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(The Plum Village Online Monastery)
(Thay) Please come closer.
(Thay) Today, we have a session of questions and answers.
Those who have a question are invited to come and sit here.
We will take turns to sit on this chair,
so that everyone can see us before we ask the question.
We know that a question, a good one, can benefit many people.
Therefore, it would be more helpful to ask a question
that has to do with the practice,
to do with transformation and healing.
You may like to write down your question on a piece of paper also,
if you don't want to come up here.
But looking from here is so beautiful!
(Laughter)
So those of us who already have a question,
please come up and sit around here,
and we will take turns to sit on the chair.
The practice, according to the tradition:
Before we ask a question,
we breathe in and out three times with the sound of the bell,
and everyone is breathing with us.
Then, we take the microphone
and we ask the question.
And we know that a good question does not have to be very long.
(Laughter)
A question is not a statement.
So please, those of us who have a question already,
come and sit close to Thay and we will take turns.
And if you have written a question,
ask someone to bring it here to Brother Mountain,
who is sitting to the left of Thay.
From time to time, he will read from one of these questions.
This is your opportunity, please come.
(Thay laughing)
Let us listen to the bell and breathe before you ask the first question.
(Half Bell)
(Bell)
(Bell again)
Hi,
My question is:
How do we do when we go back to our real home?
This retreat has been really nice
But when we go to our real home?
What recommendations can you give us
to bring at home and be every second of our lives?
(Br. Mountain) Thay, the...
(Thay) Please speak in the microphone.
(Br. Mountain) If I understand correctly, the question is:
"How to bring this practice into your daily life?"
Yes?
(Repeats question in Spanish)
We just do it!
(Laughter)
Suppose when you turn on the water tap
and you see the water flowing,
you pay attention to the water.
You tell yourself that it's wonderful,
that the water has come to you,
to your kitchen, to your bathroom,
from high up in the mountains,
from deep in the earth,
and you feel grateful, you feel happy,
because the water is there for you.
That is how to apply the teaching of mindfulness
in our daily life.
When you brush your teeth,
you may like to focus your attention on brushing your teeth,
not thinking!
Because you have the water, the toothpaste, the brush,
and you still have teeth to brush!
(Laughter)
I am over 80 and every time I brush my teeth,
I always say:
"It's wonderful at this age to still have some teeth to brush!"
(Laughter)
And happiness can come right away.
And when you cook your breakfast, do it mindfully.
Pouring the water into the kettle, boiling the water,
every moment can be a moment of joy.
Laying the table, preparing your tea,
everything you do can be the practice of mindfulness
and can bring you joy, happiness.
You are fully present in the here and the now!
When you drive your car, you can drive it mindfully,
and enjoy every minute of driving.
When you walk from the parking lot to your school,
you do the same.
So just do it!
And you have verses to memorize
in order to brush your teeth, to sit down,
to open your window.
Every daily act can be accompanied by our breathing,
our recitation of the verse.
It's very convenient,
because people who have come before us,
they have prepared the practice for us.
And walking in a railway station, walking at the airport,
you can always enjoy walking meditation.
You do not have to set up a separate time to do meditation.
But one thing can be said:
If you have a home to yourself, in your home town,
you can create a group of practitioners, practicing together.
Every weekend you come together, to enjoy walking together,
sitting together, having tea together,
sharing the practice together.
That would be wonderful,
because that community will help you to continue the practice for a long time.
Otherwise you will be carried away
and you'll abandon the practice after few weeks.
Good luck!
(Laughter)
(Inaudible)
(Half Bell)
(Bell)
( Spanish) My question
is about the subconscious, the store, the seeds,
how mindfulness can help
to stop the wrong consumption, the toxins,
because our being is from the subconscious
to consciousness.
True consciousness.
(Br. Mountain) There is too much echo, so I can't really understand.
(Br. Mountain) Can you repeat the question?
(Translating what Br. Mountain just said into Spanish for the lady)
(Spanish )Yes, my question is...
(Br. Mountain) How can mindfulness help...
(Thay) You have to translate into English later.
(Brother) Yes.
(Spanish)... how mindfulness helps to bring out the subconscious, the mind,
to stop the toxic seeds that are in the store consciousness.
To know how to identify them.
How mindfulness can not only plant the seeds,
but stop the seeds that have already been planted.
To be more aware
of what is already inside.
(Brother) The essence of the question is:
How can mindfulness help transform the toxic seeds
or the seeds of suffering that are in the store consciousness?
Mindfulness can recognize...
the manifestation of a seed.
In fact, to be mindful is to be aware of what is going on.
So from the depth of our consciousness, called the store consciousness,
there are many seeds, good ones and negatives ones.
And every time a good seed comes up to the level of the mind
and you recognize it as a good mental formation,
like joy, brotherhood, sisterhood, forgiveness, and so on.
So mindfulness recognizes the good mental formation
that has manifested.
Mindfulness can help to keep it longer for your nourishment and healing.
You continue to breathe or walk
and maintain the energy of love,
or happiness, or joy, or brotherhood, alive
as long as you want.
