Contemplative Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh as Immersive Ambient Sound Journey

[Bell].

When I was young, I did not believe in paradise, in the Kingdom of God.

Because people suffer so much.

They don't find it easy

here and now, so they... they're thinking of somewhere else that's maybe more pleasant.

And the paradise, the Kingdom of God, Pure Land of Buddha,

are just creation of that kind of imagination, longing.

It's springtime now.

And if we observe, we see that

there's so many wonderful things manifesting.

And if we look at these flowers and ask where they have come from,

they may tell you that they have come from the Kingdom of God.

And if you get in touch with them deeply enough,

you touch the Kingdom of God.

And we ask...

If we ask the rain, the sunshine, the trees,

the fog, where do they come from?

They may answer the same way.

"We have come from the Kingdom of God.

And if you get in touch with us deeply, you touch the Kingdom."

And if your child comes,

with her smile,

her innocense,

and if you ask her, "Darling, where have you come from?"

And your child may tell you in one way or another,

that he has come from Kingdom of God.

And if you can touch her, touch him deeply, you touch the Kingdom.

And because of that practice of looking deeply, I have discovered that

the Kingdom of God is available in the here and the now.

The Pure Land of the Buddha is in the here and the now.

Your heart,

you yourself,

each one of us,

has come from the Kingdom of God.

Each of us belongs to the Kingdom.

We know how to get in touch with ourselves deeply enough.

We touch the Kingdom.

And the Kingdom can be touched within.

That is just a thought, a notion, a concept.

But the practice of looking deeply you experience,

every flower is trying to open

and the sunshine encourages them to open.

Your heart is one.

Allow it to open.

Don't be afraid.

Even if you have suffered, if your heart want to close, your heart is still a flower.

Let us allow our heart open like a flower.

It's time to do so.

And it is in the here and the now that we can touch deeply the Kingdom.

And the Buddha said that joy and peace and happiness

are possible in the here and the now, you don't need to go to the future.

You don't need to go elsewhere in order to get it, to get them.

You don't have to do anything.

You don't have to go anywhere.

So let us sit in such a way that we can

touch the Pure Land of Buddha within us, the Kingdom of God within us.

We may become the Kingdom.

The kingdom is a source of ambrosia.

It brings freshness, peace, well-being and joy.

The Buddha encourages us to practice right thinking.

We suffer because we don't know how to think.

We don't know how to practice right thinking.

And wrong thinking brings a lot of fear, anger, separation, and despair.

Right thinking brings us close to the Kingdom of God,

to peace,

to love.

Right thinking brings us back to the source of light.

Because right thinking is the kind of thinking that is free from discrimination,

free from anger, free from separation.

When you think that the Kingdom of God is not there, it is something that is elsewhere,

and you can only go to it after you die, that's not right thinking.

And you think that your mother is entirely another person,

you are yourself only and she is herself only, you are two separate persons.

That's not right thinking.

When you are able to see you in your mother and your mother is in you

and you belong to the same stream of being.

That is right thinking.

The thinking that eliminates all kind of discrimination, and anger, and hate

brings love and understanding.

The Buddha said that, "Everything is a product of our mind."

And

if we practice collective right thinking,

we can bring in

the Kingdom of God, we can bring in the Pure Land of the Buddha, we can bring in

peace and joy for us right in the here and the now.

You have a top soil, you have the trees ready, you have to fog ready, you have friends

ready to join in in order to...

to create the Kingdom of God for you.

And so the kingdom has become for me a reality of each moment,

and no longer an idea that you entertain your heart so that you suffer less.

The Kingdom is now or never.

And as a good practitioner,

whenever you make a step,

mindfully,

with freedom

and solidity,

you touch the Pure Land of the Buddha,

you touch the Kingdom of God.

And there is also always that desire to share the kingdom with another person,

with other people.

When you observe a lemon tree,

or an orange tree,

we noticed that the orange tree is capable of producing beautiful orange...

leaves, very green,

and beautiful red oranges.

And she enjoys producing leaves, flowers and fruits.

And that is her continuation.

Each of us is like an orange.

And if we do well, we produce beautiful thought, beautiful speech, and beautiful action.

The kind of speech, action, and thought that can improve the quality of the world.

And they're called action.

Whether it is a thought of hate, or a thought of love, it is there to last.

When you produce a thought, that thought will create a chain action.

If your thought is full of hate and despair, it begins to destroy yourself.

And it will help destroy the world if your thinking is full of hate and despair.

A thought of hate, a thought of despair can destroy yourself and destroy your family and the world.

But a thought of compassion, a thought of loving kindness, a thought of...

compassion,

has the power to heal yourself.

As soon as you produce a thought of compassion,

it will have a good effect on your body, your health, right away.

Right thinking can be very healing, and it can help heal the world.

And right thinking does not cost anything.

You need only to practice.

Listen to the sound of the bell.

Enjoy the in-breath, the out-breath.

The energy of mindfulness is powerful.

There is silence.

But this kind of silence is so eloquent, so alive, so peaceful.

And you feel it penetrated into your body, your mind, and you feel the nourishment and healing

because of that silence, that energy of silence.

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