(Bell)
Good morning dear respected Thay, dear sangha,
today is the 15th of November in the year 2018,
and we are in the lay day mindfulness day for the lay friends in New Hamlet,
in the Rains Retreat. And today we are going to learn with each other
the Discourse on Love,
which is in Saturday evening chanting,
in the Plum Village's daily chanting book.
And also we are going to share with each other some ways
to practice cultivating happiness, cultivating joy and happiness.
On the way to this hall,
I picked up an autumn leaf,
and I just remembered and invite our teacher to be here with me,
to be here with us this morning.
Do you hear me well? Okay.
The Buddha is an autumn leaf.
Our teacher Thay, is an autumn leaf, and each of us is also an autumn leaf.
And we enjoyed some guided meditation before the sharing,
and we allowed ourselves
to be penetrated by the beauty of the nature,
like in the song,
"And when I fall, let me fall gracefully". Like a leaf.
Now the autumn is ripening everywhere.
Yesterday, when we -
Yesterday, and the day before, on Tuesday, in Lower Hamlet,
we had a walking meditation down to the forest.
There is a pond in the forest which is full of water.
In the summertime, the sisters and the lay friends
we had community work down there
to clear the branches, the dead trunks,
and we made a new path for walking.
And I was so happy walking
with the sangha.
I felt myself like - I see myself resting in each step.
It's quite easy for us to contemplate resting in the autumn time,
in the autumn season.
Somehow, we penetrate the energy of the cosmos.
We absorb the energy of the nature, from the nature.
The trees, the plants, all beings are preparing
for the winter.
Each of us have to really
let go
of some small habit energies,
just like to prepare ourselves for a challenging time
that we would like to focus on the main thing.
Just like the tree on focusing how to sustain life,
so that all the tree
needs to let go the leaves
so that it can withdraw inside to reserve the energy inside,
to really bring the life-force down to the trunk of the tree,
so that it can survive through winter.
Even if we know that spring is always there, in the trees,
but all the trees are doing this thing.
And somehow in autumn season I feel myself as kind of the same energy.
This time is a very special time for the whole sangha,
for each of us, as monastics disciples of our teacher,
and for each of you as lay disciple of our teacher,
for everyone here in the sangha,
to really preserve our energy for the challenging times,
which is, we are preparing the transformation of our teacher.
And in order to go
to the teaching of this sutra, I would like to go
overview of the Buddha's teachings
so that we have the picture of the whole teachings of the Buddha
more than 2600 years ago.
[The Buddha Teachings]
So the Buddha's teachings contain -
The essential teachings of the Buddha can be divided into three baskets,
the three canon.
[Three Basket Canon]
The first one is the Sutra Canon.
In Pali called Sutta Pitaka.
[Sutta Pitaka]
Vinaya, which is the trainings.
[Vinaya Pitaka]
[Abhidhamma Pitaka]
These two baskets of the sutras
were collected by the Buddha's disciples
from the first time, after the Buddha's passing away.
And this is about the commentaries
taught by our ancestors
many hundreds years after the Buddha.
In these sutras there are five.
The first collection we call (Vietnamese).
Digha Nikaya.
[Digha Nikaya - Majjhima Nikaya]
And Majjhima Nikaya.
The third one is
Samyutta Nikaya.
[Samyutta Nikaya]
(Vietnamese)
I speak in Vietnamese.
Anguttara Nikaya.
[Anguttara Nikaya]
And (Vietnamese), Khuddaka Nikaya.
[Khuddaka Nikaya]
And the sutra we are going to learn with each other this morning
belongs to this collection.
We have fifteen books of these sutras,
and the sutra we are going to learn with each other
belongs to the fifth one,
we call it Sutta Nipata.
[The 5th Sutta Nipata]
This is the group of discourses, the short discourses,
and they belong to one of the main canon
of the Buddha's teachings.
In Vietnamese we call it (Vietnamese),
in English, Thay translated it into the Discourse of Happiness.
[Discourse of Happiness]
And in Pali it is the Mahamangala Sutta.
[Mahamangala Sutta]
And 'maha' means 'great',
and 'mangala' in Pali means
'fortune' or 'blessing', something good.
We wish each other 'have a good day', 'have a beautiful day'.
This meaning is- The root, the original meaning
is 'auspicious', 'auspicious sign',
something that let you know before
that there are some good things that will happen.
In different countries, different cultures, we have different signs
for auspiciousness.
Sometimes, like in Asia,
when people get out of their house,
if they encounter a monastic, they may feel, "That is a great fortune!
I'm going to have good things happening in the day."
But in the West, that is not sure, right?
Maybe people see a monastic with bold head and weird gowns out there,
and they may say, "Oh! What a weird people going on in this street.
That may bring something not so good for me."
So it is different from culture and country.
