And we've come back to Stourbridge.
And I think many of us have been here several times already,
And feel very at home here.
So as we said yesterday, there are a couple of questions that got hidden in the bell.
We didn't have a chance to look at.
So maybe we can begin today by looking at those two questions.
So one is about getting lost in our thoughts during our sitting meditation.
Actually we get lost in our thoughts at other times, too.
Not just when we're doing sitting meditation.
When we're sitting on the bus or the train, we may also be lost in our thoughts.
And in Buddhism...Yesterday you looked at the Noble Eightfold Path,
and you saw that one of the factors of the Path is Right Thinking.
So we have Right Thinking, and we have Wrong Thinking.
And meditative concentration is fine with thinking.
It always says that the first level of meditation, meditative concentration,
it has thinking in it.
So we don't have to throw thinking out altogether.
And as you can see in our guided mediations,
we've also been using Right Thinking.
And Right Thinking goes along with Right View.
And we know that, as we heard this morning
in the Precept Transmission, the Mindfulness Trainings Transmission,
that the view Interbeing, the understanding of Interbeing, is Right View.
So, the thinking that goes in the direction of Interbeing, we can call Right Thinking.
And we can use that a great deal in our sitting meditation.
So if possible, in your sitting meditation,
make use of the guided meditations
in order to keep the Right Thinking there
and not get lost in the non-stop Thinking,
which we could also call the Wrong Thinking.
And we've had a guided meditation on seeing
that we inter-are with our mother and our father.
We can also do a guided meditation to see
that we inter-are with the leaf on the tree
or with the tree.
There are things that we can do like this.
And then we go..Right Thinking is like
in the conventional realm of thought.
But if it's Right Thinking, it can take us
from the conventional, from the historical,
into the ultimate dimension.
That is the dimension that goes beyond words.
So the thinking has a role to play.
Thank you.
It's also helpful, before you begin to
meditate, to decide what you're going to meditate on.
When I sit down to meditate, the first thing I do is like bring my body and mind
back together, and calm my body and mind.
That is "Breathing in, I calm my body."
"Breathing out, I smile."
I do exercises like that.
But when I feel peaceful enough,
I ask my Store Consciousness, the deep level of my consciousness,
"What do you need today?"
"Which meditation do you need today?"
And then I allow Store Consciousness to
tell me what I need.
And it may say that I need to do the
Loving Kindness meditation, which now
I'm going to talk about.
Or it may tell me that now I need to do
the meditation on interbeing with my parents, or something like that.
So there's a book, it's called
Blooming of the Lotus,
that I am indebted to for my meditation practice.
And that book has, I don't know how many,
more than thirty, guided meditations.
And I translated them into English,
and then, now they're in English.
And then I learnt them.
And so they are all in my Store Consciousness,
and I can call them up when I want to.
And I think you also, before your meditation,
you can read the book, and
then you see one that is suitable for
your situation at the moment.
And then you try to remember it,
and you use it in your sitting meditation.
And there are wonderful meditations on
no birth and no death, like the meditation
on the wave and the water.
The wave going back, the wave breaking
on the shore and then going back to the water.
Which, when we are dying, can be very helpful.
And the meditation on the no birth and
no death of our in-breath is also
very helpful.
And the no birth and no death
of our body.
These kind of meditations are very deep
and in the book we are led into them slowly.
And they can be very helpful to us.
So now we come to the loving kindness meditation.
This morning in our Mindfulness Training
Transmission, in the Third Mindfulness Training
we heard about True Love.
True Love and the four elements of True Love.
Loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity.
And these four elements are also called limitless minds.
Infinite -- they don't have any limit.
When you meditate on loving kindness,
you feel that you have limitless space
and that your loving kindness is not limited.
It's not something, "Oh, I can have loving kindness for this person,
but I don't think I can have loving
kindness for the other person."
Our loving kindness can embrace everything.
So these four limitless minds belong to
every tradition of Buddhism.
And they also belong to the Plum Village tradition of Buddhism.
And some time ago, Thay developed
loving kindness meditation -
that's one of the limitless minds -
into nine parts.
And the first thing we recognize is what
was pointed out by Buddhaghosa is that
we must have loving kindness for oneself.
And if you get not yet enough loving kindness for me, what you consider me,
then you can't go on to have loving kindness for you, or for someone else.
Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga, a book of commentary on the Abhidhamma,
say that if you want to start a fire,
you have to have dry wood.
And then when the fire is going well,
you can put the wet wood on top.
So the dry wood is you yourself.
The loving kindness for you.
because you yourself is closest to you.
Sometimes we say, "Nobody understands me!"
But you have to ask yourself,
"Do I understand me?"
"Do I understand myself?"
And you might say, "No, I don't either."
So why do we expect other people to
understand us, when we don't understand ourselves.
