Bell
Dear community, we are August the 10th in the year 2023,
and we are celebrating, savoring the last day of our Wake Up retreat,
"Love in Action", here in the Upper Hamlet,
in the Still Water meditation hall.
I'm having an interesting moment sitting here.
When we first started creating youth retreats, about 15 years ago,
it was a real challenge to try and find enough young people
to have a retreat.
And first there was forty, then the next year there was like 65,
and then I remember the year we hit 100,
and we were so excited that we had 100 registrations!
And we went to report to Thay. This must have been around 2010.
Thay, there's a hundred young people in Europe
that want to learn about mindfulness.
Can you believe it ?
And he was like - well done!
And then, we started to create the Wake Up movement.
And I said (to Thay) it's a little bit overwhelming!
And he said, and his eyes lit up with sparkles,
he's like "excellent, it should feel overwhelming!"
and then I'm sitting here and I don't know how many hundreds
of you there are, but it feels little overwhelming
so I guess Thay's smiling with a sparkle in his eyes,
and be careful what you wish for, because it may come true.
I hope that's going to make it easier, but hey, I think speaking in front of
spiritual friends
is both challenging and wonderful, because on the one hand
I feel I want to share my heart with you all,
and on the other, of course, I have the same feeling that we all do.
of whether I can be enough in this moment.
But I will share from my, my joy my experience and my practice
and that is my best, so, we will see.
We had some little flowers here thank you, thank you.
Emotional support flowers, we also have an emotional
support cello, that we might, that I might need to call on.
I was 21 when I first came to Plum Village
and I was one of the people who as soon as there was
a chance to receive the five mindfulness trainings, I
wanted to do it. And I was here for three weeks that summer
and I was also one of the people who was like I am going to wait
until the last week.
So I know some of us have been here through the summer
and have received the five mindfulness trainings
this morning, and some of us are here for the first time
and we also made that commitment
and I have to say, getting on the train in Saint-Foy,
with the five mindfulness trainings,
kinda in my pockets, in my back pack
My life was different. It just was!
I felt that I had a path. I felt that I knew what was important to me.
I felt that what the experience was that I can't fall that far anymore.
It felt like the mindfulness trainings were a safety net or something.
Like, I'm held in their embrace that has been my experience.
And although I was sharing with my dharma discussion family
like the path of the five mindfulness trainings is not exactly
like a straight highway,
its more like this, and thats definitely been my experience.
That it has been an adventure, an experiment, a work in progress
a challenge and also a training, like really a training.
And as many of us know whatever kind of training we do, we learn
by making mistakes.
And by trying things out,
and by realizing ... oops, that was not in alignment or
I have strayed far off my path at this point
But it was wonderful and has been wonderful to feel that they are part of my life
and I don't know if your facilitators shared with you
but the dharma name we get with our five mindfulness trainings
is the dharma name for your life.
So even if you become monastics your monastic name is not as important
as your five mindfulness trainings name.
because we are kind of born into our spiritual path with this practice
and with this training.
And so this morning, definitely more than a hundred of us,
maybe more than a hundred and fifty possibly closer to two hundred of us
across the different hamlets.
made a passionate, wholehearted commitment to take the insight
and practises of the five mindfulness trainings
into our lives
and so when we get on the train tomorrow, car or however we'r getting
home.
these mindfulness trainings will be with us
and even if we didn't make a formal commitment to receive them
please take the piece of paper with you.
They can penetrate our life because in a way they
encapsulate everything we have been experiencing
together in this retreat.
And,
these trainings are, I guess, the kind of Plum Village blueprint for
changing the world.
They are nothing less than our full vision for the kind of
loving action that can transform society and the future.
Someone asked me in the earth retreat earlier in this year
I find the Plum Village teachings on the earth and climate so
fascinating, but do you have some kind of manifesto?
or something.
I said yeh - we have the five mindfulness trainings.
And the person was like, no I didn't mean that.
And I was like, oh I mean that.
Because they are applied, they live they are kind of mult-dimensional.
Each one of them is about bringing the energy of awakening and love
directly into the heart of our daily lives, our relationship and our society.
And so, as we take the practice home, maybe you go home and
somebody comes up to you and says, how was your retreat?
And you say ... brilliant, great wonderful.
I'm going to practice meditation every day.
And we may have a tendency to think that
the most easily applicable thing we can take from this retreat
is ten minutes sitting every day.
And we may think, that's going to be my aspiration, my intention
my volition, I'm going to put it all into that.
and that is good,
but I feel we can be more ambitious then that, and I say that because
if we only do 10 minutes of sitting meditation a day, and then the
rest of our life is the same,
the transformation will not be very radical.
But what we can see in each one of these amazingly challenging
and inspiring trainings in the five mindfulness trainings is
that they're about far more than sitting meditation.
