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 apassionate, 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
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 meet 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 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 alittle 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 no 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
miracously 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 workplac
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 into 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 taste 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 feeling, discomfort