That is what you do when a good seed like love, forgiveness or joy, manifests.
But when negative seed in you begins to manifest:
fear, anger, sorrow, hate, violence.
Then mindfulness helps you to recognize it:
"Hello! Good morning my fear, I know you are there,"
"I will take good care of you!"
So, the first thing mindfulness does is to recognize what is there.
"Good morning my anger, I know you are there,"
"I will take good care of you!"
And you breathe in and out mindfully,
and continue to generate the energy of mindfulness,
with which you embrace your fear, your anger.
You are protected by the energy of mindfulness,
because your fear, your anger, will not push you
to do or say things that will cause damage
to you and to the other person.
So mindfulness protects you,
if you know how to use the energy of mindfulness,
to recognize and embrace your fear, your anger, tenderly,
like a mother holding a baby.
Then mindfulness can do more.
Mindfulness can help you to look into that fear, that anger
and see what kind of roots they have.
It has come from somewhere, some wrong perceptions,
something like that.
With the practice of looking deeply into the fear, the anger,
you can recognize the roots of your anger, of your fear,
and you get an understanding of it.
Your understanding of the roots of something
will liberate you from it.
So mindfulness can do many things.
And the practice of mindful breathing, mindful walking
can help generate the energy of mindfulness,
with which you can nourish yourself, and you can heal yourself!
(Half Bell)
(Bell)
My question is personal
but it can help a lot of people.
At this moment I am feeling a lot of pain
because I am unable to follow what makes me happy,
my style of life.
What would be your message
for the people who, as me,
do want to follow a good path, a safe path
who want to follow what makes us happy
but we fight against a lot of negativity,
messages of... insanity,
but we feel that that is a wrong path.
Thank you.
(Br. Mountain) The question is:
How can we find a new path for society?
How can we find a new path
and nourish our aspiration in this society?
And what would be Thay's message for young people?
What would be Thay's encouragement for young people...
considering the society is not a very healthy place?
What can we do?
When we look at an adult
and see that that person is not happy,
we cannot believe what that person tells us about happiness,
or the path leading to happiness.
Because if the path is correct,
then the person would not be the way he or she is!
So what that person recommends us to do may not work.
Sometimes they recommend us to do something,
but they don't do it themselves!
So we have to be careful.
So we can...
we can make a decision based on our own experience.
Whatever you do that brings you true happiness,
you believe that.
That is the right thing to do.
What you say can bring you happiness and can bring the other person happiness.
We can believe in that kind of thing,
and you can continue to say things like that.
So it's much safer to base it on our own experience of life.
I think the first thing is to have a correct idea about happiness,
because everyone has an idea of happiness.
Our idea of happiness may be the obstacle for our true happiness.
So you have to look, look deeply,
and have your own idea of happiness.
Many people believe that power, fame, diplomas,
money, sensual pleasures,
can make you happy.
But when you observe,
you can see that many people...
who have plenty of these things still suffer a lot.
So you don't believe it.
You feel that when you have understanding and love in you,
you are happy.
You look around, you see people who are not so rich,
who are not powerful,
but who have plenty of understanding and compassion.
You see them happy.
So you tell yourself: that's what I want!
I want to be happy like him, like her,
and in order to do that,
I have to cultivate more understanding and compassion...
and love.
Because it's very difficult to live with a person
who cannot understand you.
You see? Very frustrating!
So you don't want to be like him, like her.
You want to be a person who has a lot of understanding.
It's very pleasant to be with someone who can understand you.
And to understand is a power.
Not money - understanding is a power.
When you love someone, if you understand him or her,
you are a true lover.
So cultivating understanding is a practice.
If you do not have the time to look deeply,
you cannot understand.
You have to understand first of all the suffering in you and the other person.
So cultivating understanding is very important.
When you have understood, love and compassion are born.
And love is another kind of power.
Love has the power to heal.
When you have true love in you, you can heal yourself
and you can help to heal the other person.
So understanding and love are two powers
and with them you can create happiness,
restore communication, reconcile.
You are determined to go in that direction,
not running after fame, power, money, sensual pleasures,
but taking your time to cultivate more understanding
and love and compassion.
Even if you live a very simple life,
you can be a very happy person.
I think the young people have the power to do it.
They don't have to follow any tradition.
They can find their own way.
They can practice true love, true understanding,
brotherhood, sisterhood,
in order to make themselves happy and to stop suffering.
If they can succeed, they can inspire many people to do the same.
(Half Bell)
(Bell)
(Man) First I would like to thank you, Thay,
on behalf of everyone
(inaudible)
English or Spanish?
(Br. Mountain) Both.
(Man replying but inaudible)
(Man asking question, inaudible due to echo)
...Mindfulness speaking, mindfulness walking...
mindfulness eating...
But the last few days you spoke about...
(Laughing)
Mindfulness (Spanish) "of suffering"
....the minfulness of suffering.
(Spanish) For me, that is a little more difficult.
