With respects to Thay, to Sakya Chan Khong,
and to all our ancestral teachers
through many generations.
Dear community
Today is the 7th of August,
in the year 2016.
And we are in our wake-up earth retreat
in the Still Water Meditation Hall
of the Upper Hamlet.
They call me Sister True Dedication,
and I'm made of non-me elements.
So it's not really me sitting here today,
but it is all the elements who have made me
including our wonderful sangha,
my sisters and brothers, our teacher,
and also my parents, my mother, my father.
I come from England, when the sangha had a
chance to visit my parents in England,
there were many brothers and sisters
who then said: "Ah!............ "
"Now I get it!"
"Now I know why you are like how you are."
We are made of our mother and our father.
And many of us have a beautiful aspiration
in our own lifetime to transform and heal
and repair some of the weaknesses
of our parents.
And my own experiences was that
I didn't spend enough time cherishing
their qualities well.
Our father and mother have transmitted
many wonderful qualities to us.
I can sit here because my father
transmitted courage.
And as I was breathing, my heart was
beating, and my breath was very short.
And we have a practise to breathe with
often our fathers' lungs Thay would invite us
as we sit in meditation.
I breathe with my father's lungs,
I sit with my father's back,
but my father has short breath.
So this morning
I breathe with my mother's lungs.
My mother has very big lungs,
and it help me a lot.
I am also here with the energy of the sunrise
from this morning.With the wonderful food
that have been eaten and
many of us have been preparing.
So we inter-are,I inter-am with you all.
And you all inter-are
with me and with everything in the cosmos.
Thay has a wonderful line that I really
like.
He says you can't be by yourself alone.
You have to
inter-be with the whole cosmos.
You inter-are with the whole cosmos.
Thay would often point to the flower
on the podium and say every flower
is made of non-flower elements.
And my first reaction I have to confess
is "but I'm not a flower".
But it is still true that
we are made of non-us elements.
And that is the good news
that is a delight, it is a joy, it is something
that we can discover and touch everyday.
I was very touched when I heard Thay say
that we all need a spiritual dimension in our life.
And hearing that I thought
"Yes,I am thirsty
for a spiritual dimension to my life".
My soul is thirsty.
And in our life here in a practise center
like Plum village,
we have so many opportunities to
keep the spiritual dimension of our life
alive, nourished and connected.
We have this meditation poems that we use
throughout the day.
When we touch running water,
perhaps we are taking some water to drink,
or we're opening the tap to wash our face,
and we comtemplate the water,
and we have a beautiful poem.
"Water comes from high mountain sources,
water runs deep in the earth,
miraculously water comes to us
and sustains all life.
My gratitude is filled to the brim."
So we have the simple actions
to serve water, to draw water.
But somehow we look deeply and
with our mindfulness, we connect ourselves
to the true nature of the water.
It has come from the mountains,
it has come from the oceans,
and now it is becoming a part of us.
When I used to work in an office,
I recited this poem at the water cooler.
I was in 6th floor
in the center of the city of London.
And I felt connected to the whole cosmos.
I could have a magical minute.
No one knew I was doing it.
A magical minute as I drank my water.
When we take a shower, we can ask ourselves
whose body is this?
where has it come from?
what was the warmth,
the original warmth that made this body,
it has been handed from generation to
generation, and never got cold.
I am English, and I like to drink tea.
I invented the poem for boiling the kettle.
Often when we have a difficult moment,
culturally, we put the kettle on
It's our first response.
So having a moment to feel spiritual
about boiling the kettle enriched my life.
When we write a poem like this,
we look at all the different elements
that are coming together in the miracle of life
to support us.
So there is the water, there is the energy in the electricity,
where has it come from?
And there is me, where have I come from?
And we have all traveled
since beginningless time
to arrive in this moment,
of making a cup of tea.
So I invite all of us to
write our own poems,
choose one or two things
in your daily actions
that you like to become spiritual moments
for you and your day.
Where there is mindfulness,
where there is deep looking.
And Thay has said that any act we do can
become sacred when we have that energy
of mindfulness to enrich it.
In the early mornings here we have
the chance to come to practise
sitting meditation together and
enjoy the beautiful walking meditation
together in the silence of the morning.