And this sutra,
because the lay friends in the Buddha's time
were not so sure about what are the auspicious signs for them
to practice living a happy life, they come to the Buddha and ask.
It is in the Pali canon, but in the Chinese canon it is -
The background of the sutra is different,
but the content of the sutra is very much the same.
This sutra, Discourse of Happiness, in the Chinese canon,
we call
(Vietnamese) also means auspicious signs.
This sutra belongs to the sutra
Dharmapadavadana sutra.
[Dharmapadavadana sutra]
Chapter 42 in Dharmapadavana sutra in Chinese canon.
And the content is very much the same.
The way they describe how the Buddha taught this sutra is different,
but the content is very much the same.
People ask the Buddha, 'What can I do, what can I practice for a happy life?'
And we are going to share something about the happiness.
There are two kinds of teachings from the Buddha
we need to understand, to distinguish,
so that there is clearer understanding.
Some teachings belong to the absolute truth,
and some teachings belong to the relative secular truth.
This sutra describes relative truth,
[relative truth]
or secular.
Which means that it can be different from cultures and countries,
from areas.
And the absolute truth,
like the Heart Sutra,
that is the Buddha describes the truth which is absolute.
But this sutra describes a truth which is secular or relative.
It means that you can apply to our daily life,
but also we can combine, observe, and understand the culture
of that area, so that it will not like -
create conflicts in ourselves.
And about the teaching of happiness,
maybe we have heard a lot of this word in Plum Village.
I would like to ask you one question.
We can see that even a child or young people know
that from time to time we suffer from different things.
Whatever, even the weather changing can create suffering.
There are many sisters in Lower Hamlet who are sick right now.
And I also had headache for many days.
Specially when the time of the changing season.
And now is that time.
Or people can suffer from
the bigger things, like war, or starvation.
So I would like to double check that. Is there any of you sitting here
who have not suffered? Please, put your hand up.
Okay, great relief.
Yes, I think so. Everyone of us has suffered for something.
Our teacher always teaches us
that with the background of suffering, we can be able to recognize
and cultivate happiness.
It is like the background of the board, which is white, we can see clearly
the writing in black.
If we have never had headache, or toothache,
we don't really enjoy the non- toothache or the non-headache situation.
So I have headache quite often,
and I really enjoy the days when my head is quite clear and light.
And it is easy for me
not only to be happy, but also to be not irritated
towards others.
So for me happiness is also a habit.
A habit to be happy, a habit to think in the direction of being happy.
The habit of enjoying the happiness of others.
Because somehow, if there is something blocking here,
and we are not so free, we are not so light,
we feel not so happy when we see others happy. Right?
Has it happened to you?
Happiness is a habit.
And here, living in the sangha, we have the opportunity
to experience that. The sangha gives us many opportunities
to train ourselves to be happy.
And also,
for some people, when they come and share,
we can see that when people
are using drugs or drinking alcohol to cover some loneliness,
a suffering inside of them,
yes, at that time they are joyful,
at that time they can forget everything. Just enjoy in alcohol or in drugs.
In the very like -
Up here feeling.
But we can ask ourselves, or we can ask the society the question,
is that true happiness?
Because we all know that after,
behind that joy, behind that excitement there is something.
There is something that makes us drown into that consumption.
For example,
there is a time that when -
In the year 2009,
we call it the Bat Nha event,
something happening in one of our centers in Vietnam
in the year 2009,
we were monastics and aspirants.
We were about 400 people,
and we were harassed and pushed away from our center
for many reasons, that is a very long story.
And at that time I was here in Plum Village,
because I spent four years with them in Bat Nha.
And when I was here listening to that news,
my heart was so heavy.
And I suffered so deeply about
how terrible
the people in Vietnam
behaved like that towards monks and nuns.
We didn't do any harm to others, we just practiced the way.
And how come they didn't allow us to stay in the temple?
So Thay asked me and some sisters to go over Vietnam
after just one week to help. I don't know how we could help,
but Thay just sent a group of sisters to come to support.
And I knew that there is danger, there are difficulties,
there are obstacles happening all the time.
And we were not allowed to go directly to Vietnam.
We had to fly to Thailand and go by bus.
It is like -
The police could stop us at the airport.
So even going to the area which I knew before there were a lot of difficulties,
and sometimes dangers,
but I see something fulfilled in my heart, I don't know why.
I'm not a person who likes adventures a lot, or risk.
But then, when we know that hundreds of our brothers and sisters
are put into a very difficult situation,
somehow the aspiration, the need inside that I would like to be there.
I don't know what can I do, but I just want to be there,
to be with them.
Just to maybe to endure together the suffering that we had at that time.
And even it is going through difficulties,
but it is a kind of happiness.
So for me, happiness is not a blessing feeling only,
it is not like when something satisfies ourselves
and we feel pleasant.