(Spanish) To be mindful of the suffering
to avoid (inaudible).
So Thay, I would like to ask you.
Could you explain a little bit more about mindfulness of suffering?
Because I find this very difficult,
because it sometimes generates a negative state of mind.
(Brother) The essence of the question is
that Thay has spoken about different types of mindfulness practices,
and Thay has also spoken about mindfulness of suffering.
When our friend practices mindfulness of suffering,
it brings up negative feelings or thoughts or emotions.
(Man) Towards myself.
(Brother) For yourself? (Man) Yes.
(Brother) So how to work with the mindfulness of suffering,
how to practice?
(Man) Clarify the practice.
(Brother) If Thay can clarify what it means
by working with mindfulness of suffering.
(Thay) Mindfulness of suffering is a very important practice.
Mindfulness, first of all, is the kind of energy that helps you
to know what is going on.
When suffering is coming up,
you should know that suffering is there.
That is mindfulness of suffering.
Most of us do not want to do it,
because we feel that when we get in touch with the suffering inside,
we will be overwhelmed by it.
So everyone is trying to run away from their own suffering.
They try to cover up the suffering inside.
When you pick up a newspaper to read,
when you turn on your television,
maybe it's not because you need to do that,
but you do that in order not to have to get in touch
with the suffering inside.
So pick up the phone and talk to someone,
take the car and go out,
we do many things in order not be in touch with the suffering inside.
The suffering inside remains the same and continues to grow,
because you do not know how to take care of suffering inside
and how to transform it.
So mindfulness of suffering is first of all to have the courage...
to go home to yourself and recognize that suffering is there.
And then, as I have said several times,
you can use the energy of mindfulness to embrace your suffering,
your fear, your anger.
If you know how to do it, then you will suffer less.
It's like a mother holding her baby,
the baby suffers less after a few minutes.
I have also said that if you are a beginner,
you may like to borrow the energy of mindfulness of someone else
in order to help you to embrace your suffering.
Three or four people sitting with you,
breathing with you,
and offering their energy of mindfulness,
to help you to recognize and embrace the pain in yourself.
That is brotherhood, sisterhood.
If you live in the heart of a practice community,
you profit from the collective energy of mindfulness,
of the community.
We have learnt a very important thing:
if you know how to suffer,
you suffer much less.
That is an art, to suffer is an art.
Everyone has to suffer,
including the Buddha,
including Jesus Christ.
But those of us who know how to suffer,
we suffer much, much less.
We have to learn.
If you have the energy of mindfulness, you can go back to yourself.
You are not afraid of being overwhelmed by the suffering inside.
With that energy of mindfulness, you can embrace your suffering.
Even smile to your suffering,
as a mother holding her child.
If you know how to do that,
in three, five or eight minutes, you suffer less.
The energy of mindfulness is holding the energy of anger,
of fear, of despair.
Two kinds of energy.
They are not fighting each other,
but one is holding the other.
Very non-violently, very tenderly.
That is what everyone should learn,
it is possible to embrace our pain tenderly,
with compassion.
That helps you to get a relief after a few minutes of practice.
So we should remember that someone who knows how to suffer,
will suffer much less.
And then he can go further,
he can make good use of suffering
in order to create understanding, compassion and happiness.
Suffering has a role to play in creating happiness.
It's like when you grow lotus flowers, you need the mud.
Without the mud, lotus flowers cannot grow.
It's the same with happiness.
Happiness is a kind of lotus
and it needs some kind of mud, in order to grow.
The process is like this:
there is suffering,
and there is mindfulness that can look deeply...
into the nature of suffering.
We listen, we look deeply,
and from that kind of practice, called mindfulness of suffering,
understanding and compassion are born.
Understanding of suffering,
compassion coming out of that kind of understanding.
Understanding and compassion are the very foundation of happiness.
We know that understanding and compassion come from the mud,
come from suffering.
So there is a very deep connection between suffering and happiness,
like the connection between the mud and the lotus.
If you try always to run away from suffering,
you have no chance.
You have to see the goodness of suffering.
The goodness of suffering - (French) la bienfaisance de la suffrance.
It's like the mud, the mud is essential for the lotus.
So suffering is essential for the making of understanding and love,
which are the very foundation of happiness.
When you have seen that you have Right View.
Right View is the first element of the Noble Path leading to happiness.
You don't have any discrimination any more.
You know that there is a deep connection between suffering and happiness.
If you know how to make good use of suffering,
you can create a lot of understanding and compassion
that can create happiness in you and in the other person.
So there are two things we have to remember concerning suffering:
if you know how to suffer, you suffer less;
if you know how to make good use of suffering,
you can create happiness.
That is why mindfulness of suffering is very, very important.
We should not try to run away from suffering,
pretending that it's not there.
In our civilization, most people do that.
They pretend that there is no suffering
and they buy, they consume, in order to cover up the suffering inside.
We consume not because we need to consume.
There are people who go to look for something to eat,
but they are not hungry at all.
They eat because they want to forget the suffering inside.