And a few years ago in the winter retreat,
Thay was staying in his hut
on the side of the hill.
And that morning he stepped out,
and he saw the sky filled with stars,
and he felt such love for the earth,
for this planet and this beautiful cosmos.
And that day or the next day,
when he gave the Dharma talk,
he said that
he had fallen in love with the earth.
He had realized
he was in love with the earth.
I often ask myself
am I in love with the earth yet?
We speak about the wonders of life,
and when I look deeply and
see the wonderful diversity
of earth manifestations.
How many millions or billions of years
they have taken to evolve.
I have a kind of awe and
wonder of the fertility
and beauty of life.
And I am training myself
to cherish this as much as I can.
But sometimes it's not so easy.
I think I grew up in very cynical environment
in my society in my generation.
Somehow a tree just did't seem exciting.
But I am learning to look
with the eyes of wonder, and to see
the miracle that a tree is or a bug or any
kind of living being,
or even any human being.
So I'm training myself to fall in love
with the earth to learn more about
the earth.
And Thay had said that if we love the
earth enough,then we will know what to do
in order to help protect the earth.
And we will have the energy we need to
protect the earth because love is a
wonderful source of energy.
It sustains us,it nourishes us,
it keeps up happy,
it keeps our mind fresh and delighted.
(Bell sounds)
I came to Plum Village
when I was almost 22 years old.
And I had a lot of questions,
I just graduated,
and I had felt that
my education had cheated me.
I asked myself who am I,
and somehow my university degree
and my school hadn't told me.
I was asking myself what do I want,
what do I really want in my life?
Of course I asked the question
why am I here.
It means why I am here on this planet,
and what am I to do?
Why am I here?
The fact is I wasn't yet
practising mindfulness,
so I wasn't very present at all.
So I don't think I could say
I was even present here
when I ask the question why am I here.
But slowly I am learning
to be more present.
I also wanted to know what can I trust,
what can I count on,what can I rely on.
Mother nature is often smiling to us,
we can usually rely on
the fact nature is smiling to us.
In particular in difficult moments,
in moments of crisis,
in moments when I felt overwhelmed,
I wanted to know what can I rely on.
I also wanted to know where am I going,
what is the direction.
I had this feeling like
I'm being on a conveyor belt,
and I had to do this set of exam,
I have to go to this school and do that
exam and you have to go to a university,
I felt like I was sped out age 22,
the conveyor belt still have a lot of
energy telling me now you need to do this,
you need to have this kind of career,
you need to go there, learn this.
And I felt I hadn't yet stopped,
to really ask myself, where am I going,
and where do I want to go, how much
of these directions until now is me,
and how much is everything around me
pushing me.
We have a story in Buddhist tradition,
about someone on a horse,
riding very fast past cross-roads,
there is a man standing there, he says:
"Where are you going so fast?"
And the rider says:
"I don't know. Ask the horse."
Are we on a horse?
Do we know where our horse is going?
What are the elements
that have given energy to the horse?
What is pushing us?
Have we mastered the horse yet?
Since I've come to Plum village
and been living here,
I have learnt that it takes a while
to learn how to ride.
Take some traning and we can do it.
We can master the horse.
Another question I had was how can I help,
I had a sense that I have some energy
and I see there are problems in the world,
and I want to know what can I do to help?
So slowly here I think there is one peot
who once said
we live our way to the answers.
So I am living my way to
answer these questions.
I hope that we can all actively
live our way to answer these questions.
Some of you may know we have a five year
monastic training program in Plum Village.
It wasn't an option when I ordained
So as we learned yesterday,
I didn't have to suffer
from having too much choice.
Just made a lifetime commitment.
But when it came to five years,
and Thay was convinced that five years is
more than enough to be able to
learn a lot of things,
and then go out into the world,
and continue to be a teacher in lay society.
So when I got to five years,
I had to do a reality check.
and I ask myself what have I learned?
This is what I discovered,
I have learned how to eat.
It's harder than you think.
How to listen to my body?
How to choose the right foods?
How to feel connected when I eat?
How to nourish and joy
myself and others with food.
How to respect life as I eat?