The first step is to understand ourself.
And then when we understand ourself,
we understand the happiness that we need,
we shall be able to offer ourself happiness.
And that is what loving kindness meditation
is about -- it's about offering happiness.
But the first person I need to offer
happiness is to me.
And some people when they are on their death bed, and you ask
"What do you regret?"
They will say, "I did not allow myself to be happy.
I could have been happy.
I see now there were many times
I could have been happy.
But somehow, I thought I didn't deserve it.
I didn't deserve to be happy.
So I didn't allow myself.
And the loving kindness meditation
is meditation when you allow yourself
to be happy.
I don't know if you want me to read it,
if I can remember it, and then I can tell
you what the different elements are.
But you will be able to find it in the
Plum Village Chanting book or
on the Plum Village app.
Brother Phap Lai is not sure.
But, anyway, never mind, I'm going to tell you now.
"May I be happy, peaceful and light in body and in spirit."
So, I want to be happy.
Not just my body, but also my spirit.
I want to be peaceful.
How can I be happy if I'm not peaceful?
It's another thing that Buddhaghosa said.
He said when the mind is agitated,
no other positive mental formations can be present.
So we need a mind that is peaceful.
And when the mind is peaceful,
then other positive things,
like happiness and understanding, will come up.
So, "may I be happy, peaceful and light in my body and my spirit."
And you have to really want it for yourself.
And when you feel strongly that you want,
that's what you really want for yourself,
then you can offer yourself happiness by
the second part:
"May I be safe and free from accident."
We know that life is insecure.
We don't know what is going to happen to us.
But deep down, we all have a desire to be safe.
There is no one who doesn't have that desire.
And sometimes we feel, we feel safe.
Sometimes when we can, when we have that peacefulness....
We have that understanding.
We feel completely safe.
But it's not all the time.
And I think Wittgenstein is not a Buddhist practitioner, but he also mentions
somewhere, in the tractatus or somewhere, I think
There are times when I feel absolutely safe.
So on the one hand,
we spend a lot of our time feeling
insecure and unsafe,
but on the other hand,
the seed of feeling safe is in us.
And we deeply want that.
We need that.
So, we have to wish that for ourselves.
The most important thing maybe is not to
wish it for yourself but to see how much
you want it, how much you need it.
And then you will see that other people,
that's what they want, too.
That's what they need, too.
And sometimes they do things trying to
get that safety and security,
like controlling or having power,
where they feel they can be secure
if they are in control or they have power, outside power.
But that isn't the real safety.
The real safety is a seed that is deep in our consciousness.
So the third thing is:
"May I be free from anger, anxiety and worry."
So, anxiety and fear, sorry.
And I think that anxiety, we could say, is
one of the sicknesses of our time, of our era.
Many people suffer from anxiety and fear.
And none of us want to be angry.
Even though we sometimes get angry,
we express our anger,
I don't think there's anybody who has
a desire to be angry.
We all want to be free from anger.
So we have that deep desire that
when we are put in a situation
which waters our seed of anger,
we will be able to come back to ourself
and take care, so that we don't express our anger in a harmful way,
towards others and towards ourselves.
So that the first triad, those three.
And then the second triad is:
"May I learn to look at myself with eyes of understanding."
So we already mentioned that often
we don't understand ourselves.
Ourselves is really a non-self,
changing at every moment,
different one moment to the next,
so it's not particularly easy
to understand oneself.
But we can get closer.
We can get closer to understanding ourselves.
And often in a retreat,
it's what people manage to do.
To come back to themselves,
and understand a little bit more
about themselves.
Understand about their feelings more,
about their mental formations,
about their perceptions.
So understanding oneself
is something we long for.
And it's not just something Buddhist.
We know that Socrates,
over the place where Socrates taught,
he wrote "gnōthi seauton",
"Know yourself"
And when we know ourself,
then we suffer much less.
We know our own mind,
we can control our own mind.
So, know yourself.
And may I recognize --
this is a little bit like the Right Effort,
that you probably heard about yesterday,
the Four Diligences.
"May I recognize the wholesome seeds in myself."
And if you don't recognize
any wholesome seeds in yourself,
what should you do?
Go to your good friends,
your Sangha friend, your Dharma friend,
and say to them:
"I don't recognize, I haven't recognized,
any wholesome seeds in me.
Could you please tell me what wholesome
seeds you see in me?"
Because often we the things that
are not wholesome in ourselves,
but we forget about what is wholesome.
So that is a real exercise, to be able
to recognize what is wholesome.
The peacefulness you have,
the loving kindness you have,
the way you care for your children,
your grandchildren.
That is a wholesome seed.
And I've heard many stories in the
Dharma sharing about how
grandparents and parents,
they take care of their children.
So many of us have that wholesome seed.
