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.
The Insight of Interbeing
Our grief with the destruction of the earth and cultures
is also the grief of the earth herself. That is why it
feels so big.
And we are a part of that
That we don't need to hold it in.
identify with it, and kind of imprison ourselves
within it, saying me I'm someone,I am angry
and I am in grief and in despair.
And we've done quite some work with climate
leaders -I'm an activist and we host retreats
for climate leaders, and
we hosted one recently near Vancouver in Canada
And, it was very interesting because it was the first time
I realized that climate despair has become a thing
thata people were identifying with
and I realized that there was a story that went with it,
and that it was really hard, people were finding it hard
to see that their despair was impermanent and ever changing
and interrelational
so I'm a student of despair in practice, and I've realized
that when I am learning to suffer with my despair
it's been really important for me not to identify with it.
but to recognize it as a seed that has been transmitted to
me and activated by my environment.
And so I trained to allow my despair
to like, evolve a little bit, to have
different threads to it. To be something fluid, something
made of non-despair elements.
Something made of multiple parts,
and this can be - even our despair inter-is, it's not a fixed thing
I've really learned that it has not helped me when I have
identified too much with my despair.
Another thing that might belong to the collective consciousnes
that might - any of us might feel, is like an energy of
restlessness, and kind of craving.
But this is very important to know
if we come to do sitting meditation and we sit down and we feel
the restlessness in our body
and like urges and impulses
craving in our feelings and body
this is also the result
of our capitalist, consumerist society
you are not enough, because you need to consume more.
And we've kind of been automated and trained - all of these inputs
are telling us that we need more to be happy.
So when in this retreat, we are sitting in stillness, not reaching
for the phone, not reaching to eat or drink something
that is an act of resistance.
When we go home, we can do the same, we can take time
maybe on the journey home how can I simplify my life.
We've lived so simply this week. We did not need much to be
happy. The presence of people was a condition of happiness.
Well hopefully for most of us, most of the time.
And hopefully the present of the forest and the trees.
for quite moments, was a condition of happiness.
But when we can be with our friends in a simple way
we don't need a lot to be happy.
Sister Hero has a good insight around the question of striving
and optimizing, kind of not-enoughness.
And we feel like society is telling us
the collective consciousness is telling us
you need to develop yourself more in order to contribute.
you need to have these skills, this and this diploma, these qualifications
And, you need to be productive.
You need to be efficient.
We've created all of these systems a kind of this crazy society
all of these screens, these e-mails and we have to learn to be
efficient, productive, Siste rHero has this questions.
When we feel that pressure,
that society is asking us to optimize but for whose benefit.
To give up our time, our energy,
Wwe may end up like losing our life, like literally spending our
time to create a skill for a specific economic process, but we may not
be living our life in the process.
We may lose our freedom, our contact with nature,
our time with friends, our ease with our body,
With the energy of mindfulness we have a chance to stop
to look deeply and to deeply reflect on our questions.
What I'm doing with my time, and energy - is it meaningful for me.
Who benefits?
Like every hour counts. Our livelihood is important.
and how we spend our time.
Who we're with.
The collective consciousness, we expose ourselves to.
There was one day in the newsroom when after drinking my glass of water
I came back round towards my desk
and
my colleagues were cursing and arguing
and [booging] someone else
and
being very aggressive about the next program.
And I just suddenly realized I'm in a toxic atmosphere.
And it was literally like that I'd probably been there like
18 months by then, drinking my water,
and I just suddenly was - what am I doing to myself.
what am I doing to myself.
Practicing mindfulness in the workplace is really important.
because you can wake up and you can see
honestly, I swear that my path out of the newsroom
began in that split second.
when I woke up to reality
of my environment.
I'm on the sixth floor of this gigantic building in Westminster
in London and I'm wasting my life.
That was quite a punch line. I didn't mean it. Okay.