How to nourish my compassion as I eat?
So I maybe have completely mastered it.
I have made good progress.
How to sleep?
I think only by arriving and living in the
monastry did I discover
how unstable my life was
and I imagine it's the case for many of us.
Are you getting enough sleep?
Are you getting good quality sleep?
Do you know how to prepare yourself
to have a good night's sleep?
How to wake up without headache?
How to smile to yourself
as you wake up in the morning?
I have made good progress on this one.
But I am not a master yet.
As my sisters in the last week
can tell you.
I also somehow learned something about
taking care of my body and mind,
handling my body and mind,
listening to my body and mind.
So it's something about energy,
life is energy,
that horse pushing us is a kind of energy.
And have we learned how to listen to
our unique combination of energies?
So that we can master them
like riding a horse.
So that we can live beautifully,
peacefully,happily as much as possible.
And this is what Thay has said,
what's more important than to know
ourselves,how to generate happiness
in our daily life,
and how to handle difficulties,suffering.
Thay has reassured us, this is possible.
We can learn how to generate
moments of happiness in our day.
We can also learn how to
handle our suffering,our difficulties.
How to not feel overwhelmed?
How we can learn
what to do in difficult moments.
When I first came here,I didn't know
any of these things as a 20, almost 22 year old.
I didn't know how to generate happiness,
I didn't know how to handle my suffering.
Sometimes our suffering may have
come to us from previous generations.
It's not exactly US.
Perhaps the seed of sadness or
despair, this is what I'd discovered.
My seed of sadness and despair
had been transmitted to me.
I'd done a fair bit of helping it grow too.
But I had received a strong seed already
from my parents and from my grandparents,
and probably their parents.
Because even our parents
are not just themselves.
They're also their parents.
Each of us has a treasure trove of elements that we've received from our ancestors.
And we need to know what they are.
We need to know how to handle them.
at least, I needed to know what they were.
I needed to know how to handle them.
So that I can feel free in my life.
So that I could answer
some of these questions.
We learn here that
we are made of many different elements.
And I would like to draw something
on the board to illustrate this.
We can see ourselves as five different rivers,we have our physical body.
Thay often like to draw this with segments of clementine, tangerine
So we have our body
This has been transmitted to us from many generations
That we nourish with everything we eat.
I wish it was a 360 degrees board, but it is not
Body
And the next segment is our feelings
They may come from the body or from our emotions
Our perceptions
So our perceptions is how we are perceiving things,
how we are perceiving the world,
ourselves,
other people,
situations.
Generally most of them are wrong
And then we have our mental formations
so based on our perceptions
and feelings
we give rise to a state of mind,
a mental formation.
It could be something like frustration
or anger
or depression, sadness,
or joy
some positive ones
hope
And then we have consciousness
which is the ground of our beeing
So to share a little more about consciousness
our teacher likes to draw a circle.
But I'm not very good at drawing circles
So I've got some help
I think that was been my English ancestors
rather than my Vietnamese ancestors.
So, our body and our mind
Thay often speaks about two levels of the mind
So we have the upper part of our mind
and the lower part.
And we call the upper part "mind consciousness"
and the lower part "store".
So, here...
we are talking a lot about store consciousness.
And this is were we have all the seeds.
These elements that have been transmitted to us
that we carry
and that are potentials in life
So we have seeds like ...
Joy
and Hope,
Mindfullness,
Peace,
and some other ones like .... Anger,
Fear,
Anxiety.
Any others we can think of ?
Jealousy .... very good,
Sadness,
Compassion,
Desire, Craving.
Sometimes we crave
we usually crave sensual pleasures
but we may also crave money, status, fame, power... craving...
So it is a little bigger than the other ones
Any more ?
Doubt,
Pride ... oh, wonderful,
How big is that ?
And we have Doubt.
So we have a lot of seeds.
And somehow our store consciousness
is both individual and collective.
We also share it.
So, when the seed of fear in society is very strong,
our own seed of fear will be
will take more place, will be more active.