And we are also developing the wholesome
seed of mindfulness, concentration and insight.
And the third part of the second triad is:
"May I identify the unwholesome seeds in myself."
This is a very important practice for me.
I don't know about for you!
I know certain unwholesome seeds I have.
And one of them is my ego.
And one of them is my pride.
And often before I give a Dharma talk,
I talk to Thay.
I don't really talk to Thay there,
but I talk to Thay in me.
That is my teacher, Thay.
And I also talk to my mother and father.
Sometimes before I give a Dharma talk,
I feel a bit nervous.
I don't know if I have anything to offer.
So I ask my mother and my father
to support me, and Thay to support me.
And when I talk to Thay,
I usually say that I want
to remain humble,
that it's very important that
I remain humble.
And if people after the Dharma talk,
they come up and praise me,
I want to recognize:
"You are partly right."
because those words of praise,
they are not really praising me,
there's no separate self that is me.
So I say to Thay please - because Thay
really helped me to develop humility
and not so much pride --
So I ask Thay please -- I know that
when I give this Dharma talk it's not me
who gives the talk.
That everything I can teach,
it's what Thay has handed on to me.
So, I ask Thay to keep me humble.
So I recognize that seed of pride,
that seed of ego, in me.
And I identify it.
And that means it's good that I know it's there.
Because if I don't identify the unwholesome
things in me, it means that I don't have
a chance to transform them.
They will just stay there like they are.
So we need to identify the unwholesome things.
And then the last triad is
"May I nourish myself with happiness every day."
And you may think,
"Oh, that's very selfish, wanting to nourish yourself."
But actually it's not.
Because the world really needs people
who have the capacity to be happy.
And if I can be happy,
I can offer happiness to others.
And of course, the kind of happiness
that I want is the happiness that
we talk about in True Happiness,
in the second Mindfulness Training today.
The happiness that is not dependent
on outer conditions,
but the happiness I can:
"Oh, I'm so happy I can still walk!"
"I'm so happy that I have eyes to look at the trees!"
That kind of happiness in our daily lives.
So, may I nourish happiness in myself every day.
And then the next one is
"May I live fresh, solid and free."
Though we, sometimes we meditate on
being a flower, being a mountain,
being space,
and during the meditation, we might
do it quite well.
But some other time, we may forget it.
And sometimes when you come home from work,
you don't feel very fresh,
and Thay suggests that before you open
the front door to your house,
you just stop a moment,
and you breathe in:
breathing in, I am a flower.
breathing out, I feel fresh.
Because I want to be fresh for my family
when I walk in the door.
And the last one is:
"May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not be indifferent."
So, we know how we suffer when
we're attached to something
or to someone.
And cannot be free when we are attached.
So we want that freedom for ourselves.
And after that, we -- the opposite to
attachment is aversion -- we want to
be free from that, because
when we have aversion for someone
or for something, we also lose our freedom.
But we don't want to be indifferent.
Because we are going to practice
loving kindness and compassion.
Equanimity, inclusiveness, doesn't mean indifference.
It means the capacity to embrace
and to hold.
Other people, other species.
So this is the way that we practice
loving kindness meditation.
And as I said, we practice it for ourselves.
And then, when we feel that we've
nourished ourselves and our fire is burning,
our fire of loving kindness is burning,
we can practice it for someone else.
We can practice it for "you".
Maybe we can practice it for somebody
who makes our life difficult.
And in that way we can look at that person
differently.
And the way that we look at another person
is important.
Sometimes we think when we have
a difficulty with someone else,
that it just comes from the other person.
It's nothing to do with us.
They are a difficult person.
But actually, it also comes from the way
that we look at that person.
And people that recognize very quickly
when we look at them,
they recognize the kind of eyes we look at them.
And if we have some aversion for somebody.
And even though we may smile and say
good morning, how are you and so on,
the aversion, it may come through our eyes.
And that person unconsciously,
maybe not consciously bu subconsciously,
will pick up that aversion.
And then that makes our relationship
more difficult.
So we need to be able to
develop our loving kindness for
the person who is difficult
so that when we look at them,
there is real love in our eyes,
not just a smile to show that we like them.
[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited to sound.]
So sometimes, I'm not afraid of death at all.
But other times, I feel fear of death.
So that is a seed in us.
We have those two seeds.
We have the seed of fearlessness,
and we have the seed of fear,
as far as death is concerned.
And we need to be a little bit
afraid of death, because if we're not,
we might fall off a cliff very easily.
So, we need to know there's the edge
of the cliff and we better stop.
And we feel a bit afraid when
we get too near.
So that fear is something very, is
necessary maybe for our survival.
But also that fear, it kind of stretches
out a bit too wide, and then
takes over territory that we don't really
need it to be there.