Eating is one way,
one of the ways to help us to run away
and not to have to confront, to get in touch with the suffering.
We can practice by ourselves,
but if we have a community of practice supporting us,
the practice of mindfulness of suffering can be easier,
because we have brothers and sisters in the practice supporting us.
They provide understanding and compassion,
and with that kind of collective energy,
we can easily recognize and embrace our suffering.
Clear?
(Laughter)
Thank you.
We'll read from one written question.
Bell, the bell.
(Laughter)
(Half Bell)
(Bell)
(Br. Mountain) "The errors of the past have caused a lot of suffering"
"and are very difficult to liberate."
"My errors have created in the past quite a heavy burden."
"How can I forgive myself for this pain I've caused"
"and how to be sure that I've forgiven others?"
"What can I do if I offer forgiveness and reconciliation"
"again and again to others,"
"but the others don't respond positively"
"and they keep the door closed?"
This is a very good question.
(Laughter)
First of all, everyone can learn from their own mistakes, unskillfulness.
All of us are unskillful at times.
Even the Buddha as a teacher,
he was unskillful at times,
and he learnt from his unskillfulness.
(Laughter)
So first of all, we should remember that we are a human being,
and we can be unskillful at times.
The practice of mindfulness can always transform,
even transform the past.
You think that the past is already gone
and you can't do anything concerning the past,
but that is not true.
You can change the past,
because the past is still there in the present.
The wound of the past is still there in the present moment
and you can touch it.
Suppose in the past you have said something unkind to your grandma,
and now you regret it.
Your grandma is no longer there for you to say sorry.
You have that complex of guilt following you all the time,
but according to this practice, you can do something.
You breathe in and out mindfully,
and you recognize that your grandma is still alive in every cell of your body.
You continue your grandma.
That is the truth.
The genes of your grandma are in you.
Your grandma has not really died.
She continues in you.
So having seen your grandma in you, you say:
"Grandma, I am sorry."
"I was not skillful."
"I promise you that from now on,"
"I will never say something like that again."
And if you are sincere, mindful, determined,
then you can see your grandma in you, smiling,
and you are healed, you are healed.
So you can transform the past.
You make an aspiration, a strong aspiration,
that from now on, you will not say things like that any more.
You will not do things like that any more.
That is a powerful energy,
that can transform even the past and you feel lighter. Lighter!
During the Vietnam war, there was an American soldier
who killed five children in Vietnam.
His unit was destroyed by the guerillas,
so he was very angry.
He came back to that village,
looking for a way to retaliate.
He brought with him a bag of sandwiches,
and he put explosives in the sandwich.
He left them by the gate of the village.
He hid himself and he saw five children coming out,
and enjoying eating the sandwiches.
After that, the children showed the signs of sickness
and they cried, they yelled,
and their mothers came out and tried to help.
But the soldier knew that nothing could be done,
because the village was so far from a city.
He saw the five children dying in the arms of their mothers.
The soldier survived the war and went back to America.
He could no longer sleep.
Every time he found himself with a few children in the same room,
he could not stand it, he had to run out of the room.
He could not share the story with anyone,
until one day,
we offered a retreat for war veterans in California,
and he came.
After four days of practice, he got enough trust.
During the sharing, he told us the story, crying a lot.
I was in the group.
I promised to give him a consultation.
I told him: "Daniel, you have killed five children."
"That is the truth."
"And you suffer."
"But now there are other children who are dying"
"in Africa, in Asia, in many countries,"
"and even in America, children are dying."
"There are poor people."
"There are children who only need one tablet of medicine"
"in order for their life to be saved."
"Thousands and thousands of children like that are dying all over the world."
"If you make the aspiration to go to them, every day you can save five children."
"You don't have to lie down in the corner of the past"
"and suffer like that."
"If in the past you have killed five children,"
"then today, you can save five."
"If you can save five today, five tomorrow,"
"then you can see the five you killed begin to smile in you"
"and you are healed."
So he followed those instructions.
I could see the transformation and healing taking place
right during the time he listened to the advice,
because during the time he listened to me,
he made that vow:
"I will go out and try to save children."
"I am young enough to do the work."
The tremendous amount of energy given to him by that aspiration...
began to heal him right away.
After that he practiced helping children in the world to survive.
He was healed.
He married a dentist in England
and lead a normal life.
This is a real story.
So the fact is that you can liberate yourself from the past,
from the prison of the past.
You can make a strong determination, a strong aspiration, to go and help:
to help the people who are abused,
to help the people who are victims of sexual abuse, and so on.
And then you can heal yourself.
That is the power of aspiration - the [third] nutriment we call "volition."
If you have transformation and healing in you,
you become a pleasant person,
you are full of compassion, understanding,
and your presence is very fresh,
very pleasant for other people.
If you propose to him or to her the practice of reconciliation
and if the other person refuses to do it,
it's because you are not fresh enough,
you have not healed yourself enough.
You have to show yourself as someone who has transformed,
who has healed himself, or herself.
The healing in you will help start the healing in the other person.
There are many ways.
