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 he lit up with sparkles,
excellent, it should feel overwhelming!
and then I'm sitting here and I don't know how many hundreds
of you there are, overwhelming so I guess Thay's smiling with
a sparkle in his eyes, 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, and
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, 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. 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 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 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 some form, with the five mindfulness trainings in my pocket, in some form
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 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 sharing famiy
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 monastcs 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