The one thing I wanted to say about the path of
the five mindfulness trainings
and we heard it this morning, we read it in the text, they all begin with this
really powerful phrase. Aware of the suffering caused by
When we wake up to like what is actually going on
and what is wrong with what is going on, then immediately
there is a release of energy and intention or volition - I want to
do something about this. I vow to change my choices, my
situation.
We will now enjoy the sound of a bell.
[Bell]
When we wake up we realize that something is
suffering and then we want to understand the roots of that suffering.
Why has it come to be?
In simple ways and in deep ways.
If I
am watching something late at night and I am not able to
resist this automatic play on the next episode and I am
still watching something at three in the morning
and I have a headache the next day, awareness of suffering
the path that led to suffering
is very clear.
It's really good to be mindful.
Maybe we should have a pop-up on certain apps and things so that
we have a certain awakening in the moment, so we know
what to change in order to do it differently.
And this is the case on the personal level and also
on the collective level.
Our way of consuming may water our seeds of fear and anxiety.
Maybe there can be a different way that we read the news.
or we can put a shorter timer on social media.
Maybe the choices we make about how we spend our time
who we spend our time with. Are the people we surround ourselves
with - lifting us up? or pulling us down.
When we look deeply into suffering and we see it deeply
right away we see the path out of suffering.
So we see that there is something we can do to
make a difference.
We see the cause of suffering and what we can do.
So Thay, he describes it as the path that led to suffering
he called it the path of suffering
and the path of happiness and wellbeing.
Some of you may recognize this as the four noble truths.
So what we are doing here with the five mindfulness trainings
represent a path that is leading us through and out of suffering.
And so we may ...
A very important point about this
so underline it - you may have realized it already
the function or the purpose, the intention of mindfulness
is not to make an unliveable world
liveable.
Mindfulness is not to help us survive and unsurvivable situation.
For me in the newsroom, mindfulness began by helping me stay true
to myself in really difficult days. And really painful moments.
But mindfulness carries a seed of insight in it, until the day when
that mindfulness [says' you;re in a toxic environment, get
out of here. It didn't say stay in this toxic environment
and breathe. And this is really important because sometimes
mindfulness is introduced into different sectors to kind of enable
toxicity, to enable an unsurvivable working environment.
or an unsurvivable ....well
even military environment, there Is now mindfulness in the military.
But that's another story.
When we practice the whole teaching.
When we practice the full} scope of mindfulness
as expressed in the five mindfulness trainings
it carries the seed of a way out in it
for ourselves and [ ] We don't perpetuate unjust
and toxic ways of being.
I need to say that - thank you.
So, we may ...how do you say this
When I first came here, I really had this question
how can I contribute to a better wordl
and at the begining my answer was I will transform - [ ]But
I started to understand this question much more
deeply. How can I
act to contribute to a better world.
How can I act to contribute to a better world.
If you like we can call this a koan. And in koans
we ___ to investigate our terms.
How can I act?
Hopefully this week ___ of who we are.
That we are
inter connected to all that is
we represent a lineage of ancestors
our action now is action that will impact our descendents
and we are deeply affected by our environment.
collected around us.
Sometimes we can suffer a lot with the question
if we make the I too small. and we limit ourselves
to this body.
Little me. In fact we are a big me. We are a vast
interbeing self.
So if we are suffering in this question, we may be caught
in who I am.
And this is also an interesting thing about collective action
from that which we will get to.
From that but it's very important the word next to it.
Act - how are we understanding action. And the theme of this
retreat is love in action.
In Buddhism we have a word for action.
and a very clear understanding of it.
We understand it as being threefold. Action has three
aspects.
You can call it triple-action.
It's our thinking, our speaking and our bodily action.
It's very interesting that our thoughts are our actions.
Our teacher used to say that our thoughts carry our signature.
Our thoughts are hatred, resentment anger go out into the world
and carry our signature.
Our thoughts of love, tolerance compassion also go out into
the world and carry out signature.
He gave the image of like a kind of candle
and the candle is kind of radiating our thoughts our speech and our action
just like a candle radiates light and warmth.