You can write him or her a letter of love.
You can ask a friend to talk to him or her on your behalf.
There are many ways to do it.
If you have already reconciled with yourself,
renewed yourself to become a new person,
then transforming him, reconciling with him,
becomes much easier.
If you still find it difficult to invite the other person to reconcile,
it's because you have not started the process of reconciliation from within.
If you have, then you have healed yourself.
Then it will be much easier to help him to reconcile,
with himself and with you.
OK?
(Br. Mountain) Thank you, Thay.
(Half Bell)
(Bell)
Well...
(Spanish) Sorry, in Spanish.
First, I would like to thank you,
because until yesterday,
I thought I was practising mindful listening properly,
just because I tried to listen to every word
that the other person was saying.
Yesterday I understood
that my practice was not right,
because no matter how hard I tried to listen,
if I did not add compassion,
the practice was not going to improve.
I thank you for that.
My question has nothing to do with myself,
it has to do with my daughter.
She is 3 years old.
I wish she will not need to be 35 to begin to practice mindfulness,
as it happened to her mother.
I want to begin to practice with her,
but everyone tells me that she is still too young.
I see that children live more in the present moment than us, adults.
But they do it for short periods.
I don't want to begin with formal practices too early,
because it would not be appropriate for her age.
Is there a good age
to begin the practice of mindfulness with children?
(Br. Mountain) So I will try to touch the essence of the question.
She has a daughter who is 3 years old
and she would like to teach her mindfulness
and start already with the seed of mindfulness at that age,
and not wait until her daughter is 35 to start the practice of mindfulness.
So is there any good age to start teaching mindfulness to children?
Some people say she's too young for me to teach her mindfulness.
She's only 3 years old.
Is there a good age to start teaching mindfulness to children?
(Thay) You can teach your child mindfulness,
even when your child is still inside of you!
(Laughter)
You practice mindful breathing
and you talk to your child:
"Breathing in, I know you are there"
"and I am so happy."
You are mindful of the presence of the baby in yourself.
If you are mindful, the child in you is mindful at the same time,
because you and him or her are not two entities.
Everything you eat is for your child.
Everything you drink is for your child.
Your happiness is your child's happiness.
Your anger is your child's anger.
If you conceive a baby, you have to be very careful.
You have to be very mindful.
Anything you consume of the Four Nutriments,
the child consumes also.
So be gentle, consume only the healthy things,
in terms of the Four Nutriments:
what you read, what you listen to,
what you eat, what you hear as conversation.
They will go directly to the baby.
So your practice of mindfulness is the practice of mindfulness of your child.
So you can begin at a very early age with your child.
The baby may not understand yet the talking of adults,
but the baby can be aware of the energy that you radiate.
If father and mother are in harmony, loving each other,
the baby feels that.
Don't say that he does not understand what we are saying to each other yet.
Don't do that.
The baby may not understand what you are saying,
but the baby can feel the harmony or disharmony between you.
So your practice of mindfulness, of reconciliation, of harmony...
has a direct impact on your child.
When you hold your baby,
if you hold your baby in mindfulness,
the baby feels that.
That is a way to teach mindfulness.
When you feed your baby with your own milk,
you are aware of that,
you feel the happiness,
so the baby not only is feeding himself from the milk,
but from your love too.
So you can teach the baby mindfulness right away in the beginning.
I remember at a Dharma talk in Germany,
there were 1000 people in the talk.
I remember in the front row,
there were 3 or 4 mothers, breast-feeding their babies.
The atmosphere in the talk was very, very peaceful,
because we practiced mindful breathing, mindful smiling.
It was very nice.
Before I started the talk, I looked at the babies.
They were so happy, so calm.
They were getting the nutriments not only from the breast of their mother,
but they were getting nutriments
from the collective energy of mindfulness and compassion
generated by the practice.
So children, they know the value of the practice of mindfulness.
When you are about to have breakfast with your child,
if the child is 3, or 4, or 5 years old, you can say:
"Darling, it's wonderful that we have breakfast together."
You show your appreciation...
that mother and son, mother and daughter, are there having breakfast together.
You cherish every moment.
There is a mantra that we practice in Plum Village.
From time to time, we remind the other person or people...
that the moment we spend together is a wonderful moment.
That can be practiced with children too.
The mantra is: "This is a happy moment."
"This is a wonderful moment."
"Don't you agree?"
"This is a legendary moment that we share with each other."
That mantra, we can practice, we can pronounce, several times a day.
I myself practice that mantra a lot with my students.
Walking together, sitting together, eating together,
we remind each other that this is a wonderful moment.
We are still alive, we are sharing a cup of tea.
This is always possible.
So children are receptive to that kind of practice.
They know that we appreciate their presence.
We offer attention to them, and they are happy.
They learn in a way that we cannot conceive.
They learn without knowing that they are learning.
We transmit the practice of mindfulness by our way of life.
If the parents smoke and drink alcohol,
the children will smoke and drink alcohol.
If the parents practice mindfulness, loving speech, and deep listening,
then the children will do it.
