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Bell

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Dear community, we are August 
the 10th in the year 2023,

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and we are celebrating, savoring
the last day of our Wake Up retreat,

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"Love in Action", here 
in the Upper Hamlet,

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in the Still Water meditation hall.

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I'm having an interesting 
moment sitting here.

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When we first started creating
youth retreats, about 15 years ago,

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it was a real challenge to try and
find enough young people

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to have a retreat.

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And first there was forty, then
the next year there was like 65,

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and then I remember 
the year we hit 100,

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and we were so excited that
we had 100 registrations!

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And we went to report to Thay.
This must have been around 2010.

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Thay, there's a hundred 
young people in Europe

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that want to learn about mindfulness.

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Can you believe it?

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And he was like - well done!

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And then, we started to 
create the Wake Up movement.

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And I said (to Thay) it's a little 
bit overwhelming!

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And he said, and he lit up with sparkles,

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excellent, it should feel overwhelming!

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and then I'm sitting here and I
don't know how many hundreds

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of you there are, overwhelming
so I guess Thay's smiling with

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a sparkle in his eyes, be careful what
you wish for, because it may come true.

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I hope that's going to make it easier,
but hey I think speaking in front of

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spiritual friends, and

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is both challenging and wonderful,
because on the one hand

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I feel I want to share my heart
with you all,

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and on the other, I have the
same feeling that we all do.

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of whether I can be enough
in this moment.

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But I will share from my, my joy
my experience and my practice

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and that is my best.
We will see.

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We had some little flowers here
thank you, thank you.

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Emotional support flowers,
we also have an emotional

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support cello, that we might
need to call on.

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I was 21 when I first came 
to Plum Village

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and I was one of the people
who as soon as there was

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a chance to receive the five
mindfulness trainings, I

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wanted to do it. And I was
here for three weeks that summer]

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]and I was also one of the people
who was like I am going to wait

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until the last week.

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So I know some have
been here through the summer

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and have received the five
mindfulness trainings

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this morning, and some of us
are here for the first time

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and we also made that commitment
and I have to say, getting on the train

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in some form, with the five mindfulness
trainings in my pocket, in some form

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in my back pack, my life was different.
It just was!

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I felt that I had a path.
I felt that I knew what was important to me.

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I felt that what the experience was
I can't fall that far anymore.

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It felt like the mindfulness trainings
were a safety net or something.

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Like, I'm held in their embrace
that has been my experience.

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And although I was sharing
with my dharma sharing famiy

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like the path of the five mindfulness
trainings is not exactly

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`like a straight highway,

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its more like this, and thats
definitely been my experience.

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That it has been an adventure,
an experiment, a work in progress

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a challenge and also a training,
like really a training.

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And as many of us know whatever
kind of training we do, we learn

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by making mistakes.

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And by trying things out,

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and by realizing ... oops, 
that was not in alignment or

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I have strayed far off my path
at this point

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But it was wonderful and has been wonderful to
feel that they are part of my life

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and I don't know if your facilitators
shared with you

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but the dharma name we get
with our five mindfulness trainings

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is the dharma name for your life.

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So even if you become monastcs
your monastic name is not as important

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as your five mindfulness trainings name.

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because we are kind of born into our
spiritual path with this practice

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and with this training.

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And so this morning, definitely
more than a hundred of us,

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maybe more than a hundred and fifty
possibly closer to two hundred of us

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across the different hamlets.

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made apassionate, wholehearted
commitment to take the insight

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and practises of the five mindfulness
trainings

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into our lives

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and so when we get on the train 
tomorrow, car or however we'r getting

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home.

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these mindfulness trainings
will be with

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and even if we didn't make a formal
commitment to receive them

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please take the piece of paper
with you.

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They can penetrate our life
because in a way they

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encapsulate everything we
have been experiencing

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together in this retreat.

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And,

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these trainings are, I guess, the 
kind of Plum Village blueprint for

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changing the world.

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They are nothing less than 
our full vision for the kind of

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loving action that can transform
society and the future.

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Someone asked me in the
earth retreat earlier in this year

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I find the Plum Village teachings
on the earth and climate so

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fascinating, but do you have
some kind of manifesto?

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or something.

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I said yeh - we have the
five mindfulness trainings.

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And the person was like, no I
didn't meet that.

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And I was like, oh I mean that.

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Because they are applied, they live
they are kind of mult-dimensional.

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Each one of them is about bringing
the energy of awakening and love

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directly into the heart of our daily 
lives, our relationship and our society.

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And so, as we take the practice
home, maybe you go home and

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somebody comes up to you and
says, how was your retreat?

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And you say ... brilliant, great
wonderful.

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I'm going to practice meditation
every day.

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And we may have a tendency to
think that

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the most easily applicable thing
we can take from this retreat

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is ten minutes sitting every day.

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And we may think, that's going to
be my aspiration, my intention

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my volition, I'm going to put 
it all into that.

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and that is good,

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but I feel we can be more ambitious
then that, and I say that because

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if we only do 10 minutes of sitting
meditation a day, and then the

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rest of our life is the same,

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the transformation will not be very radical.

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But what we can see in each one of
these amazingly challenging

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and inspiring trainings in the
five mindfulness trainings is

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that they're about far more 
than sitting meditation.

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In fact, as a relatively active person,

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when I left Plum Village I, found
it really hard to do sitting meditation

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I think it was very rare that I made time.

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was able to make time to do sitting
meditation in my daily life.

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But, my life was utterly transformed.

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by the five mindfulness trainings.

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One thing I learned, I used to
sit on public transport and

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be present for the people
around me, and present for

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my feelings.

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And honestly, I think I got
more kind of shift in my

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perspective and way of living
in the way I sat on buses in

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central london then I would
have done by sitting on my cushion.

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because I lived like many of us 
a very

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active and hyperstimulated life.

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I was juggling a job in journalism and
a masters degree.