So, in then those areas,
we need to develop the fearlessness,
as far as death is concerned.
And so the Buddhist teachers in the past,
they have said that the great work of a
meditator is the realization of
no birth and no death.
So it's a great work.
And it's not just an intellectual realization.
It's a deep realization in our unconscious,
in our subconscious mind,
I don't know what you call it,
in the deeper levels of our consciousness,
that are usually subconscious.
That non-fear.
The intellect is not enough.
So when we give a Dharma talk,
we're usually on the intellectual level.
We use words.
We use concepts.
The first Dharma talk I heard about
no birth and no death was the first
retreat I went to in Cumbria with Thay.
I organized the retreat for Thay.
And during that retreat, Thay was talking
about the Heart Sutra,
and Thay held up a piece of paper,
and Thay asked, when is the birthday
of this piece of paper?
When was it born?
And then Thay asked,
and when is the death day of this piece
of paper?
And Thay said, maybe when the paper came
off the, off the machine in the factory,
and rolled off as a sheet of paper,
then that was its birthday.
And if we are to take a match,
and burn it,
and it turns into ashes,
that will be its deathday.
So that is our normal way of thinking
about birth and death.
But if we look more deeply,
we will see that the paper
is there in many things that
are not the paper.
The paper inter is,
inter is with the cloud, with the sunshine.
Because in the paper there is water.
And in the paper there is some tree
or some plant or something that made
the paper.
So we can see that the paper is not
something that has a real birthday
or a real death day either.
Because when you burn the paper,
energy is produced, the smoke is produced,
the ash is produced, the heat is produced.
So paper doesn't become nothing.
And the paper doesn't come from nothing.
And normally when we think about death,
we think we become nothing.
So yesterday, my friend said my self will
become nothing. This is what I heard.
My self will become nothing.
My separate self will become nothing
when I die.
And this can be something that
we are afraid of,
losing our separate self.
But the fact is that our separate self
doesn't exist when we are alive.
It's not there now, while we're breathing.
There is no separate self.
So in a way it can't die, because
it doesn't really, it's not really alive
There is no separate self.
So of course, the ash will go
back to the earth.
And maybe it will be fertilizer
for the earth, and the earth
will give rise to a flower.
The heat and the smoke will go
into the universe.
So one person told me that when
his wife died, he took her ashes, and
he put them at the foot of a magnolia
tree in their garden.
And every year, the magnolia tree
blossoms on her birthday.
So when we say that the ashes
go back to the earth,
it's not just the ashes.
There's also some other energy that
goes with the ashes that goes back
to the earth.
And we also, in Plum Village, we also
had a young meditation student
of 8 years old, who died,
of meningitis or something.
It's very sad.
And we put his ashes at the foot of
a plum tree, a plum tree he had saved up
his pocket money in order to be able
to buy that plum tree for Plum Village.
so that we can sell the plums and send
the money to hungry children in Vietnam.
So he saved up his pocket money to
buy a plum tree.
And when he died, we put his ashes at
the foot of that tree.
And that tree is always the first tree
to blossom, and the last tree for the
blossom to fade.
So we can see that in the matter,
what we call matter,
there is also spirit.
We have these two energies.
Matter is a kind of energy,
condensed energy, and then
there is the energy we send out
with our loving kindness, or
with our anger, or whatever.
So we usually distinguish between
matter and spirit,
but in fact, matter and spirit are,
you can't really take them out of each other.
You can't really separate
one from the other.
So we have an idea of ourselves as
five skandas, we call the five skandas.
The body, is, the body we think of
as being matter.
The feelings, and then the perceptions,
and then the mental formations,
and finally the consciousness.
So we think that is what my person is
made up of, these five things.
And one of them has to do with
material -- our body,
and the other four have to do with
our mind, our spirit.
But actually, we make that division,
even the Buddha, when the Buddha was
teaching, he made that division,
but in fact, you can't divide things like that.
They always inter-are.
So in the ashes left from the body,
there is also some mental formations,
some feelings, and so on.
When Anathapindika was dying.
Anathapindika was a lay disciple of the
Buddha, who donated the Jeta Grove
Monastery in Savatthi.
So Anathapindika was a very diligent practitioner.
He was sometimes successful, and
sometimes unsuccessful businessman.
He went bankrupt at one point.
But because he was such a good friend
to so many people,
they helped him, and then
he became a successful business man again.
And he used to bring his businessman friends
to listen to the Buddha's teaching.
And then he was dying.
At first the Buddha went to visit him.
And after that, he said Sariputra, one of
the disciples of the Buddha,
should take care of going to visit
Anathapindika, because Sariputra was
the best friend of Anathapindika.
And so Sariputra went with Ananda -
- at that time, Anathapindika was on
his death bed -
to give final teachings to Anathapindika.
