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Too much for me. 
Just one person

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and I thought that I couldn't survive.

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Now I had to go through
6 more times. Too much.

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Then I know that on this path

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I will know how to handle.

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Then a year and a half ago,
Thay tested me.

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Thay tested me.

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When Thay was in the coma,
in his bed and the neurologist said:

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'He has a few more days.'

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And Thay really tested me how I faced --

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I didn't face my father's death.

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It was afterwards.

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Afterwards, after his death,
I practiced to overcome the grief.

00:23:41.897 --> 00:23:48.239
Then, a year and a half ago, Thay wanted
to see me how I deal, I face death.

00:23:52.975 --> 00:23:55.217
And one more time,

00:23:57.824 --> 00:24:03.311
one more time I saw
how the practice saved me.

00:24:04.959 --> 00:24:07.298
With the Right View.

00:24:10.990 --> 00:24:16.132
When my father passed away
I looked at my hand, I thought

00:24:17.499 --> 00:24:19.635
as Thay taught.

00:24:20.642 --> 00:24:24.024
But I didn't really see my father's hand.

00:24:24.127 --> 00:24:27.673
I couldn't really see
my father in this hand.

00:24:27.877 --> 00:24:29.872
I still suffered.

00:24:31.546 --> 00:24:37.949
There were still ideas, I had to practice
day after day, months after months

00:24:38.187 --> 00:24:40.462
years after years,

00:24:40.586 --> 00:24:45.107
in order to really experience, to feel it.

00:24:45.683 --> 00:24:48.488
Ideas didn't help me.

00:24:49.554 --> 00:24:52.126
A year and a half ago,

00:24:54.023 --> 00:24:57.410
when I heard that neurologist say it,

00:24:58.027 --> 00:25:02.117
what really helped me
was the Right View.

00:25:02.276 --> 00:25:06.247
I thought: Ok, I am Thay's continuation.

00:25:07.547 --> 00:25:09.894
And right away,

00:25:10.449 --> 00:25:16.208
I didn't fall into sadness and depression
like the time when my father passed away.

00:25:18.080 --> 00:25:22.296
But when I remembered
that I am Thay's continuation,

00:25:22.407 --> 00:25:24.655
I was full of energy.

00:25:24.789 --> 00:25:29.376
I saw that there are so many things
I need to do for Thay.

00:25:32.699 --> 00:25:36.489
To realize Thay's aspiration,
Thay's dream.

00:25:36.693 --> 00:25:41.492
And I see that the rest of my life,
I have so many things to do.

00:25:41.986 --> 00:25:45.264
I was full of energy.

00:25:47.894 --> 00:25:56.374
And the sadness transformed right away
into strong energy, action.

00:25:58.070 --> 00:26:00.610
I have the sangha,

00:26:01.076 --> 00:26:04.515
I have Plum Village,
the sangha of Plum Village

00:26:04.615 --> 00:26:07.865
and the fourfold sangha
everywhere in the world.

00:26:09.777 --> 00:26:14.367
And together, hands in hands,
we still have many things to do.

00:26:14.514 --> 00:26:17.225
We are Thay's continuation.

00:26:18.315 --> 00:26:20.533
And I was so grateful,

00:26:20.661 --> 00:26:24.028
so grateful for the teachings,

00:26:24.519 --> 00:26:27.265
Thay's teachings, the Buddha teachings,

00:26:27.396 --> 00:26:29.481
handed down to us

00:26:30.233 --> 00:26:34.574
after so many centuries.

00:26:35.329 --> 00:26:37.811
And we are so fortunate today,

00:26:39.439 --> 00:26:42.838
we have all these tools

00:26:43.967 --> 00:26:48.788
to help us get out of our suffering.

00:27:04.777 --> 00:27:06.425
(Bell)

00:27:11.180 --> 00:27:17.518
(Bell)

00:28:09.048 --> 00:28:12.571
We, as human, we have the capacity

00:28:13.702 --> 00:28:15.386
to bear,

00:28:17.620 --> 00:28:19.887
to bear suffering.

00:28:22.307 --> 00:28:26.696
Sometimes suffering becomes a routine

00:28:27.818 --> 00:28:30.244
and we are able to bear it.

00:28:30.384 --> 00:28:33.561
Then it becomes something normal.

00:28:36.281 --> 00:28:41.353
And we feel that
we don't need to get out of it.

00:28:41.503 --> 00:28:47.893
We don't need to go on the path
to get out of it.

00:28:49.638 --> 00:28:52.290
And the same thing with happiness.