They do not have to know that they are learning.
So the learning, the practice, can be non-formal.
You don't have to say that, "I am practicing mindfulness."
You just enjoy the practice of mindfulness, of breathing,
walking, eating and so on.
That will have an effect on the children,
even the very young ones.
Three years old may be too late!
(Laughter)
(Half Bell)
(Bell)
Dear Thay, dear brothers and sisters,
I want to deeply thank you for sharing your time with us.
My question is regarding hurt kids.
How can we guide them, help them to look deeply,
and try to understand the root cause of their suffering,
such as anger, anguish, or fear,
when they are small?
(Br. Mountain) So the question is about children:
How to guide them to look deeply,
and try to understand the cause of these children's suffering
- anger, anguish, fear -
so how to help them?
Any particular age?
(Lady) Maybe six, seven or eight.
(Br. Mountain) Six, seven or eight.
So how to help little children understand the cause of their suffering?
We should not try to give the teaching...
orally only,
because often it does not work.
As teachers, we have the tendency to explain.
In order to explain, we have to use words.
That may turn them off.
They are not interested in words and concepts.
I think we should use very simple expressions,
simple, simple words.
Suppose when...
when we have anger in us,
when mother has anger in herself,
if the child wants her to do something,
to say something, for him.
If the mother realises that it's not good to do it, to say it,
when she's angry,
she may tell her child
that Mummy does not feel good in herself.
Mummy is a little bit angry.
You should allow Mummy to breathe, to walk,
in order to calm herself first.
You can do it like that.
That is teaching.
You teach by your own life.
If they see you practicing when you are angry,
they will believe you.
Next time when they get angry,
you may say something:
"Darling, why don't you do it like Mummy?"
"Don't say anything, don't do anything,"
"it may do harm to yourself and to others."
"Do like Mummy, just breathe"
"and know that we are angry."
"If we know how to breathe like that, walk like that,"
"then we will feel better."
"Why don't you hold Mummy's hand"
"and we will breathe together, make a few steps together."
That is teaching.
The same thing is true with other mental formations,
like fear, jealousy and so on.
So there is a kind of teaching called teaching by your own life,
by your own body.
This is very good.
So as a teacher, I know the value of that kind of teaching.
You teach by the way you walk,
by the way you sit down,
by the way you eat,
by the way you look,
by the way you react to a provocation.
That teaching is well received by the young people.
You don't have to use a lot of words.
Another question from the floor.
(Br. Mountain) Dear Thay, dear Sangha,
this is a question from a man, I guess,
because it says:
"How can men today avoid becoming soft men?"
"How can men become more confident,"
"without becoming aggressive?"
"How can a man avoid becoming a soft man?"
Sometimes men, maybe in Spain, have been aggressive in the past
and now when we practice,
we become soft, very receptive and attentive,
and maybe we become too soft.
Too soft!
(Laughter)
Yesterday, we spoke about Noble Silence,
a kind of silence that is very powerful.
It's not oppressive at all.
It's very alive.
When we stop our talking,
when we stop our thinking,
we breathe, we become alive,
we are aware of being with each other
and that kind of silence is very powerful.
In the Buddhist tradition,
they describe the silence as "thundering silence."
Powerful like thunder.
(French) The thunder.
Thundering silence.
There are those who believe that when they have too much compassion,
they become very soft,
and that is not true.
Compassion is not soft.
Compassion is very, very powerful.
When you have great compassion,
you can die, you are ready to die for the sake of helping people.
You are very powerful.
It is violence that makes you weak,
because you are weak,
that is why you need a gun,
you need an army.
If you are really powerful,
you can help many people around,
many countries around,
and you are safer.
If you are too afraid,
you need a gun, you need an army.
That is why cultivating compassion,
you protect yourself much better
than with an army, with a gun.
If you carry a gun, that means you are afraid,
you are fearful.
Compassion makes us...
Compassion gives us a lot of energy.
With compassion, you can do everything in order to help people.
You are not afraid.
In the Lotus Sutra,
compassion is described as "thunder."
It's like a cloud, a big cloud in the sky.
It looks very soft,
but a cloud can generate thunder,
lightning and thunder.
So in the Lotus Sutra,
compassion is described as lightning and thunder.
Very, very powerful.
If you have violence in you,
your nature is weak, and not powerful.
But if you have compassion in you,
you are really powerful.
With violence in you, you suffer.
Children, adults, teenagers,
if they have a lot of violence in them,
then they suffer,
and we can see the suffering.
And they are weak.
If we cultivate compassion, we are healthy,
and we are powerful.
Violence makes you sick.
It is destroying our health, physical and mental.
Violence.
When you produce a thought full of hate and violence,
that thought begins to destroy you and destroy the world.
But if you have Right Understanding,
you generate a thought of compassion, of understanding.
That thought begins to heal you
and begins to heal the world.
That is the practice of Right Thinking:
thinking in such a way
that you can generate understanding and compassion.
That is real power.