In fact, as a relatively active person,
when I left Plum Village I, found it really hard to do sitting meditation
I think it was very rare that I made time.
was able to make time to do sitting meditation in my daily life.
But, my life was utterly transformed.
by the five mindfulness trainings.
One thing I learned, I used to sit on public transport and
be present for the people around me, and present for
my feelings.
And honestly, I think I got more kind of shift in my
perspective and way of living in the way I sat on buses in
central London then I would have done by sitting on my cushion.
because I lived like many of us a very
active and hyperstimulated life.
I was juggling a job in journalism and a masters degree.
Like too much input, so if I sat on a cushion all I
heard or saw was just all the inputs
but when I was in relation with the world,
following my breathing and being in contact with my body
it's like I opened up a whole new way of experiencing life
and that was really transformative for me.
So as we think about what we might want to take away from
this retreat, i'm gonna sort of reflect back to some of the
things that we've been experiencing
and we can see for ourselves which of these elements
do I want to incorporate in my daily life.
One of the things, perhaps the most important thing
we've been doing on this retreat is resting.
relaxing
and spending time in silence
both with people but also with nature
and so we may ask ourselves
in my daily life, am I making time to rest
So resting without screens
resting wihtout maybe headphones
am I able to rest and listen to my body
and how might we incorporate a practice of resting in our daily lifes
So those of us that work from home we have a great chance to do relaxation
after lunch.
Because no one can see you.
So, you can find the Plum Village App or your favorite relaxation teachers
and you can listen to a relaxation
and make it a part of your working day.
We can make a commitment to ourselves, a promise to ourselves
to spend more time in our nearest park, or to use
our days off from study or work to actively go out into
nature.
And we can also , like, learning from this experience of being
with people, in nature, is great.
How can we invite our friends and organize to have more time
in nature together.
That is actively cultivating ourselves, our body and mind
our awakening and also our resistance.
What I mostly want to talk to you today
about is, spiritual resistance.
How the choices we make about how we live our life
are a fundamental, deep form, or resistance.
to collective consciousness and to society.
So choosing to rest in our super busy world is a form of resistance
we don't need to consume, we don't need to do,
we're gonna be in the way that is the future we would
like to see.
more simple, more connected and more whole in ourselves,
not relying on external things.
like consuming and doing to be happy.
Another thing we've been doing on this retreat has been stopping
and looking deeply. We have had a chance to step back
from our life, to step outside
the constant
pressures that we are under
to kind of take stock to reflect a little bit and to listen
and so the question about how we could take this kind of
stopping back with us could be
is there a practice that you can take in your life where
every day has at least one moment of stopping in it.
So when I went back from Plum Village, the something
that I chose was drinking a glass of water from the water
cooler at work.
And my work was in a newsroom
so it was a very overstimulated environment, but I wanted to
keep this connection to Plum Village into my spiritual life
and the spiritual dimension of my being because being in a -
I was in the politics department of the newsroom -
so its probably like the least, a very not spiritual place.
But I was determined, I was there for ethical reasons because
that ethical news was possible
thats another story.
So I chose that the moment that I drank water was the moment
when I would be deeply into touch with my spiritual life
and I recited the poem that we have here in plum village
for drinking water, many of us
know this poem, but if we are here for the first time
you might have just seen it near a water tap somewhere
and this poem goes like this
Now, with the collective consciousness I don't have
the first word.
Water, thank you.
My brain is a social brain.
Water comes from high mountain sources,
water runs deep in the earth
miraculously water comes to us and sustains all life.
My gratitude is filled to the brim.
I was working in the newsroom in Spring 2003
I was a peace activist and it was at the outbreak of the Iraq war
And every time I went to the water cooler, I recited this poem.
There were screens all around me that had a live screen from the war
zone. And this was my act of resistance. This was my resolve
my heart alive, to keep my hear open and to stay in touch with
the beauty and wonder of life
so that I could see clearly the destruction and injustice of war.
It is very interesting to practice mindfulness in the workplace
so I invite you to try it out.
You could choose drinking water, you could choose maybe if you go
to a place of work or study, you could choose some part of
the distance when you are transitioning from your home life
to go int work, you can take 200 meteres, and you can say
to yourself, I will walk as a free person, as my whole
self including my spiritual aspect from this lamppost
to that pedestrian crossing and you make a resolve,
I will do this.
So this was another thing I did.
Across the center of London
I had my anti-war umbrella. In London it always rains
except recently but that's a different story.
Sorry. No diversion.
I had my peace umbrella, in London everywhere. Everyone about 15 years
ago still wore black in the city and had black umbrellas,
so my umbrellas was white and it had the words peace that I
had stencilled on to it.
And I got lots of reactions as I would walk through the city
on my way to the newsroom, but that was my almost resistance.