00:28:52.410 --> 00:28:54.852
We get used to happiness.

00:29:00.493 --> 00:29:02.679
After we

00:29:07.502 --> 00:29:12.306
After we learn something,
we learn the path, it is so wonderful

00:29:12.412 --> 00:29:18.733
and we, I could solve
some problems in my daily life

00:29:18.865 --> 00:29:21.206
and I am so happy.

00:29:23.075 --> 00:29:25.236
But after a while,

00:29:25.823 --> 00:29:28.058
I get used to that happiness

00:29:28.936 --> 00:29:31.523
and then I go back to my habits.

00:29:33.897 --> 00:29:35.835
I am not happy anymore.

00:29:38.395 --> 00:29:44.627
Or I do not appreciate anymore
what I have.

00:29:47.917 --> 00:29:51.136
And slowly, I lose my happiness.

00:29:55.463 --> 00:29:58.237
When I became a nun,

00:30:00.516 --> 00:30:03.366
the first few years I was so happy,

00:30:03.583 --> 00:30:10.137
because I was bathed in the beautiful
teachings, in the beautiful practice.

00:30:11.889 --> 00:30:14.209
Then, after a few years,

00:30:16.629 --> 00:30:21.724
this environment became a routine,
became something normal to me.

00:30:24.666 --> 00:30:31.538
But fortunately, Thay kept reminding us
to cultivate our beginner's mind

00:30:32.379 --> 00:30:37.001
and not to get used to our happiness.

00:30:38.649 --> 00:30:41.321
Not to get used to our comfort,

00:30:42.026 --> 00:30:45.510
spiritual comfort, for example.

00:30:48.819 --> 00:30:53.114
We need to look back
at our own suffering to remember

00:30:54.010 --> 00:31:00.295
that in the past there were moments
when we suffered so much

00:31:01.233 --> 00:31:04.282
because of this, because of that,

00:31:04.435 --> 00:31:06.708
to remember that today

00:31:08.802 --> 00:31:12.434
we are in a different situation.

00:31:13.049 --> 00:31:16.163
We don't suffer anymore.

00:31:17.734 --> 00:31:22.762
When we remember it we can wake up

00:31:24.112 --> 00:31:26.914
and appreciate what we have

00:31:27.204 --> 00:31:29.705
and appreciate our situation now.

00:31:29.866 --> 00:31:31.827
Otherwise,

00:31:32.090 --> 00:31:35.432
we can get used to our own happiness

00:31:35.560 --> 00:31:37.166
and lose it.

00:31:42.536 --> 00:31:44.990
It is the same thing with suffering,

00:31:45.121 --> 00:31:46.960
When get used to suffering,

00:31:48.144 --> 00:31:50.083
we see that it is normal.

00:31:50.175 --> 00:31:54.377
We continue to make ourselves suffer
we continue to make the others suffer

00:31:54.478 --> 00:31:59.476
and then we don't feel
the need to get out of it.

00:32:01.802 --> 00:32:03.637
Until one day,

00:32:03.756 --> 00:32:06.340
somebody yells at us:

00:32:06.485 --> 00:32:10.403
'Stop making me suffer, please!'

00:32:10.723 --> 00:32:14.823
And then we wake up.
'Oh! Really?

00:32:15.981 --> 00:32:19.074
I didn't know that I make people suffer.'

00:32:20.406 --> 00:32:23.546
So we need the sangha
we need friends,

00:32:26.548 --> 00:32:29.022
we need spiritual friends.

00:32:47.198 --> 00:32:50.707
When we look deeply into our suffering,

00:32:51.325 --> 00:32:53.440
to see the cause,

00:32:54.438 --> 00:32:56.257
the cause of it,

00:33:00.256 --> 00:33:02.641
what is the cause of my suffering?

00:33:02.773 --> 00:33:03.954
Is it --

00:33:06.709 --> 00:33:12.759
I suffer because I don't know
how to appreciate what I have?

00:33:12.837 --> 00:33:20.061
I don't know how to really, to live fully

00:33:20.201 --> 00:33:24.290
what is happening
in the here and the now?

00:33:26.038 --> 00:33:32.510
Is it because I always run towards
the future looking for some happiness?

00:33:34.937 --> 00:33:39.486
When we stop
and we look deeply at our ill-being,

00:33:41.740 --> 00:33:46.335
we have Right Mindfulness,
we have Right Concentration,

00:33:48.149 --> 00:33:53.095
and we are already
on the path to end suffering.

00:34:05.268 --> 00:34:08.763
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00:34:09.007 --> 00:34:16.824
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