Right now in this hall action is happening
we are radiating an energy of peace, of presence, of enquiry
of stillness together.
And outside as well.
We are radiating that energy and just like the candle
it also receives its own warmth which is what melts the wax
so the wick can burn. It receives its own
warmth and it is lit by its own light.
So in the same way, we receive like the food of our
thoughts, the food of our speaking and the food of
our bodily action is coming
back into us. And is creating
an impact.
Thay said a really interesting thing. He said sometimes we say something
that we didn't mean to say.
Maybe it was only partly true.
And quite quickly it might come back to us and we get what we call
the retribution of that and we have to apologize or explain ourselves.
And if the candle represents time maybe that happens quite soon afterwards.
When a particular speech, act came back
And, he said, there may be some acts of thinking, speech or our
body that come back later.
Like perhaps five, ten, twenty years later.
So its coming back a bit further down the candle.
and with some actions, it will come back after our candle
and this becomes the collective retribution in our society
and for our descendants.
So how we think is important and this is in the first mindfulness
training
can we have thoughts of compassion of tolerance, not of fanatiscism
and hatred. How we speak is important.
Can we speak in a way that lifts each other up rather than cuts
each other down.
And the way we act is very important.
The strongest kind of actions that we may be taking , may not be the
ones that we necessarily think are the ones.
So for example, Brother Dao Phang was sharing yesterday, that the
action of 400, 500 young people walking in peace and freedom on the
New Hamlet hill, that action
has gone out into the world.
No one can take it away.
Here is a thought for you.
A hundred years from now, would you like people in the
world to be walking fast, stressed chasing after some kind of
economic illusion.
Or would you like them to be walking in peace and freedom
in nature, listening to the natural world, listening to each other,
listening to the suffering that is present in themself and on this planet.
And if we want future generations to have this kind of spiritual quality,
this kind of freedom, this way of being - in the future
we need to start patterning it now. Us doing it now together.
in this retreat, is making it immediately more likely that
this will be happening in a hundred years time.
If we go from this retreat and we choose a stretch of our
daily life where we will walk in peace and freedom, listening
to the earth, listening to the suffering of the world.
That immediately we are making it more probably that it will happen
and be available for future generations.
a hundred years from now. It is a very powerful action.
If we lose the capacity the walk in peace and freedom, there is no doubt
that future generations will not have the capacity to walk in
peace and freedom.
This is the Buddhist understanding of action. What we do and how we
are counts. And this gets really interesting because the kind
of future we want to create we are creating every day.
with our body, with our choices, with our way
of being.
So for example, another kind of bodily action that
is very important is our way of consuming.
Thay had a kind of way of particular analysis of what is going on.
in our economy, society right now.
He said that we are a culture of consuming that is overconsuming
consuming too much because we are consuming to cover up
our suffering because we do not know how to suffer.
You can imagine -very easily see all the industries that we have,
to help us cover up our suffering as a society. Because as a society
we don't know how to suffer.
And he said, that the great power of reclaiming our right to be happy
our right to be happy with few conditions, with simple living,
with not consuming much,
is a resistance to that collective culture of consuming that is
destorying the planet.
If we know how to suffer and how to be happy - we don't need to
consume as society is pushing us to consume.
Do you see that? It's a really intersting thing, because right off
the way, our own practice of mindfulness, handling our
own painful feelings, and giving ourselves the right to be happy
claiming our happiness, reclaiming it, has a direct alternative economic
vision and impact. So our mindfulness has something to do with economic
structures that we are living in.
We can resist the culture of consuming if we know how to be happy
not through consuming but through being with the painful
feelings. Accompanying them.
Taking care of our time. Finding ways to be with others. To be
with nature.
So according to the Buddhist principles of action, changing ourselves, and
changing the system, is two sides of the same reality.
There is no system that is outside of the humans that created it.
When we as humans can transform ourselves, the system is changing.
And that is why we could also say that the five mindfulness trainings
are like a Plum Village vision for a systems change.