And when I can to a certain place near a cathedral, I chose a stretch
that was quite nice, right in the heart of the city and I said
I will walk as a free person, free from my anger about the war
free from my fear about the days work ahead,
free from the fights, I will walk as a free human being on this
beautiful planet earth and I did this for 200 meters
and these were delicious 200 meters, and now whenever I
think of London, my heart goes right back to this particular stretch
and whenever I have a chance to go there, I like to revisit
my corner of these few hundred yards, that become like a
deep refuge for me because when we make
a commitment to do that what's amazing is
our whole body remembers the feeling, our whole
body remembers, I feel peaceful and free here
so even if my mind is really stressed, about
what was happening or about what I need to do
that step up onto the pavement those two steps through this
gate, the step to the right with the two trees,
all the signals where, you are peaceful, you are fee
you are a free person.
So this is another way that we can take the practice
home, that we can,
take something as simple as walking to be an act of
resistence and an act of freedom right in the heart
of our daily life.
I was walking in the rush hour the people were often
overtaking me, because I had a certain pace.
It wasn't as slow as slow walking but there was a certain pace
that I found could tasted free to me. And everyone was like
overtaking me.
And literally, each step felt like an act of resistance.
I don't agree with the direction that my society is going in and
I will express my resistance with my body, with each step.
And I reclaimed my freedom
from this rat race, from this collective consciousness.
Another thing we have learned to do on this retreat is to be
present with discomfort, with discomfort in the body,
discomfort in our feelings, discomfort in the mind.
And
I think these things are changing now but at least this was not
something that I had a chance to learn at school, it was only
something I had a chance to learn at age 21 when I came
to Plum Village.
Many of you
have a lot of emotional maturity. I feel that I'm the kind of -
I'm a millenial and I know that many of us here
are Gen Z - so we're possibly slightly different generations.
But it's wonderful to see that the emotional intelligence is there
in the young generation. That we are finding ways to understand
the landscape of our emotions.
And we hope that over the last few days, we've learned something
really tangible, felt ways that we can be with a painful feeling
when it comes up.
We've been learning how to name it, or even beyond naming
how to feel it, in the body,
how it might effect our breathing.
Our breathing becomes more tense, or shorter or more jagged.
Our jaw becomes tighter, and we've been learning how to encounter
and accompany and embrace unconditionally, challenging and
uncomfortable feelings that come up.
And,
just that this is a really great skill to have.
I feel that as a human being when we can be with and master some
of the most painful feelings that we have, it's honestly, close to a
superpower, kind of. It allows us to have agency, to have freedom
to have a way out, of some really difficult situations that we will
be encountering in our life.
To be able to feel the feel, feel the emotions and the painful feelings
but, not be overwhelmed by them.
Because we have an energy of mindfulness, we hold on to
our breathing, we hold onto our felt sense of our physical body.
Something as simple as feeling our hands, or feeling our toes.
We find a way to be and breathe through difficult feelings.
And what we've found on this retreat I'm thinking, I'm sure in every
dharma sharing circle group, is that when we can be with a
difficult feeling, it allows us to be authentic. We can be real.
We can share our whole self because we're not afraid of it
And we've been able to speak our truth in our dharma sharing
circle, and we've been training how to listen to other people's uncomfortable
feelings and to accompany and offer that spiritual friendship and support.
And this also a kind of superpower.
To be able to show up for our friends
without fear, but with a real strong, and loving presence.
And that we are also taking home with us tomorrow.
When we are with our friends and when they are having a difficult
moment, we know how to come back to our breathing, we know how
to feel the reflection of their suffering in our own body.
Take care of it there and be with them, not to change it in any way
but to be not alone.
We've been learning how to be together, even in suffering.
And this is so important for our generation, because we know that
the path ahead will be challenging for us. So learning how to suffer is
a really important skill and training.
And this brings us to something really important, which is, something
that Br. Phap Huu touched on in the first talk, that mindfulness is not
just to make us feel better.
Many of us may have come to mindfulness through some kind
of wellbeing program or because someone said you can take care
of your mental health with mindfulness so please practice
mindfulness to be well.
And there are some offerings of mindfulness that only go that
far. But in deep mindfulness,
authentic mindfulness, original mindfulness, real mindfulness,
I don't know - whatever this thing is that we do here, that
has ancient roots, more than 2,000 years old, in our kind of
mindfulness, we don't just practice mindfulness to feel well.
We practice mindfulness to understand our suffering and
to find a way out, for ourselves, for our loved ones, and for our
society. So deep in the DNA of our kind of mindfulness, is a kind
of radical transformation.
A way out, changing things.
[Bell]
We are leaving this retreat with a spiritual path.
Path.
And it has something to do with suffering and it has something to
do with happiness.