At that time, I felt unpleasant,
I felt I suffered in my heart, but at the same time, there was happiness.
It is as I understand the teaching about how a Great Being
made a Great Vow to rescue people and to go the realms of hell or difficulty
to help people.
So just a little thing, a little compassion in my heart
at that time to help me understand what is true happiness.
Many people understand, if we have this house,
and if we have that car,
then we will be happy. We normally wait for something to be happy.
Normally we think that -
Or people may say many times that
for men, they can say that,
'Until I marry that woman I won't be happy'
or for women, you may say that 'When I marry that man I will be happy'.
I just listen from you, eh?
I don't understand this very much.
My brother said that, 'Oh! The monks and the nuns know a lot!'
It is not because we are not in your position that we know a lot,
but through consultations.
So we have a lot of consultations from you, all of you, from time to time,
and we know everything.
(Laughter)
Okay, we go to the sutra.
(Laughter)
So this sutra, I would like to start from the second paragraph,
that I will read for you:
Discourse on Happiness.
Okay, we go through, this is the Buddha's answer.
The upper part is the question from
from a deva.
"Late at night, a deva appeared,
whose light and beauty made the whole Jeta Grove shine radiantly.
After paying respects to the Buddha,
the deva asked him a question in the form of a verse:
Many gods and men are eager to know
what are the greatest blessings which bring about a peaceful and happy life.
Please, Tathagata, will you teach us?
This is the Buddha’s answer:
Not to be associated with the foolish ones,
to live in the company of wise people, honoring those who are worth honoring,
this is the greatest happiness.
To live in a good environment, to have planted good seeds,
and to realize that you are on the right path,
this is the greatest happiness."
So, in these two chapters, in these two paragraphs,
the Buddha talks about the environment.
And planting good seeds. So I would like to go a little bit deeper about this.
[manas]
[Store C.]
[Mind C.]
[eyes]
[ear]
[nose]
[tongue]
[body]
In Buddhist psychology, we call it the psychology of the mind,
this is the simplest way for us to understand
according to the Buddhist psychology.
It divides the mind into eight parts. That is easier for us to understand.
This is the store consciousness, the manas, the mind consciousness,
and the five sense consciousness, which are the eye consciousness,
the ear consciousness, the nose consciousness, the tongue consciousness,
and the body consciousness.
And when we live in the environment,
it is not only that we contribute to our individual consciousness,
but we also absorbe and also add to the collective consciousness.
Sometimes we think that if I say this thing or I say the other thing
it doesn't matter, it will not relate to any of you.
I just want to speak from my own view, but actually,
the individual consciousnesses are affected.
The collective consciousness.
It is like when we are here, together in this hall.
Our energy affects each other.
It is like the many, many ways
of relating to each other through our energy.
And in the store consciousness,
we have also learned a lot from -
I think many of you know a lot about this teaching.
There are many seeds in our store consciousness
including wholesome seeds and unwholesome seeds.
Wholesome seeds like mindfulness, faith, happiness, joy, etc.
As well as the unwholesome seeds like anger, or jealousy, despair, etc.
And the quality of our lives depends quite a lot on these seeds,
on the quality of these seeds.
And also as -
We can together contemplate the image of a garden.
There is a gardener who sows a seed of, for example, lettuce, or carrots,
any plants.
And suppose he already did the soil up and put the seed down to the earth.
The weather is quite nice. There is a lot of sun,
enough rain, and also appropriate manure.
I think the happy farmers can understand this a lot, more than me.
But then, the last condition, which is the earth.
So we need to give space and time for the earth so that the seed can sprout.
I'm just thinking about a gardener who is worried sometimes.
And he would like to make sure that the seed is still there,
and make sure that - He just would like to see
what is going on with the seed.
And after one day, he goes to the garden and digs the soil up and he looks,
'Okay, you are there'. And then, puts it back down.
And after three days, digs the soil up again.
Just to see, to make sure that the seed is still there.
So, what happens?
I don't think the seed will sprout on time,
or if it sprouts, it will be quite weak in the future.
For us it's the same.
Our mind is the same.
If we sow the seed of, for example, mindfulness,
we come here,
and you are to do everything in mindfulness.
You are guided to eat in silence, to walk in silence.
We are sowing the seed of mindfulness in the store consciousness.
And with some conditions, spiritual friends, a sangha, the nature,
the food, everything, the seed of mindfulness already like -
It was in the earth,
in the store consciousness, in the earth of our consciousness already.
The last thing we should do is to give it time and space,
be patient with our store consciousness, be patient with the earth.
Some day, when we have enough time and space, and faith,
the seed of mindfulness will sprout
and become a tree,
a flower, in here.
And you become peaceful, and mindful. It is a process.