And if our parents have transmitted to us a strong seed down here
then it will be more strong perhaps than in
other people and our mind is receiving
information from sense doors from our
eyes our ears, our ears, our nose, our tongue,
and from our body
So information is coming in all the time
So when we watch a news bulletin, or we
listen to the radio, that will come in
and it may water the seeds of fear in us,
or the seed of anger in us, and that seed
will then come up and manifest in the
upper level of our consciousness. So when
we want to learn how to handle our mind,
we need to know what to do when this
happens. First of all we need to know
anger has come up.
Fear has come up. Sadness has come up.
So we have to recognize, we have to identify
that it happened. And that's why we need
the energy of mindfulness. Mindfulness
helps us to know what is going on.
So the energy of mindfulness is another seed
and if we say that it's the seed of
anger that has come up, we can say that
mindfulness comes up and embraces
the anger. So you have one energy which is
anger, and we have the other energy which
is our compassion. I said compassion
because the antidote to anger is
compassion.
So we have mindfulness embracing anger
and if we can generate an energy of
compassion that will help cool the anger.
So what I have been learning here is to
have a strategy for when different
mental formations come up and to know
how to invite certain seeds to come up
in order to embrace the one that has manifested.
So many different seeds have different antidotes.
We could say that
when we have restlessness, the antidote
might be relaxation.
If we feel restless maybe we could spend 10 or 20 minutes to relax.
If we feel sadness, perhaps five or
ten minute bath in the present moment
will refresh us. We can nourish ourselves
with the wonders of life. But if the
sadness is a bit stronger and it takes
the form of despair, we have to have a
even stronger strategy.
And I've learned that the antidote to despair we have a
bodhisattva who is fearless and persevering.
So we have an energy of hope
and we are fearless and we don't give up
And that is how we handle our seed of
despair. That is how i have learned to
handle my seed of despair.
And we have many wonderful practices to cultivate
non fear, like the five remembrances
aware that we are of the nature to grow
old, to get sick, and to die and to be
separated from those we love. We have a
contemplation on that, and that helps us
strengthen our non-fear. We accept the
reality and we cultivate courage and non-fear.
And sometimes the seeds that come up are
very big and overwhelming and some of us
may have had that experience there's not
even space for mindfulness to intervene
and those are the moments when we need
to practice a kind of emergency practice
and for me my emergency practice has
been something that has taught us to do
which is deep belly breathing. So when
our mind has a seed running riot we have
to come down from here which has become
a chaos of a thunderstorm and we have to
bring our energy down to our breathing
so we take our energy down from the
upper level of our consciousness and we
just breathe and we trust in
the good seeds down here who have some
space to help respond to the situation
so if necessary we lie down we take
ourselves out of this situation that has
triggered our anger or sadness or our
despair and we put our hand, I put my
hands on my belly and I'm bring all my
attention 100-percent to the rising and
the falling of my abdomen
And I often give myself the challenge
that I have to follow the breath all the
way through and all the way back again
strictly no thinking and it's not very
easy but if we have our hands on our
belly and we are fascinated by the
experience of our in-breath and are out
breath
I've discovered that with practice
it's possible to breathe 10 times in and
out with not a single thought and I do
it like snakes and ladders so if I have
a thought I have to start again and
count from one. And i started doing this
because i thought if i cannot even
master my breathing
Who am I to know what to do in this
situation
my mind is not clear. I haven't
got a grip on my mind. So I shouldn't
trust my mind in this situation it has
no right to have a voice until it has
breathed 10 times
and the amazing thing is that after ten
breaths there's clarity there is
stability it made on a bad day it may
take 20 minutes or 25 minutes to have 10
clear breaths
but after that there is clarity and we
know what to do and what not to do. So
somehow i have learned not to trust my
mind but to trust my breathing
if in doubt breathe. And it has never
failed me and that has given me a real
solid basis something I always know I
can trust and I don't need to be afraid
because I always know that the breathing
when I breathe fully 100-percent will
help calm clarifying and give me courage
(bell sound)
So what we are taking in, through our
sense organs
it's a kind of food. And that is going to
affect how our mind is going to operate.