Suffering , illbeing,
Happiness, illbeing
We're learning how to handle painful feelings and suffering
and we have been very actively musically, joyfully, learning how to
generate happiness. These are two really important skills.
Sometimes we may think that happiness only comes from
outside. And we may sort of outsource our happiness ...
oh you know because the conditions are not enough, I can't be happy.
So we kind of give up our agency, give up our freedome to be happy
by making it someone else or something else's responsibility.
And here we reclaim our power, and we say that it is possible to learn to train ~
to create a happy moment for ourself and for the people around us.
In Buddhism we are not afraid of suffering. We're ready to name it.
To call it out, to look at it head on.
And I think that on this retreat many of you are also
deeply aware and awake to suffering in the world.
One sister reflected to me
sometimes it might be that in the collective consciousness
right now,
we think that we have the right to suffering
we have the right to suffering
because the situation is so bad
in every aspect.
But we don't think we have the right to be happy.
It's quite interesting - think about that for a moment.
We allow ourselves to suffer but we don't allow ourselves to
be happy.
That's a bit of a koan for us. Maybe its' not true.
But we can investigate that a little bit, why we might
think it is. And perhaps it has something to do
with the collective consciousness that surrounds us and we'll go into
that in a little bit.
Our teacher said that learning how to suffer is an art and a training and
yesterday in the Q&A there was a really interesting question
I think it was the second question about on the one hand we know that
we are enough, and we alrady are what we want to become
and we can feel complete and whole
but sometimes with the energy of mindfulness or professional settings
we become aware that we are lacking in some areas.
and we want to train or to cultivate
And I really appreciated this question
because both are true. There is a kind of energy in mindfulness.
that when we wake up to for example our habits
or the thoughts and feelings that are coming up in us
we may want right away to do something, to change
the situation, there's a kind of dynamism. On the one
hand we accept it totally on the other hand we see
the possibility for change.
things are impermanent - we can effect things.
So actually in Buddhism, the spirit of training, cultivating
is really, really important, and i think that the one skill
that I've really got better at in the monastery because
I was the nearer of the four is how to suffer.
And the immediate result of learning how to suffer
is that you are also actually directly learning how to be happy
because for me the obstacle for my happiness was my suffering
and the compost in my suffering has given me more joy.
But it's really interesting, because it's not that my suffering has
neccesarily gone away,
But that I've learned to be with it differently.
And this is something our teacher said, to be aware of the misconception
that we somehow might need to take our suffering out of us
put it down or take it out that I've learned that the way
I can be with it, because my suffering is kind of real
in some sense, because it's felt, how can I be with it.
And ye, for me what I've learned is that my,
my suffering is not something kind of fixed, it's a bit more like
a river. And this is really interesting to kind of unpack a little bit.
So when we talk about taking care of our suffering. The mind is an
embodied mind. So we're taking care of our mind and we're taking
care of our body at the same time.
They're not two different things.
This is really important.
How we are living in our body, how we are taking care of body
how we're eating, acting, consuming
has a direct link also to our suffering.
And, our suffering may kind of reflect, reflect the collective,
And this is what I have kind of discovered.
That, my suffering has quite a bit to do with the suffering
of my family.
LIke many of us I have a strong seed of despair
I also have another one of fear and anxiety.
I have another one that's a little more like sorrow, or
melancholy.
And, when I've learned how to suffer with them, I've learned not to
see them as mine alone.
But to see them as something that belongs to a river of
ancestors. And so when I'm taking care of it, I'm taking care of it
on behalf of my father, his father, and grandfather and grandmother,
and other grandfather, and other grandmother.
So I would like to give you this image of our emotions being this
river, kind of being fed by different inputs, so that the lineage that
comes from our ancestors and somewhat in the body, and
so from our childhood and our nurturing, and there are also
the inputs from our society.
From kind of collective consciousness.
And our way of consuming.
So one of the interesting things about this week is that
we have consumed a differend kind of consciousness.
I think the kind of screen consumption, has probably
gone down by like 90%.
We have been with a lot of non-violence, a lot of compassion
and good will.
A lot of presence rather than distraction.
We've had healthy good - very particular kinds of the day
I don't know if this is normal for you to have three healthy
regular meals may be very new for our body and
our body may be feeling good aobut it.
WE've had a different kind of experience about our own
consciousness, because our own good seeds, have been
triggered, while we've been here they've been kind of activated.
Each of us, our seed of compassion our seed of stillness, our seed of joy
in different ways.
So what we have been kind of immersing ourselves in
is what Thay calls, community
of resistence.
WE have given ourselves the chance to experience something difference
this week, and to see how it feels.
And all the insight that we've had about our own, suffering
our other's suffering, our families
suffering, about different decisions and choices, we have to make, is
because we have given our consciousness, a really deep
kind of bath, in a different environment.
So to recap something we were learning this week, we were learning
about the different kinds of fuel.