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 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 some
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 become more tense, or shorter or more jagged.
Our jaw become tighter, and we've been learning how to encounter
and accompanyy and embrace unconditionally, challenging and
uncomfortable feelings.