And it's very interesting, we don't say we reduce the system to personal change
we don't say that we are not challenging and confronting larger power structures
but we are not diminishing or denying ourselves the agency and freedom that
we do have as awakened humans.
We won't let them take away that agency and freedom.
There's another thing I would like to say.
about action
When we want to challenge the system that we live in
the most powerful way we can challenge it, is by bringing
a different energy
to that system.
So we don't use the tools of the system to fight that system
we find ways to step outside of it
and offer a completely different energy and way of being
that's a radical challenge to
a system. That's our spiritual resistance.
So the question for each one of us Is
how are we taking care of the spiritual energy
in our daily life. How are we keeping that flame,
the fire of the bodhiccita of intention in our heart
I want to say freedom is a practice that we will need
to keep alive, each week,
each day, moving on from this retreat.
And our connection to our own internal kind of spiritual
dimension throught the energy of mindfulness is what will help us
keep our freedom from the system we are in and ultimately create
a different kind of future.
Thay when he said these words we create a community of resistance
he understood all the forces at play - he literally had this line
he said that we to reclaim our sovereignty from the system
of our own creation.
And he said that we do that by creating communities of
resistance. Where we create a healthy collective consciosness
same good, brave, noble, bold intention and aspiration.
where we are nourishing ourselves body and mind.
So the question for you all, moving forward from this retreat
how will you weave and build your communities of resistance
around you. Who will your
allies be? How will you create community?
We can create community in our places of work.
We can make our time of working with other people
real encounters between human beings.
Some of the quality of listening we have had in our dharma sharing
there is no reason why we can't listen to our colleagues
like that. Even the difficult ones.
I have experience"! It is possible.
And it's amazingly powerful.
So maybe our workplace can become more community spirited.
Maybe we can be really intentional about who we live with. where we live.
And live with people that go in the direction, help us, resist the mainstream
and go in the direction we want to go in.
More real, more authentic and that kindof
embody the world we want to be possible
for future generations.
in our way of consuming
our way of spending our time, our way of acting.
Acting to protect and to save.
rather than to extract, to exploit.
destroy.
And what is interesting about our community of resistance
as you've discovered this week because we are not afraid of suffering
being with suffering as a community
there;s a kind of mechanism that is happening
that the more we are with suffering the more compassion we generate.
So communities of resistance that are awake to suffering are naturally
generating compassion. And we heard also
in the Q&A yesterday that maybe compassion and non-violence can
neutralize - have an effect of neutralizing
the struggle and fight
being with suffering, generating compassion
in the face of suffering - that kind of compassion can be
very powerful. In Buddhism we speak about compassion being
as fierce as thunder.
It's a powerful energy - the energy of compassion.
And the energy of compassion can create and build.
And the energy when we act and resist and respond to the system
with a different kind of energy
the system has greed in it, the system has craving in it
hatred, discrimination in it.
We want to create a different kind of energy so that energy of compassion
and non-violence is a powerful alternative.
It is not weak, but it carries within it the possibility for regenerative
new ways of being. in the ways that Hatred and discrimination can only
destroy, but compassion can create.
And one time Thay was asked why the monastics don't go on more protests
and he didn't go to more peace conferences
And Thay said, we want to demonstrate that another way of living is possible.
We want to embody and create an alternative way of being.
That's what you are all tasting and experiencing.
now. That's a vision that Thay had.
I want hundreds of thousands of young people to experience
something different.
To show that another world is possible.
And that is very powerful.
It is as powerful, more powerful than tearing down.
We build up again and show that something else
can be created.
Thay said that we can't change the world if we can't change
our way of seeing, our way of thinking, our consciousness.
And the shortest way we can say about the right way of seeing and thinking
is the Insight of Interbeing.
With the Insight of Interbeing we see that
life is precious, the world is precious, humans are previous,
the planet is precious, we see that the -we are deeply connected to
the earth - and we are deeply connected to the humans around us.
And when we can keep this insight alive, with the five mindfulness trainings
we are cultivating a whole new way of seeing and being in the world.