So my practice is
we try to provide the good conditions,
the supporting conditions for the seed
so that it can be taken care of and have faith in our store consciousness.
When learning about this, it is the Manifestation Only teaching,
when I was learning about this I found it quite interesting,
because I ask myself a question,
when do I have to have faith in the store consciousness?
How do we know that the store consciousness can take care of everything?
We can see that. I try very hard, but my habit energy stays still,
no changing.
And after three weeks, or two months, three months, and a year in Plum Village
I see my anger is still there.
So I kind of lose faith in the practice.
Some friend - It has happened to some of us.
Also some monastic brothers and sisters, after quite a long time practicing,
we take everything for granted.
We say, 'Oh! The practice is not so beneficial for me.'
That is why we lose our faith in our store consciousness.
And I keep asking myself, why? Why I must have faith in the store consciousness?
When asking that question,
it was a great opportunity for me to learn more.
And after a while, when Thay taught about
the functions of store consciousness, I was very fulfilled.
I would like to share briefly about this,
why do we practice being faithful to the store consciousness
and let the store consciousness take care of our life.
One example that Thay gave quite often
about how to describe the role of the store consciousness
is a person who learns to drive.
At the begining he needs to spend a lot of energy
to try to control the car, how to guide the car,
how to understand the car, etc.
And he needs to use the mind consciousness all the time to really control the car.
But after a while of driving, he gets used to it.
And actually, when you drive you don't really focus a lot in driving.
That is the time the store consciousness works.
Even that, if something happens,
that can bring danger to you or your passengers,
the store consciousness reacts very quickly.
You can turn, or make something, or you brake,
anything to save ourselves from the situation.
That is also the work of the store consciousness.
[1. Holding, restoring]
It is the first function of our store consciousness.
Holding and restoring things, just like the hard disk of the computer.
Whatever we say, or we think, or we feel through these senses,
through eyes, ears, these five senses
and also through the mind,
the store consciousness stores and holds everything
back down here.
So it is also the meaning how to choose the environment to live in,
how to choose food to eat.
And the second is learning. It is a function.
The nine functions of store consciousness.
[9 Functions of Store C.]
[2. learning]
The store consciousness has the function of learning.
When you first come to Plum Village
you may not really be confident in walking meditation, for example.
And you tell yourself, 'No, no. It is too slow for me.
I should walk a little bit faster.' Things like that.
But actually, after one week in Plum Village,
naturally and gradually you slow down.
It is the capacity of the store consciousness.
You observe things and learn things and change.
Also from this meaning the store consciousness is organic.
The nature of impermanence, the nature of changing
the nature of transforming.
For me it is good news,
because our difficulties, our suffering, when it gets enough conditions,
enough training, can be transformed.
It is not something stuck, that stays there forever.
[3. Processing]
And the third function is processing.
Yes, it receives information
and it is processing.
That will produce more beautiful results for us.
And the fourth is
[4. Maturation]
Maturation.
About the capacity to make things ripe on time.
For example, we may say that,
'Oh! I practice not so well. I lose mindfulness all the time.'
But actually, it will depend on the time and the way.
Our store consciousness needs time to get things mature, to get things ripen
on time.
Like the orange tree.
It needs time, manure and everything, all the conditions
so that the oranges can be ripe, can get the orange color
and we can eat them.
It is the same for the things happening in our mind.
And the fifth function is
nourishing.
[5. Nourishing]
The sixth is healing.
[6. Healing]
These two capacities of store consciousness
also need to be recognized by a practitioner
with the practice of sitting meditation, walking meditation, eating in silence,
we allow ourselves to be nourished and to be healed
by the beauty elements in ourselves and in the sangha,
in the environment.
And in the sutra, the Buddha says that
to be able to live in the environment,
this is the greatest happiness.
For me it is really related to each other.
For example, you live in Bordeaux, or in Paris,
in Amsterdam, or in Hanoi,
it is a very busy and crowded city.
And after a long arrangement, you come here.
Even if you haven't arrived to the countryside yet,
but when you get out of the busy city, you already feel
very well, and you already feel light inside
with the view of the green around.
There is one time,
I went to Italy with my brothers and sisters for a retreat,
a quite long retreat, one month.
We went to different places to have retreats there.
It was in spring time.
We went to Pisa and many big cities in Italy.
And we went also to visit Venice.
Yes, it was very beautiful, but it was very noisy for me.
And when we were able to take the train back to Verona,
where we were staying together before we came back to Plum Village,
I was so relieved.
It was like -
All the noise in my head -
So I understand this feeling.
When we go back from Bordeaux or Paris to Plum Village, even on the way here
we already feel very fresh.
So that is the 5th and the 6th function of the store consciousness.
And the seventh,
[7. auto-piloting]
the eighth,
(Vietnamese)
sustaining life.