And the first thing they wanted to do
was to take care of the feelings,
the perceptions, the mental formations
and the consciousness.
Of course, when someone is dying,
we can also take care of the body.
We can massage while we are talking
to the person, we can massage
their or their hands, in order to help
them feel that we are really there for them
and they are not alone.
So Thay often tells us how when one of his
lay friends was dying, Thay massaged their
feet. Alfred Hassler.
Sister Chan Khong said, "Alfred, you know
it's Thay massaging your feet."
So, but anyway, in this case,
Sariputra wanted to concentrate more on
the feelings, perceptions and consciousness.
So Sariputra said to Anathapindika,
"Anathapindika, remember the Buddha."
"Remember the happy times that you
have had with the Buddha."
And then, "Remember the Dharma."
"Remember all the happiness that
listening to the Dharma has brought you."
And then, "Remember the Sangha, the
happiness that you have received
from the Sangha."
And so giving these teachings is to take
care of the feelings and the perceptions
of the person who is dying, to send the
feelings and the perceptions
in a certain direction.
Because they have to continue.
Those feelings, those perceptions,
they continue
even though they become,
usually at death we say that the body
becomes separate from the feelings and
the perceptions, we also saw that that
is not completely correct, but in a sense
they also have their own way to go,
have their own energy to go, to give.
So we want that energy to continue as a
beautiful, peaceful energy.
And that by giving our attention
to the happiness we receive from being
in touch with the Buddha, the Dharma and
the Sangha, those feelings can go in
a good direction, a good energy.
And so when we are taking care of
someone who is dying, it's important
to know about the happiness of that person.
If somebody was not a Buddhist, to talk
about the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha
it might not be helpful.
So you would need to talk about something else.
And sometimes remembering wholesome
things that that person had done
during their life time.
When I was with my father,
I reminded him of the beautiful things
that he had done in his lifetime,
and also the happy things that he had done.
At one and the same time, we remind about
things that had a lot of happiness in, but
at the same time, those things that were
done that were very beneficial, that
brought happiness to others as well.
So we need to know about that person.
And then we can nourish that person with
happiness, help that person be nourished
by feelings of happiness, so that he or she
is able to look deeply into non-self.
That is our true nature.
[Singing:] "Nothing whatsoever to remove
from this. Not a single thing thereon to
add. Properly regarding the true nature.
When truly seeing, complete liberation."
Sorry, I don't have enough qi, eh?
Nothing whatsoever to remove from this.
Not a single thing thereon to add.
Properly regarding the true nature.
When truly seeing, complete liberation.
So this meditation that was offered to
Anathapindika was for Anathapindika to
be able to see the true nature and
therefore be liberated from the sense of
self and to be free at the moment of death.
So this meditation goes something like this.
You begin by meditating on your eyes.
Now, normally we think these eyse are
part of me, they're part of my body.
And Sariputra when guiding the meditation
for Anathapindika, he said that
"These eyes are not me. I am not
caught in these eyes."
So this is something we can prepare
ourselves before we lie on our deathbed.
It's better, because Sariputra may not be
there for us when we are on our deathbed.
So we can prepare. It's good.
And we have to look deeply at the nature
of our eyes. When were our eyes born?
And we see that our eyes are just the
continuation of our mother's eyes,
our father's eyes.
And they are not really mine.
Our eyes have been nourished by the food
that we have eaten, that we've been given.
They inter-are with everything that
we eat every day.
Our eyes, in fact, inter-are with the
dust of the stars.
If there weren't the stars, the dust of
the stars, our eyes would not be there.
If we look into the elements that make
our fleshly eyes, we will see the
different chemical elements that are
there, they come from the stars.
And so, we have to learn to meditate on
our eyes, to see that they are not me.
The same with our ears.
But not only that, we need to meditate
on the object of our eyes,
the object of our vision.
Whatever we see and we consider to be
outside of ourselves, we also consider
that to be me.
When somebody was dying, they were once
asked, "Is there anything that you regret?"
And that person said, "Yes, I regret that
I will no longer be able to be in touch
with the beauties of spring, the beauties
of autumn, when I die, I won't be in touch
with those things.
But in fact, that is because we think that
those things are there for me, but when
I die, the beauty of spring and the
beauty of autumn, it doesn't die as well.
There will be other eyes which will be
in touch with those things.
So, and I inter-am with those other eyes
that will be in touch.
So we have to let go of the idea that the
outside world is something that belongs
to me.
And then of course, in our vision, it's
not just eyes and the light waves, and
the so-called objects out there that make
possible our vision. We need something else.
And that is, we need our consciousness.
Without consciousness, we wouldn't see
anything, even though our eyes are
perfectly good, our optic nerve is
perfectly good, but without
consciousness, we don't see anything.
