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
that are feeding the river of our body and mind.
And, the fuel has something to do
with how we feel, so
we learned about four kinds
-food and drink (we used to call
it edible foods) and i can't write
the word edible on the board
so I'll just say food and drink.
Sense impressions -
So the screens and the music
but also like the noise of the city
we give ourselves a break from that.
The fourth one (sic) my volition or
intention
we've been exposed to a different
kind of volition and intention this
week an intention to live differently
to build a different future, to
be with each other in a different way.
And this other one that I am talking
about now is consciousnness.
exposing ourselves to a different
consciousness.
So the inputs this week have
been different, and that's
why our feeling now is different.
This is your power and this
is your freedom.
When we go home from this
retreat, you are the master
you can choose how you will consume
thse different things, how you will
guard yourself, how you will
protect yourself.
How you will resist.
We want society to go in
a different direction, and
all ours choices around these
things are a chance to resist
and in our own life to embody
the different directions - to claim
our freedom.
And it takes training, right.
We have had it surrounded.
And going out from this retreat
we will be encountering a really
good intention, and then the
absolute reality.
of our habit, how we usuallY
spend our evenings, how we
usually spend our mornings.
How we spend our free time.
So there is some organizing
going onhere.
How could we make commitments
to organize our life so we are
eating in a different way, so
we're spending our time
differently.
When we encounter, like for example
in our, many of us this week
we've touched a deep fear, inside
or a deap anger and one piece
of the Buddhist understanding
of consciousness, that we want
to give you, is that consciousness
is both individual and collective.
When you feel angry,
we name our anger, we allow
our anger to be there, embrace
that feeling of anger,
and we then have a chance to
ask ourselves the question
and in what way is this anger
not only mine?
So to not identify with
our anger, to not like
put ourselves in a box
and say I'm angry, I'm angry
because of this, and that
but to see, wow, my anger
at the fossil fuel companies
is a generational, societal, collective
anger. My anger at inequity and
racial injustice is a collective anger.
And we allow ourselves to recognize
that our consciosness, also belongs
to the collective consciosness.
Our fear and anxiety for our future
also its strong in the collective.
And that is why it is strong in us.
Now what is interesting about this
is that with the energy of mindfulness
because of the deep interbeing,
between our consciousness and
the collective, that is exactly where
your power lies.
That is where we have agency.
We belong to a collective. We are
intrinsic to the collective and when
we transform ourselves we transform
the collective.
This is one way we can apply
the insight of interbeing.