[8. sustaining life]
[9. manifesting as environment]
(Vietnamese)
I would like to go to the number nine.
This is concerning the non-self practices,
I wouid like to go here.
Our store consciousness has the capacity
to manifest as an environment. It means that
when we are able to be here,
we already have sown the seed of mindfulness, of peace, of happiness
sometime in the past already.
Why you don't remain in your city?
You choose to come here. Or maybe someone forced you to come here.
That is also a good condition.
This is like
even if we don't know how and what,
but all of us have something
similar to each other, so that we are here today together.
Our store consciousness knows how to direct our life
into the direction that describes the very deep desire inside of us.
Like the people who are gifted
in singing, they can join with each other.
Or people who are gifted in arts, they find each other.
And we, gifted in happy life, mindful life,
we are finding each other. That is the meaning.
For me, be patient and be deep, be ourselves,
so that our capacity of auto-pilot
can direct us to a very good environment, which expresses our deepest aspiration.
Of course, all of us have the aspiration to have a happy life,
to have a mindful life, so that be can be able
to have ourselves suffer less, and have our beloved ones suffer less.
But because of many reasons, we forget this.
We are struggling, fighting with the conditions outside.
Then, we lose our own capacity to be auto-piloting ourselves.
(Bell)
Okay, then.
When we are able to be here as a community,
we have an opportunity to sow good seeds.
The seed of mindfulness, the seed of happiness, the seed of peace,
not only in ourselves but also in the people around us.
I know you are also doing this,
because, for example,
at the beginning of the day,
(instead of being) busy and worry about your work,
you get up and light up the awareness
of being in Plum Village, I have nothing to do.
Just go to the bathroom, and go to the meditation hall.
And enjoy sitting in silence and peace.
For me, that is a great fortune.
I know my parents worked a lot to take care of us, seven children.
And me, I don't have to work a lot, as my mum.
In working meditation time, just one hour, or one hour and a half.
But we do this in a very joyful and relaxing way.
No one pushes me to finish the work.
There is no boss.
You don't have to be afraid of your boss.
You don't have to try to get a progress in the work
so that you have to get more salary.
When I am aware of this path in my life, I feel very grateful.
I don't know which good seeds I have sown in the past,
or my parents sowed in the past
so that today I have such a wonderful life.
Of course, we have difficulties and challenges in monastic life.
If you would like to know,
you are welcome.
But then, the happiness, and the joy, and the peace
is full, is everywhere.
It is available all the time.
We have many opportunities
not only to sow good seeds in ourselves but also in others,
and also in the society.
I remember when I read the book about mother Theresa,
there is a sentence that I like a lot, that she said that,
if you would like to change the world, come back to your family
and love your family members.
Wow! It is very simple! Very simple and doable!
As practitioners, we are also gardeners.
The mind consciousness is a gardener,
and the store consciousness is the garden.
We use the mind consciousness to sow the seed, to garden,
like to put manure, and everything, weeding,
to help our garden grow beautifully.
But if some day there is a dead tree in your garden,
or there is a lot of weed in your garden, don't be too worried about that.
Somehow we, human beings, we remember suffering easier and more often
than we remember happiness, right?
Like, during a day,
there is like ten times moments you feel happy,
and suppose there is one time that you feel difficult with someone.
And somehow, at the end of the day you remember that difficult moment
more than the other ten times of happiness.
So I would like to suggest one exercise for all of us.
How many days you remain in Plum Village?
Please, find some time to do this exercise,
which is to write down the list of happiness.
The list of
things you feel grateful to.
Instead of preparing the list of shopping, shopping list,
you make a happiness list.
Even an autumn leaf can be added in that catalog.
A list of happiness.
Okay, we go to the next,
“To have a chance to learn and grow, to be skillful in your profession or craft,
practicing the precepts and loving speech, this is the greatest happiness."
So the Buddha taught us in very concrete ways,
how to cultivate happiness.
If you have a -
If you have been doing a job, which does not bring any harm to yourself,
to the Earth, to the environment,
you must recognize that it is my greatest happiness.
In the Buddha's teaching,
to be skillful in your profession means that you have a right livelihood.
And livelihood means you have a vocation that is beneficial to humans,
animals, plants, and the Earth, or at least, minimally harmful.
Which is the definition of the right livelihood.
Yesterday, in Lower Hamlet,
the group of sisters
offered to the monastic sangha
a presentation on the topic about the environment,
protecting planet Earth, and global warming, etc.
And there is a research from a sister,
I was very impressed,
she worked on the transportation of Lower Hamlet's sisters,
and how transportation of the community
helps reducing the global warming.
She told that
in one month,
the whole monastic sangha, we are about 60 sisters,
and in one month we drive
53,000 km for one year
for the 60 people.
And the average for a French driver, he will drive 20,000 km one year.