Because the light waves that our retina
is able to pick up, the nerves are able
to pick up and send a message to our
primary visual cortex and our secondary
visual cortex, those light waves, they have
to be interpreted.
So we have to see that also this consciousness, this visual cortex,
is not me, it's not mine,
it's not myself.
So in this way we are liberated.
We don't identify ourselves with any of
the things that we normally in our lifetime
identify ourselves with.
In Plum Village, we often use the meditation
on the water and the wave.
We visualize ourself as a wave,
and there is a time when the wave is born,
and then it exists for a while, and then,
it crashes on the shore or
it goes back into the sea.
And at that time when it crashes on the
shore, the water, it goes back into the sea.
And also there's the energy from the wave,
that you can hear on the shore,
you can feel on the sand on the shore,
you can feel the energy from the wave.
So it's true, that the wave has lost
its separate self.
Its separate self has gone back into
energy on the shore and water in the sea.
But nothing is lost.
It's something very scientific.
It's not metaphysics.
And as our friend said yesterday,
the Buddha didn't like metaphysics.
Not he didn't like it, but he thought it
was a bit of a waste of time.
When the Buddha was asked:
"After death, do you continue to exist?
Or after death, do you cease to exist?"
The Buddha's reply was that the Buddha
only teaches two things,
suffering and the end of suffering.
I can't answer that question.
So the wave you can see that you can't
say that the wave continues to exist,
because it's not that wave that we saw
that was there before.
But you can't say it ceases to exist,
because the energy is still there,
the water is still there.
And this is something very scientific.
The scientist Lavoisier,
the chemist Lavoisier.
"Rien ne se créé, rien ne se perd."
Nothing is created, nothing is lost.
Everything is in transformation.
And that is something that was seen by
scientists when they do experiments in
their laboratory, chemists and physicists.
And we know that the first law of
thermodynamics is that energy is not lost.
So, when we look at this matter of
no birth and no death, we have to take
in consideration what scientists say as well.
It's not just something metaphysical.
So the occasion when the Buddha said that
he only taught about suffering and
not suffering was when one of his
young disciples, a young monk, of the
name of Anuruddha. He went out on the
alms round in the early morning.
And then after the alms round, he thought
why don't I go and visit the pavilion where
all the monks of all the different
traditions are sitting having some kind
of Dharma discussion.
So there were many kinds of spiritual
traditions in India at that time,
not just Buddhism.
So, Anuruddha walked into the pavilion,
and they said, "Oh, look, there's one of
the disciples of Gautama Buddha!"
Why don't we ask him about what
happens to us after we die.
He must have heard from the Buddha
what happens.
So they said, "Anuruddha, you're a disciple
of Guatama Buddha. So please tell us:
after death, will the Buddha continue to
exist? After his death, will the Buddha
cease to exist? After death, will he both
continue and cease to exist? After death,
will he neither continue nor cease
to exist?" This is Indian logic, at that time.
And Anuruddha was completely befuddled.
He didn't know what to say. He felt
very bad. "Here I am representing the
Buddha. But I'm a young monk, and
I never heard the Buddha talk about
any of these things."
So he couldn't answer. And he said,
"Friends, I'm sorry, but I've never heard
the Buddha talk about any of these things."
And then they said, "This monk either
just became ordained, or he is stupid."
And he didn't feel very good about that.
But anyway, he went back to the Buddha
and said "Lord Buddha, this morning I
went to the pavilion and I was asked
this question, and I couldn't answer.
Please sir, can you teach me, so the next
they ask me this question, they won't say
that I am stupid. I will be able to answer."
And so the Buddha taught Anuruddha.
And the Buddha said to Anuruddha,
"Here is the Buddha sitting here."
"So first of all, is the Buddha the body?"
And Anuruddha said "No, the Buddha
is not the body."
"Is the Buddha feelings?"
Anuruddha said,
"No, the Buddha is not feelings."
"Is the Buddha perceptions, mental formations, consciousness?"
And Anuruddha said, "No."
And then the Buddha asked,
"Is the Buddha possible without the body?"
And Anuruddha said, "No."
"Is the Buddha possible without feelings?"
"No."
"Without perceptions, mental formations...."
And so in the end, Anuruddha
could not find the Buddha.
And the Buddha said,
"Anuruddha, if you cannot find the Buddha
while he is alive, how to you hope to be
able to find him after he's died?"
And Anuruddha said "You're right."
And then the Buddha said,
"Yes, the Buddha has only taught
two things, suffering and the end of suffering."
[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited to sound.]
And sometimes after a young couple have
been married, Thay will ask them to do
this kind of exercise.
So you ask your loved one questions
like that: am I this body?
And then the other person says no.
Am I my feelings? No.
And then you recognize that person you love
is not somebody you can find.
It's not something you can grasp onto.
It escapes all definitions.
