Dharma Rain, and Being Alone | Thich Nhat Hanh (short teaching video)

(Palming joining and bowing)

Good morning, dear friends.

Today is October, the 21st, in the year 2003.

We are in the Lower Hamlet,

Dharma Nectar Temple,

in our second day of the I-P (Israeli Palestinian) retreat.

Our intention is not to give you ideas.

Even ideas of peace.

Our intention is

to offer you

an opportunity

to recognize the seed of peace and joy

that are already in yourself.

A talk

a Dharma talk

is like a cloud,

a rain.

And the rain can help

the seeds

in the soil

to sprout,

and to bring forth

flowers and fruits.

The rain is not the seeds.

But the rain can help the seeds to sprout,

and bring forth the flowers.

The flowers of understanding. The flowers of peace. The flowers of joy.

That's why it's not my intention

to give you ideas.

It's not your purpose to come here

and receive ideas,

and put it in a notebook.

When there is a rain,

we allow the rain

to penetrate into the soil.

And if the rain is enough,

then all the seeds within the soil

will be penetrated by the rain.

And they have the chance to sprout.

So during a talk like this,

we don't need to do anything,

we don't need to

try to understand,

or to try to record what is being said.

In a talk like this, you just allow yourself

to be penetrated by the rain.

And suddenly you'll find that the seeds of understanding, wisdom, and love in you

sprouted.

There is nothing whatsoever to do.

Just sit there and allow the rain the penetrate.

You have to believe

that the seed of peace,

the seed of joy,

the seed of happiness,

are already in you.

The seed of the Kingdom of God

is in you.

It's not outside of you.

If you think that God is outside of you,

and if you are looking for him, or for her,

you'll never encounter God.

It's like a wave running to search for water.

She'd never encounter water.

She has to go home to herself,

with the strong conviction that the water is within,

and then there is a chance.

You're not looking for something outside.

When the brothers and sisters came up this morning to chant,

they did not address these words

to someone outside of them.

That someone maybe the Buddha, Bodhisattva, or God.

No

They're not addressing a God outside of them at all.

And they know that.

And this chanting is only

a kind of rain

in order to water

the seeds of understanding, of peace

within themselves.

And when we stand up and bow to this direction,

that does not mean that the Buddha, God, is in this direction at all.

When you bow like that,

we touch the ultimate in us.

We touch the good, the beautiful, the true in us.

(It) does not mean that we believe that there's nothing in here,

there's something in that direction.

and if you believe that there's something in that direction,

you are wrong.

There is nothing whatsoever in that direction.

Although there is a Buddha statue sitting,

that is only a block of rock.

It's not the Buddha.

The Buddha is the capacity of understanding and loving

that is in every cell of our body.

So let us not be fooled by the form.

The most precious

gift

we can offer

to the person we love

is our energy of understanding,

and love.

If we do not have understanding and love within us,

there's nothing to offer to him, or to her, or to the world.

But how to cultivate understanding and love?

You can cultivate understanding and love when you are alone.

To be alone does not mean that you have to cut off

cut yourself off,

from the society,

and go to a mountain

and live in a cave.

To live alone means you always are yourself.

You do not lose yourself.

You sit in the marketplace,

and yet you can be alone.

You never lose yourself.

You're always yourself.

You are the boss,

you are not a victim.

When you practice walking mindfully,

you are concentrating on your steps,

and your in-breath and out-breath.

Even if you are walking with 200, 300 people,

you are still alone.

Because mindfulness and concentration are in you.

And every breath, every step nourish you,

and enrich you

and bring you the energy of understanding, of love.

Because of you are not yourself,

you cannot love,

you cannot offer anything.

To live alone, to be alone, means

to come home to yourself,

and become the master of yourself.

And not to allow yourself to be carried away.

And this is the practice of mindful walking,

mindful breathing,

that can help you

to always come home to yourself.

So that you can get the nourishment,

you can cultivate

awareness, understanding, and love.

Because understanding is the foundation of love.

If you don't understand,

you cannot love.

If you cannot understand yourself,

you cannot love yourself.

If you cannot understand him,

you cannot love.