so our sense impressions, what we watch
movies, websites, what we listen to, music,
or even conversations, what we smell
you'll notice that some you are very
sensitive to certain kinds of smell, what
we eat, so the kinds of foods edible
foods that we eat, they are nourishing
something in us, so if we eat food that
has violence or suffering in it then
somehow we r that is becoming a part of
us and that is affecting who we are but
if we are able to eat with compassion
then our seed of compassion here will grow
so every day you can have a day without
meat you can say to yourself I have
nourished my seed of compassion today,
and i have not nourished my seed of
violence or suffering, and we know that
the animals suffer deeply when they are
killed, and that is what we are eating,
and when we eat meat that it is
destroying our planet to cultivate that
meat, then we are also eating something
that is not wholesome, we are not
nourishing our compassion and our care,
so we can learn about four kinds of
nutriments
so the first is edible foods
edible foods and drink,
so this includes orange juice and alcohol
okay so we know that it takes a lot of
grain to make liquor and maybe that
grain could be better used for something
else. Our earth is in need for our help.
Our sense impressions, that's all the movies,
the movies, the music and so on.
even now I still remember movies I
watched 20 years ago. they come up
sometimes even in my meditation and i
think god how did I let that come in.
because once its come in, it's somehow
they're in our memory and it's very
trusting of us we go into a cinema we
even pay for the privilege for someone
else to then put all this stuff into our
consciousness that may be violent or
disturbing unpleasant. so we have to be
very careful when we choose what to
watch and feel free to walk out i guess
i didn't have enough courage to walk out
of cinemas or to switch off movies but I
think we need to be able to switch them
off
Third Kind is volition.
This volition comes from the world will, like
"volonté" (in French). it's a kind of technical word
but it just means our deepest desire
do you know what you want to do with
your life what you really really want to
do with your life?
what is your deepest desire, and our
deepest desire is like a seed that we've
planted in our consciousness and when we
can identify it and take care of it it
will be a great source of energy in our
life, and we need to know what we want to
do.
life is precious we don't know how much
of it we have. we would like to think
that we will all live to 80 but maybe
that won't be the case. so what do you
want to do, we have this one body, we had
this life, and what we do with it.
A terrorist is someone who has the
intention to revenge vengeance.
That is a kind of deep desire. A terrorist
also have seeds of compassion, of
kindness, of peace, of joy, of love. but
they have watered another kind of seed
that drives them to do something very
violent. so we can see the power of this
kind of energy and each of us we need to
know what we want to do with our life.
how would we like to live. what talents
that we have been transmitted would we
like to cultivate. we are a wonder of the
earth, and how will our particular flower
in the garden of humanity sing her song.
what is your song? How will you be a flower
on this earth?
what would you like to cultivate and to
offer? and its deepest desire, our volition
I came here because I wanted to
transform and to live
leanly we have a wonderful word in English.
It means some simply, just what
is necessary in order to have more
energy to act, to help, to not destroy
with my way of consuming. and the final
one is consciousness
so we've been learning the consciousness
is both individual and collective and
here it's mostly we're talking about
collective consciousness.
The environments we are exposed to, our kind
of food coming into our being,
if you've ever been on a protest for
social justice when everyone is
collectively having a very strong energy
sometimes in in a protest there is also
an energy of anger of demanding and you
may feel that you are carried by this
collective consciousness or like now we
have a lot of fear and anxiety in the
world at the moment, so that is coming in
and triggering our own fear and anxiety
or in our family, if something is
happening in our family, certain seeds
may be stronger at one time then another.
jealousy or anger, or at work, or in our
friendship group is a kind of collective
energy and we need to be aware what is
being triggered in us by our environment
so we need to learn when to walk away,
when to step out of the room, when to
switch off the television. that is our
freedom, that is empowering us to be the
kind of person would like to be. that is
how we protect our mind and our body.
because when we have things that make us
tense or afraid or anxious, we live that
also in our body.
this evening we will have a presentation
on the five mindfulness trainings and
they are a wonderful path of practice
showing us how in our daily actions we
can cultivate our mind. so that we can be
the kind of person we would like to be.
so that we can have more compassion. so
that we can have more inner space,
more freedom, more courage to be able to
make wonderful use of this precious life
that we have. and to be able perhaps to
deserve the earth in ways that we would
like to serve the earth. she needs our
help, we need her, and she also needs us.
Thank you for listening.