So we are 60 people, but we just drive 53,000 km.
But a French driver, in general, he will drive 20,000 km for one year.
So we don't really do anything,
but as a community we contribute quite a lot
to help reducing the global warming,
the quantity of carbon to the environment, to the air.
And after that,
she also presented a point which is quite funny.
In order to take one round around the Earth,
people would drive 40,000 km one year.
So it means that
60 sisters in Lower Hamlet in one year, we make one round around the planet Earth.
So it is also -
The sister told me it is still a shame we use a lot of energy.
But then it is already a good news.
Because if we live as individuals,
we use quite a lot the car.
And she also presented
the four ways of supporting transportation to reduce using cars.
One of that ways was we were thinking about bicycles.
And the sister was so happy with that,
because there is many long term friends in Lower Hamlet using bicycles,
even electric bicycles, it is already wonderful.
So the next paragraphs of the sutra I would like to read.
“To be able to serve and support your parents,
to cherish and love your family,
to have a vocation that brings you joy – this is the greatest happiness.
To live honestly, generous in giving,
to offer support to relatives and friends,
living a life of blameless conduct, this is the greatest happiness."
I remember in one session of Q&A in Lower Hamlet,
there was a young woman.
She asked a question about -
Her parents divorced when she was two.
And she was brought up by her mum.
And her dad never came to visit her or gave any support to her mum.
And even he has his own family.
Sometimes she had to come to stay there with him.
And she didn't feel any love from him
as well as from her stepmother.
She was crying a lot when asking this question.
And she shared, how can she overcome this suffering
and this blame in her towards her parents, towards her dad.
Because she tried her best, but he could not accept her. Why?
Why her dad leaved her when she was just two?
What happened between them
so that things happened like that?
And she was crying and suffered.
And she said that
with the practice, she knew that
she should love her dad.
But she felt that very deep down in her heart
she didn't accept her dad. She wanted to push him away.
She didn't want to do anything with him. She didn't want to see him.
She didn't want to do anything relating to her dad.
And I was there, I was so moved from the story.
We shared with her that -
I asked her, dear friend, do you see that you are more lucky than your dad?
And she didn't understand why I asked that question.
But actually I see that she is more lucky than her dad,
because she knows the practice.
She knows even deep down in her heart that she didn't accept
but she knows that,
she wants to reconcile with her dad.
And she knows how to breathe, to embrace her suffering.
She knows how to do walking meditation even if she lives in Paris,
she practices walking meditation in the park in Paris.
So many people pass by and stop and stare at her.
I saw she is very courageous,
to keep practicing.
And we shared that we are lucky, because we know the practice.
For me, that is the point.
Because of the suffering that our parents could not continue,
but there are no parents on this Earth who don't love their children.
Just because of some reasons,
because they cannot embrace their suffering, their difficulties.
And maybe that suffering was transmitted from their parents too.
Maybe your dad suffered as a child.
So just by practicing,
we have the way.
Even if our mindfulness and compassion are not strong enough yet
to embrace this suffering,
we should have faith in our store consciousness.
We practice more, and more, and more.
And one of my practices is also to restart over, to start over everything.
Renew again even the very basic practices. Do it again, just do it again.
After some time, we feel,
we feel that we are not interested in sitting meditation anymore.
We need to be creative to renew our practice.
Do it again, and again, and again.
With this line of this teaching from this sutra,
I see that in order to -
In order to practice being happy in ourselves,
normally we would like to be fulfilled,
the two needs of all human being which is understanding and love.
We have that need inside,
we want to have understanding and love for others.
And also we would like to be understood and loved by others too.
They can be our parents, our friends, our relatives, our neighbours,
or even nature, etc.
So, with the practice, when we are able to
take care of our parents,
when we are able to be a good friend, that is the greatest happiness.
Do we recognize that happiness that we have right now?
By recognizing, by watering
the seed of joy and happiness,
joy and happiness will sprout, will flower,
sooner or later, it depends. But it is already in here.
I would like to go to the next paragraph.
"To persevere and be open to change,
to have regular contact with monks and nuns,
and to fully participate in Dharma discussions,
this is the greatest happiness.
To live diligently and attentively, to perceive the Noble Truths,
and to realize Nirvana, this is the greatest happiness."
To live attentively here means to live mindfully.
In the sixteen exercises of breathing, in the Sutra of the Awareness of Breathing,
the Buddha taught sixteen exercises of breathing.
And the exercise number 5 and number 6
teach about cultivating joy, I breathe in, and I breathe out,
and cultivating happiness, I breathe in, and I breathe out.
Normally, for example,
we are on the way back to Plum Village, when I was on the way back to Plum Village
after a long trip,
I had excitement.
I mean that, oh! I will get home, I will be able to rest,
and to see my sisters! That was joy.