And then when that person dies,
you won't feel that it's only after
they've died that you can't find them.
You also see that when they were alive,
you could not find them.
Because when they are alive,
they aren't. They inter-are.
And when they are dead, they aren't.
They inter-are.
This morning when we chanted the
Insight the brings us to the Other Shore,
we said "no being, no non-being."
And that is a new addition to that sutra,
but Thay saw that it's very important.
We believe that things really are,
or that things really are not,
because we are caught in our perception
of a sign.
We identify someone with a sign.
And we say that person is.
And when that sign is not there for us to
identify, we say that person is not.
This line is infinity, it's not begin and end.
And on this line there's a sign that we
call "B", and that sign is the sign "birth".
And there's another sign that we call "D".
And that's the sign "death".
Birth is a sign.
It's not an absolute reality.
We say where there is a sign,
there is a deception.
But we need signs in order to be able to
recognize things.
Like you need a birth certificate
in order to be able, I don't know
sometimes you need a birth certificate
I don't know when you need it,
but you do, eh? [laughter]
And you also need a death certificate
sometimes. Well, you don't need it, but...
[laughter] somebody else does.
So anyway. Birth and death are signs.
And we saw that when we looked at the paper,
it's very difficult to find the birthday
of a piece of paper, if you look deeply.
But, you can establish a sign, and say
that was the birthday when it came off the
tread, or whatever it came off, I don't know.
And also for your own birth.
When they say "Oh, there's that new baby,
what it looks like, we can see with our eyes."
Then that is a sign, and we call it
the birthday.
But some people call the birthday
the conception day, the day when
conception took place.
But that is also another sign.
Because before the conception there was
also mother's egg, father's seed.
So it's not exactly a birthday.
So death is also a sign.
If you look outside, there are some poppies.
Yesterday there were two, and today
there are three. Or maybe the day before.
Anyway, there are now three.
And the two older ones, they're beginning,
the petals are getting a little bit faded
on the edges. And then along side of them,
there are some seed pods,
two flowers already changed into seedpods.
So you can say that two flowers have died.
But in fact, they've changed their sign.
Before they were red flowers, but now
they are seedpods. And then the seed
will at some time fall back to the earth,
and then they'll be another sign of
another flower coming up.
So it's not really a matter of death.
Normally we say that death is non-being.
But the flower hasn't become non-being.
The petals have gone back down into
the earth and the seedpod is continuing
the flower.
And then you say here, after the flower
has opened, it became being.
But that is just a sign.
Before that, when it was a bud..
we say before that, it was non-being.
So the idea of birth and death is connected
to the idea of being and non-being.
If you don't have an idea of being and
non-being, you won't have an idea
of birth and death.
Because birth coming into being from
non-being, and death is going out of being
into non-being.
So we've all witnessed people who have died.
We've all. They are people in our family who
have died, or we know people who have died.
And we have to ask ourselves,
"After that person died, did they become
non-being?"
While they were alive, were they being?
Or while they were alive, were they non-being?
So now we look at ourself when
we were a child.
And if somebody took a photograph of us.
And sometimes we will open the
photograph album, and we will say to
our friend, "Do you know what, that's me!
when I was 6 years old or something."
And the friend will say, "Oh really,
I would never have guessed it?"
So that child in the photograph,
it looks very different from how you look
when you are 30 or 40, or 80 or 90
or whatever.
And not only the body of the child is different.
But also the feelings are different.
If you ask yourself when I was that age,
what were my feelings like?
What were my perceptions like?
You will see that they are quite different,
although you can remember what they
were like, from what they are now.
So we have to say that that child is not
really me, no really the same me as the
me now. But on the other hand, we
can't say that that child is different,
because that child hadn't been there,
there's no way that this thing I call me
now would be here.
So this is some time, in this way of looking
we have to go beyond our normal
concepts and categories.
Normally we say it has to be in a box
called "same", or we have to put it in a
box called "different".
So either I am the same as that child, or
I am different from that child.
And Thay, when I first came to Plum Village,
this was one thing that Thay was always
asking his students,
"Is Thay the same as Thay was last year?"
And I would always say,
"Yes, Thay is the same as last year."
And then somebody else in the room would
say "No, Thay is different."
And Thay would say, "You cannot put Thay
in a box "same", you cannot put Thay in a
box "different". Thay is outside
those two boxes.
It's the same when people want to make
a stupa for Thay.
When Thay dies, they want to have a
little bit of Thay's ashes that they can
put in that stupa. I think Thay doesn't
terribly want to have a stupa, I'm not sure.
Anyway, he said to the people.
"Ok, you can make a stupa for me, but
you have to put a notice on it, that says
'Thay is not in here.'" And then you also
have to say 'Thay is not outside of here'
either, because inside and outside of here
are also two boxes.