Compassion can be expressed in the way you think,
in the way you speak,
and in the way you act.
If you are motivated by the desire to help a person to suffer less,
you can use loving speech, compassionate speech.
What you write down in a letter,
what you say,
what you tell him or her on the telephone...
has so much compassion.
When you are able to say something compassionate,
you feel wonderful within yourself,
you can heal yourself.
You can begin to help heal the other person.
So compassion has the power to heal.
That is why all of us have to learn
how to generate the energy of compassion in us.
If we want to heal ourselves,
we have to generate the energy of compassion.
If we want to heal our family,
make our family happy, harmonious again,
we have to generate, to cultivate compassion.
If we want to heal our community,
our city, our nation,
we have to cultivate more compassion.
Compassion comes from understanding, understanding suffering:
our own suffering and the suffering of the other person,
even the suffering of the people who we believe to be our enemies.
They have a lot of suffering in themselves also.
So the answer to our situation is compassion.
And medically speaking, doctors are beginning to understand
that compassion has a healing power.
If you have so much hate, and despair, and anger,
then it's difficult to heal.
But if you have compassion,
it's easier to heal yourself.
At Stanford University,
they have begun to study the healing power of compassion.
Thay was invited to speak at Stanford
about the practice of compassion,
and someone asked exactly the same question.
Is it not true that compassion makes you weak?
No, the opposite.
Compassion makes you very strong.
Bell first.
(Bell)
I would like to ask:
If someone, at one moment, comes to me for help,
and I cannot (inaudible) for that person,
and I have that moment,
when I tell that person to embrace the pain,
to embrace the suffering.
What if the person doesn't accept
and maybe gets mad?
How can I keep helping the person?
I only have maybe a few minutes,
and then this person will go away.
(Br. Mountain) (Spanish) Could you ask the question in Spanish?
(Spanish) If someone comes to me for help
and I have a limited time,
and I try to help him and tell him to embrace his suffering,
his sorrow, his hate,
and that person at that moment refuses to do it
and gets even more angry,
How can I help that person in that limited time I have?
(Br. Mountain) So somebody comes to her, asking for help,
but she doesn't have much time to offer to this person,
and she tells this person that she just needs to embrace her suffering,
or anger, or whatever emotion,
but that person reacts, they don't want to hear that.
With this limited time that I have,
how can I help this person transform?
So basically, she says to this person that she needs to embrace her suffering,
but the person reacts and doesn't want to embrace the suffering.
And she doesn't have much time available to help the person.
What work do you do? What is your profession?
Is this something professional?
(Lady) I am a teacher, but I also help people with problems.
(Br. Mountain) So... a teacher, and you help people professionally?
(Lady) Teaching, yes, it's my profession.
And I help people... (inaudible)
(Thay) (Speaking in Vietnamese)
(Br. Inclusiveness) (Replying in Vietnamese)
If we are so busy,
if we do not have the time,
we cannot do anything.
So the problem is to arrange that you have plenty of time.
(Laughter)
There are those of us who are doctors,
lawyers,
and who are able to help people,
but our capacity is limited.
So many of us have become monks and nuns in order to have more time.
(Laughter)
Because as a monk or nun
you don't have to make a living.
You don't have to make a living.
You don't need a private house, you don't need a salary.
You don't need
a private bank account and so on.
So you have plenty of time to practice helping yourself
and helping other people.
So one of the ways to have the time is to live a simple life.
Especially and if possible to live in a community.
You don't need a private car, a private house,
a private bank account and so on.
You have plenty of time.
That is what the Buddha and his monks did.
They had plenty of time walking, sitting, helping people.
Time is not money.
But in our society, many people think of time as money.
Time is to make money.
Time is much more than money.
Time is life, and time is love.
You are given years, months and days
and hours and minutes
in order to live your life and to love, not to make money.
If your priority is to make money,
then you don't have the time to do the work of loving.
You have to love yourself.
Do you have the time to love yourself?
To take care of your body, to take care of your feelings and so on?
If you don't have the time to do that,
how can you help another person?
If you don't have the time, how can you love?
Everything you do in your daily life is an act of love.
Everything you say, everything you do in your daily life
can be an act of love, that is possible.
So please, reconsider the way you use your time.
What are you doing with your time?
Your time is to be,
to live your life and to love.
Look at the people in our society, the way they make use of their time.
They don't have the time to breathe, to sit, to walk,
to enjoy being alive,
to look at their children.
We are always in a hurry.
So there must be a kind a revolution.
Those of us who have chosen to be monks and nuns
or the lay practitioners who are living in the community,
we want a lot of time
so that we can take care of ourselves fully.
Heal ourselves and help heal and help other people.
When we organize a retreat, we do it as an act of love.
When we see the people transformed and healed,
that is our reward.
That is the benefit we get.
When we see people suffering less,
beginning to smile, reconciling with each other,
we are very happy.
We see that our life has a meaning.
This is nourishing us a lot.
So every one of us has to sit down
and reconsider how do we use our time.
Do we have the time to love, to serve?
Do we have the time to take care of ourselves?