And there was excitement in it.
But when I was able to really arrive to Lower Hamlet,
really step on the land of Lower Hamlet, go back to my room and lie down,
that is happiness. That is something peaceful.
Something very deep down in here.
Practicing meditation is the same. At the beginning,
we may have some joy and excitement in the quality of meditation.
But later on, just like the people who are thirsty,
and who are on the way to get water, there is joy and excitement in it.
But when he drinks the water, and the water goes into the body,
he feels the freshness of the water. That is happiness,
which is something very deep. And in happiness there is the element of peace
very deep inside.
And instead of
living in the busy city, right now you choose Plum Village to stay,
and go back to the countryside and have a simple life here.
In the Buddha's teaching, that is,
the Buddha calls, by the practice of letting go we create joy and happiness.
That is, you would like to let go of something
that makes you tired and lose your energy.
You would like to choose an environment which brings peace, and joy, and relax
to our body and mind.
There is a practice of meditation called 'dwelling happily in the present moment'.
In Vietnamese, (Vietnamese).
Letting go by the practice -
By the practice of letting go, you cultivate joy and happiness.
For the people who think that
in order to be happy, I need to have that beautiful house.
Or in order to be happy, I need to have that car, I need to buy that car.
The Buddha asks whether that is you cow.
There is a sutra - The Buddha was teaching about
a farmer who lost his cows.
He was very worried, and running around the hamlet to try to find the cows.
And the Buddha told the monks,
'Monks, you are lucky. You don't have any cows to lose.'
From that sutra, our teacher teaches about letting go of our cows.
But if you have any cow,
if you are caught in something that prevents you from being happy,
you can recognize that is a cow.
That obstacle prevents us from being happy. It may be the idea of happiness.
That idea of a house, that idea of a car, the idea of a partner, etc.
Or for the monastics, maybe the idea of liberation.
That I need to be liberated, then I will be happy. Things like that.
Sometimes,
I notice that I was caught in the idea of freedom.
I want to be free.
I want to practice in order to be a free person, or a happy person.
And if I am not careful with my practice,
if I do not stick to the basic practices,
I see that that idea easily lifts me up to the sky.
And it is like dreaming about the liberation.
And the second suggestion from the Buddha
about the practice of cultivating happiness
is (Vietnamese).
The practice of mindfulness helps to cultivate joy and happiness.
By practicing mindfulness, we cultivate joy and happiness.
I think this is quite clear for all of us.
And in here,
the Plum Village meditation practice tradition
is very much the same to the line of the meditation we call (Vietnamese),
'dwelling happily in the present moment', 'drsta-dharma-sukha-vihara'.
This word is repeated quite a lot in here.
Dwelling happily in the present moment.
Whenever we are able to be in touch with the present moment,
we can be in touch with happiness.
And by the practice of breathing, like in the exercise number 5 and number 6
in the sixteen exercises of breathing,
Cultivating Joy, Cultivating Happiness,
we continue to maintain the practice of our mindfulness,
to support us in every day,
in the daily activities
so that we are able to more and more cultivate the energy of mindfulness.
When we first enter the practice,
we normally see that our awareness is very weak,
we forget all the time.
We are walking in the autumn forest,
the leaves are very beautiful,
but we are drown in our own difficulties and suffering.
We are planning about something else.
And by the training, by the support of our friends, our sangha,
we can be able to remind ourselves to come back again, and again.
And this is also a training.
For me, it is also a training, a really -
We really make a commitment with ourselves that we would like to train ourselves
so that we can get the new habit of being mindful.
And the third practice which the Buddha and our teacher suggested about this
is (Vietnamese),
by the practice of meditation, concentration,
you can create joy and happiness.
So the mindfulness, concentration and insight
are essential teachings of the Buddha's teachings.
Actually, one contains the other.
When we practice mindfulness,
in mindfulness there is the element of concentration and insight.
And in concentration there is the element of mindfulness and insight too.
And the fourth method is (Vietnamese),
by the practice of insight, you create joy and happiness.
() is joy, and () is happiness.
I remember one time when I gave a consultation for a friend in Lower Hamlet.
When she started to share,
I was surprised, because after sharing her difficulties,
she shared what she thought about that difficulties.
She shared how she suffered, and acknowledged,
and knows the way out of that suffering.
And when she finished sharing, that woman, I asked her,
'I see you know everything. Why don't you put it into practice?
You know everything about the human mind, the habit energy,
and even the way to practice mindfulness.'
And I was surprised that she still suffered about that thing.
And she shared that
'Yes, sister. I know this, but I don't have any support.
I don't know how to start. I cannot do it by myself.'
And when I listened to that, I felt quite impressed,
because she knew the wisdom about her,
and then she was very open to share that with me, everything with me.