So, it gets deeper and deeper.
So if you have someone you love,
be careful not to put them in a box.
If you have someone you don't love,
be careful , don't put them in a box.
That box is made out of signs.
One sister I know practised very well.
Her father and mother died when she was
quite young. And she said now I see that
I am much closer to my mother and father
than when they were alive.
So this means that mother and father
continue in you, and they continue in
your siblings, they continue in their
children, in their grandchildren.
And when Mother and Father were alive,
maybe you put them in boxes.
So you weren't able to be in touch with
them as a whole, as part of everything,
as part of interbeing.
So in order to free ourselves from ideas
of being and non-being, we have to have
another concept which, with any luck,
will take us into the non-conceptual.
So, before someone dies, they inter-are.
And after they die, they continue
to inter-be.
Sometimes, after someone has died,
you see them much more clearly
in their children and their grandchildren
than before, because before they died,
you looked at them as separate from
their children. But after they die, you
don't have anywhere else to look, so
you see them in their children.
So we've been practising to walk on
Mother Earth, to place footsteps of love,
and to caress the Earth as we walk, to
see that the Earth is not just matter,
but also spirit. And we've talked about
Mother Earth as we are born from the Earth
and we go back to the Earth.
And I think that this can remove a lot of
our fear also. Whenever we walk on the
Earth, we see, yes, this is where I will
go back to. A large part of me will
go back to the Earth.
And the Earth is always ready to receive
and embrace me.
So an important part of developing
fearlessness about death is to be able to
see the Earth as your loving Mother who
will receive you when you die.
And we talked a bit about the teaching of
no same, no different, not in those boxes.
We also have boxes which are
no coming, no going.
No, sorry, we also have boxes which are
"coming" and "going".
And often when people die, people ask,
"Oh, can you tell me where he has gone?"
"Where can I find him now?"
And Thay used to light a match.
Do you remember Thay's box of matches?
We forgot the matches today.
Nevermind, you can remember.
So you have a box of matches, and then you
take out one match and you ask,
"Dear little match, will you produce a
flame for us?"
Thank you.
So first of all, we have to ask,
"Where is the flame now?"
We don't see a flame;
we don't have the sign of a flame.
But on the other hand, we know that all
the elements to make the flame are present
inside this box and also outside, because
you also need the oxygen, so inside and
outside.
So now we have the match, we have the box,
we have the oxygen. We only need one
more condition for the flame to manifest.
And that is we have to do something with
our fingers. "So, dear flame, please manifest.
Dear match, please help manifest the flame
for the Sangha.
And now the flame is manifesting.
You allow it to manifest.
And while it's manifesting it's giving
off light and heat.
And now it's giving off smoke.
So then we ask the flame,
"Oh, dear little flame, where have you gone?"
And the flame says it hasn't gone anywhere.
Dear Sangha, I haven't gone anywhere.
I haven't gone North, South, East or West.
It's just the conditions were not there
for me to manifest anymore,
so I ceased to manifest.
And similarly, I didn't come from anywhere.
I didn't come from the North, the South,
the East or the West, but the conditions
were all there for me to manifest
so I manifested.
So when somebody dies, and we ask them
"Where have you gone?" then the answer
will also be "I haven't gone anywhere."
And if you look, you can be in touch
with them.
Somebody will say [singing]
This body is not me;
I am not caught in this body.
I am life without limit.
I've never been born, and I've never died.
Over there the wide ocean and
millions of galaxies,
all arise from the depth of consciousness.
So smile to me and take my hand,
and wave good-bye.
Tomorrow we shall meet again,
or even before.
We shall always be meeting again
on the millions walks of life.
We shall meet in every moment,
on the million walks of life. [end of singing]
Did I leave out a line? I think I did:
Birth and death are only a game
of hide and seek.
Birth and death are only a threshold,
a door through which we go in and out.
Birth and death are only a game
of hide and seek.
So we use our understanding of interbeing
in order to be able find the person who
has died, to find they haven't gone
anywhere, they didn't come from anywhere,
they haven't gone anywhere.
When the conditions were right, they manifest.
Conditions not right, they cease to manifest.
And the first place to look is in yourself,
to find that person.
To find the feeling they transmitted to you,
the perception that they left to you.
So dear friends, our retreat is coming
to an end. And thank you for being here.
And we will have a kind of closing, I think,
by singing together.
And we may have a little time
to say thank you. A few people
will say thank you to each other.
So, we will listen to three
sounds of the bell.
And the three sounds of the bell are
our good wish for you.
Firstly, to have a good journey home.
And secondly, to be able to continue
whatever part of the practice that is
most helpful for you.
And thirdly, to come back again,
when we next have a retreat.
[a lotus for you]
[The bell is awoken.]
[The bell is invited to sound.]
[The small bell is invited to sound.]