Heal ourselves and help heal our society?
This is the question.
And you have to give the answer by yourself.
(Bell)
(Spanish) Dear Thay,
(inaudible)
How can we protect our Sangha,
especially if it is a very young Sangha,
composed by young people
who have few experience with the practice?
How can we protect ourselves when there are frailties?
(Brother) When there is what?
(Spanish) Frailties.
(Brother) Weakness?
(Br.Mountain) Can you repeat the question?
(Spanish) How can we, my Sangha friends and myself...
(Br.Mountain) How can my friends of the Sangha and myself...
... protect our Sangha...
(Brother) ...how can we protect our Sangha...
...especially if it is a young Sangha...
(Brother) ...especially if it's a young Sangha?
Yes, it is OK.
(Brother) You said something more.
-It is a young Sangha. -(Brother) It's a young Sangha.
-We are all young people... - (Br.) We are all quite young...
-...with little experience... -(Br.)...with little experience...
-...in the practice. -(Br)...in the practice.
(Br. Mountain) So how can we protect our Sangha
because we are a young Sangha, we have little experience.
Building a Sangha is a very basic practice.
If you have an aspiration,
a deep aspiration,
if you have a dream to realize,
you cannot do it without a community.
And that is why, building a community is very important.
The Buddha, after enlightenment,
knew that he needed a Sangha in order to realize his dream,
offering the practice and help change the world.
So he spent his time looking for friends
and set up a community of practice.
And at the end of the first year after enlightenment,
he already had a community of one thousand people.
He spent his time training them how to walk.
How to walk mindfully and generate peace and joy with every step.
How to hold their bow, how to sit, how to breathe.
So you will do the same.
With young members of the Sangha
the first thing you do is not to organize.
For other people, we have to organize so that we can practice together.
We should practice sitting together,
walking together, eating together, sharing together
in such a way, that every time we do that
we create more brotherhood and sisterhood
and mutual understanding.
We learn to make decisions together by consensus.
We try to listen to each other.
We try to understand different views.
We try to combine all these kind of views
in order to make a synthesis of all views
and we make a decision collectively.
Only when we have enough harmony, brotherhood, sisterhood, joy
should we organize a day of mindfulness or a retreat of mindfulness
and invite other people to come.
We operate as a Sangha and not as individuals.
An individual, no matter how talented he is or she is
cannot realize the big dream.
So we learn to organize,
to lead a retreat as a Sangha and not as a person.
An individual.
In Plum Village, we try to do that.
It's the Sangha who makes the decision
and not a person.
For this trip to Spain, organizing the retreats and the public talks
the Sangha did everything,
including choosing the title of the talk and the retreat.
Thay did not have to do anything.
He just obeyed the Sangha.
So you have plenty of time to walk, to sit, to breathe.
It's very good.
We should operate as a Sangha, not as individuals.
If you are able to build a Sangha with harmony and brotherhood,
you can do a lot of things in order to help people to suffer less.
Building a Sangha is the most noble thing to do for a person.
When I met with Dr. Martin Luther King for the first time in Chicago,
in 1966, we discussed about that.
Because he knew that without a Sangha, without a community
he could not realize his dream.
A year before that, he spoke with the theme "I have a dream".
I told him that:
"Your dream cannot become true if you don't have a community."
And he agreed.
I was using the word Sangha,
but he used the word 'beloved community'.
The second time we met was in Geneva.
We attended a Peace conference.
We had the opportunity to discuss more about building a Sangha.
Unfortunately, he was assassinated
not very long after that.
So, I made the vow to continue to build the Sangha,
not only for us, but for him.
Building a Sangha is very important.
With a Sangha, you can maintain your practice for a long time.
With a Sangha, you have an instrument to help people.
People can come and take refuge in the Sangha,
learn the practice of healing and transformation.
So everyone of us who finds the practice of mindfulness useful
should go home, to his city
and look around and identify elements of a future Sangha.
We should set up a group of people, learn to sit together, walk together,
breathe together, create brotherhood and sisterhood.
Then we will be able to help many people.
Schoolteachers have to set up their Sangha of schoolteachers.
Psychotherapists also have to set up Sanghas of psychotherapists.
Doctors, nurses, even business leaders have to come together and set up a Sangha
in order to support each other.
We all need a Sangha.
Without a Sangha, Thay cannot do anything.
So he is taking refuge in the Sangha.
We always operate as a Sangha.
If the Sangha has harmony, brotherhood, you can do a lot of things.
(inaudible)
Today we have walking meditation again,
but we should go with the same speed,
we should not walk too slow.
We should not create a traffic jam.
(Laughter)
Breathing in 2 steps, breathing out 3 steps,
and do not allow the line to be broken as yesterday.
We can enjoy every step and we are aware that we are walking with a community.
We flow like a river and not drops of water.
(Laughter)
(Bell)
That's long enough, that's good.
Thank you.
We shall gather and begin our walking meditation in...
(Br. Inclusiveness) 30 minutes,
...in half an hour.
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