And I see that everyone of us has all the insights, everyone of us,
small insights, or bigger insights, about something.
I see when people ask questions,
in that question somehow they know the answer.
But then,
for me, when I share in the questions and answers session,
I share from my own experiences about that issue.
And I believe that everyone of us have our own answer.
If we really understand our mind, if we really love our soul,
then we will find our own answer.
And the thing is to put it into practice.
And we are lucky.
Living in the community,
even if some of you come here for just one week.
Our teacher always said that one week is enough for you to change your life.
Challenging, eh?
Yes, he said that one week is enough for you to change your life.
And it has happened for quite many of our friends.
It is very impressive for me.
Many of them come back for a second time, a third time.
It is normal. But there are some friends just coming for one week,
and they really make good use of the time of one week
to really garden so that they can transform their garden.
So I would like to read the last paragraphs to end.
“To live in the world with your heart undisturbed by the world,
with all sorrows ended, dwelling in peace, this is the greatest happiness.
For he or she who accomplishes this, unvanquished wherever she goes,
always he is safe and happy. Happiness lives within oneself.”
Yes, happiness comes from ourselves, not from the sky.
Happiness is something that we can train ourselves to have and to be.
When I prepared the sharing this morning, I wrote down a sentence:
'Thay, I'm going to share for you."
Yes, I'm not really good at sharing Dharma talks.
But then, this is the practice as a Dharma teacher.
You are trained to give Dharma talks,
and also it's your responsibility to give Dharma talks.
And this morning, I wrote down on my notebook, 'I do this for you'.
By this I invite Thay to be here with us.
And in order to end the sharing this morning
I would like to read for you some paragraphs in one of Thay's poems
that I like a lot.
Thay called himself 'a lazy monk'.
'A lazy monk have done quite enormous things'.
Yes, for the world.
And for me, Thay is a happy person.
When being around him,
I see that in very small things,
Thay is able to be happy. Amazing!
Even the birth of a flower!
One time he walked me around his garden
just to watch the birth of the -
A plum flower was blooming, was about to bloom.
And his face, his expression, was full of joy and excitement!
And he was eighty something.
And I was twenty something.
And I was surprised by this happy, joyful, and excited old man,
watching and enjoying the birth of a flower!
That stuck in my heart all the time.
Specially whenever I feel a little bit bored,
or something.
And also we were very moved
when Thay decided to come back to the root temple and stay,
you know that?
This poem was composed by him when he was in New York, in America.
And he was asked by his brothers in the Buddhist Delegation
to go back to Vietnam to help.
To call for peace. And he knew
that he had wounds.
Even with the love and the faith in his heart,
he was not healed yet
from the wound he got
during the Vietnam war.
And in this poem, Thay was talking about the two hands.
Here are my two hands I would like to bring back for you.
You here is what Thay called the beloved one, is the Buddhist Association,
is Vietnam's people, Vietnam's country,
to whom he would like to offer his hands,
the hands of young people full of love, full of faith, full of hope.
Because at that time,
there were many young people already losing their hope.
They came and asked Thay,
whether this war would end sometime.
And even in the very dark times,
Thay felt very painful in his heart about the very long time of the war at that time
but he shared that, 'I had to breathe deeply before I answered that question,
because if I answered no, we have no hope,
I would kill the hope in the young people.'
So Thay answered in a very skillful and compassionate way to the young people:
'As the Buddha teaches, everything is impermanent.
War is impermanent.
As a community, as a sangha,
we need to cultivate and nourish our hope in our hearts.'
When I read that part, I was crying.
Because I saw how caring he was,
how hard was for him to hold the suffering in his heart,
so that he can transmit the mission,
transmit the love and the hope to the young people.
In the year 1963,
that is a time when Thay accepted the invitation to go back to Vietnam to help.
And maybe it is the last time Thay chooses to come back to Vietnam.
Maybe to rest, but it is not only resting.
We know that Thay is like
helping the root temple
by his presence, by his own body and mind residing there.
"Here are my hands
that are also my heart, my mind, my life -
all that remains.
Their sole power is having bled
on the frets of love.
Here are my hands. Let me give them back to you.
Remember, Mother taught us to love
the withered grass on tombs even so,
the blooming roses.
For them, as for everything,
love is the immaculate morning dew.
Here are my hands.
With bowed head, I give them to you.
Look, the old wounds have yet to heal.
Their blood is still fresh,
and on the fingertips, your soul may rest
as the dew rests,
glistening on the trembling blades of grass.
Here are my hands,
reborn once again but still carrying old wounds.
And here is my smile
because I never hated.
And here is my heart, my pure heart
from days gone by.
Here are my hands,
brought back to you unhealed beneath their bandages.
I pray they will not be crushed again.
And I beg the stars
to be my witness.
(Bell)
(Small bell)