If you cannot understand her,

you cannot love her.

So understanding is the other word for "love".

Suppose

your partner, you don't understand her,

you don't understand anything about her,

you don't understand her suffering, her difficulties,

her deepest aspiration

how can you say that you can love her?

And how can you understand her?

You have to be yourself.

And when you look at her,

you begin to see.

To see her suffering, to see her difficulties,

to see her deepest aspiration.

If you are not yourself,

how can you listen,

how can you see deeply like that?

And when understanding is there,

love is possible.

Love is the water

that springs

from the source

of understanding.

Relationship is meaningful

only

when each person is himself, is herself.

If you are empty,

if the other person is empty,

you don't have anything to offer

to each other.

Empty of what?

Empty of understanding,

empty of love,

empty of beauty,

empty of truth.

And that is why we have to nourish us.

That is why we have to be ourselves.

When we meet each other,

we love to talk to each other.

It's a pleasure to talk to each other.

I know that.

But if we don't practice mindfulness,

talking is just

(to) allow yourself to

to...

be carried away

by the talking.

You don't have much to offer.

And the other person does not have much to offer to you.

Of course,

when you have something in you,

very precious,

you can share,

you can offer.

And talking is one of the ways in order to offer,

to express yourself.

But if you only have empty ideas,

that's not a true gift.

You may have opinions and ideas about everything.

But that's not what the other person needs.

What the other person needs is your understanding,

your love,

your insight.

Your insight not as ideas.

But as a living reality.

You embody insight.

You embody compassion and joy.

And that is why relationships become meaningful.

If we know the art of living alone,

it means that if we know how to be ourselves,

to cultivate

in each moment

the energy of peace,

the energy of understanding,

the energy of compassion,

then our relationship will become meaningful.

Each of us has to be ourselves,

in order for the relationship to be meaningful.

This is quite simple.

And that is why

when you have five minutes,

when you have ten minutes

for yourself,

you profit from these five or ten minutes.

in order to enrich yourself

to become more solid

more free

more understanding

more compassionate.

Because when we love someone,

we want to offer him, and to offer her,

what we have.

And what we have is joy, understanding, compassion.

And then the offering is the best thing you can make to our beloved ones.

We should ask ourselves,

What can I offer her?

What can I offer him?

Do I have much to offer? (smile)

If you want to have something to offer,

cultivate it.

And you cultivate it by being alone,

working alone,

cultivating alone.

And the practice of mindful breathing,

mindful walking

can help you to come home to yourself

and begin to.. to..

to get the energy

of joy, of peace.

Imagine a tree standing out there.

Because the tree is always standing there,

it continues to get the nutrition from the earth.

The water, the minerals, and so on.

With that kind of input,

she can nourish

her branches,

her leaves,

she can make flowers, she can make leaves, and so on.

And she has so many things to offer to the world.

And if we move the tree around,

the root of tree will have no chance

to get in touch with the soil.

And the root of the tree cannot get the nutriments that she needs

in order to make flowers and fruits.

We are like a tree.

If we do not know how to go home to us,

to become fully present,

to have a chance to cultivate,

to practice looking deeply and listening deeply,

then we cannot get the nutriments for ourselves.

We don't have much

in order to offer to the person we love.

In our retreats,

we always have time for discussion.

That we call "Dharma discussion",

the kind of discussion in which we can offer our insight,

our joy, our experiences.

It's very, very, very meaningful.

And there are those of us who don't feel that we should say anything

because the thing we'd like to share is not very clear yet.

We don't need to speak.

We just need to listen.

To allow the insights of other people to penetrate in us.

Even if we don't say anything,

we are profiting from the insights of everyone.

And what we profit is not the ideas,

but the living experiences

that other people in the group have.

And it's our duty to share.

If you have something,

some living experience in you,

you should share to the sangha.

And this is Mindful Talking.

This is a real Dharma discussion,

enriching everyone, everybody.

And you are encouraged to share

when you do have something to share.

Each of us is like a tree.

Every minute of our daily life,

we get the nourishment.

And of course we have something we can flower,

we can offer the flowers

and the fruits

and that is our contribution,

a gift we can make to the world.