The 40 Tenets of Plum Village with Brother Phap Luu | Class #8

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Dear respected Thay,
dear friends, can you hear?

Welcome back to

class on the 40 tenets of Plum Village.

Today is the 12th of May in the year 2021

and we're in the Ocean of Peace
meditation hall of Deer Park Monastery

during our spring retreat.

It's very helpful to believe

in the transformative power of the Dharma.

And that belief doesn't have to come
from some kind of blind faith,

but it can come just from
being aware of our breathing.

Breathing in, I know I'm breathing in.

Breathing out, I know I'm breathing out.

In,

out.

Just being aware of the in-breath

as it comes in through my nostrils,
my mouth.

And breathing out.

My belly falling, the air moving up
out through my nose and mouth.

Breathing in, I'm aware of the
impermanent nature of my breathing.

I cannot grasp onto the breath.

As it comes in,

as it comes out, I relax my shoulders,

relax my whole body wherever I'm seated,
watching this on the computer,

I can just close my eyes and allow

the concentration on the breathing
to manifest.

Okay, you can open our eyes.

Just taking a moment like that, seeing
the impermanent nature of the breath,

that we cannot hold on to it.

And the calm that comes
with that realization

is already enough evidence

for me to know that there's
a transformative effect of the Dharma.

And there are so many other doors.

There's taking a mindful step,

being aware of the contact
our foot makes with the earth,

coordinate -

There's being aware
of the food that we're eating.

the sun, the rain, the earth, the farmer,

all the elements that
help make up that food.

And seeing that we also are made
of the sun, the rain, the earth,

and our parents, and our ancestors.

And by seeing that, seeing
the interbeing nature of us and the food.

If we remove any of those elements from
the food, they can no longer manifest.

And the same is true of us.

If we remove any of those
non-us elements from our body,

our feelings, our perceptions,

then we can no longer manifest.

So that is the nature of manifestation.

Things manifest due to
causes and conditions.

So all of these meditation on the breath,
the walking meditation,

meditation on our eating

are like doorways into the Dharma.

They allow us to free ourselves from

the habitual way of grasping
at signs and phenomena.

And just feeling the bliss, the calm,
the ease that comes with that realization

gives us faith, gives us confidence.

That is the beautiful
nature of the Dharma.

It doesn't require you to believe
something that's difficult to believe.

You practice, you get some freedom,
you get some ease,

and then you want more,
so you continue to practice.

That is the spirit of belief in the
Buddhist tradition.

And it means that freedom is possible,
happiness is possible.

That is the kind of belief
that is very helpful to have.

So that when there are moments
of overwhelming sadness,

despair, anger, grief,

we know there's a path,
so we don't fear that anger,

we don't fear our own despair,

but we know how to take care of it.

We know how to take care of it just like
we take care of our breathing,

like we take care of our eating,
like we take care of our walking.

It's there and we can use it
as an object of our meditation,

that despair, that anger.

And to see that it is impermanent,
it is not something that we can grasp.

Thay often described it as
unblocking our mind.

We have blocks of suffering in us,

and this meditation on impermanence,
letting go,

letting go of grasping,

is a way to kind of massage
those blocks of suffering,

so we don't continue to engage
in the kind of grasping

and habitual stimulation of seeds of
afflictions in our consciousness.

We let go, we allow it to relax.

So when many people come on a retreat
for the first time,

they feel a lot of exhaustion.

'Oh gosh! I came on a retreat,
I thought I would get energy,

but why I feel so tired?'

That's because there's something
that's stuck

in their daily way of living,
in their mind.

So when they come to the monastery,

it is able to get a kind of a break,

to continue to reinforce
that block of suffering,

but you allow it to break up in chunks,
like an iceberg that's melting.

And it starts to flow.
The frozen river starts to flow.

And it's no longer blocked.

And then that flowing is,
'Oh my gosh!

So many things are going on inside.
I feel exhausted.

I have to sleep nine hours, ten hours.'

And that happens to many many people
who come on our retreats,

because they don't recognize
how, in their daily life,

they are continuing
to create this kind of blockage.

So all of these tenets that
we're learning are helping us

to release that block of suffering

and to discover new ones
that are there, hidden,

like trauma in the body itself.

Not continuing to avoid it, but rather
bringing that awareness to it

and allowing it to relax.
That is the beauty of the Dharma.

It's the beauty of this practice.

So I highly encourage you to believe in
the possibility of freedom,

to believe that happiness is possible.

To touch that inspiration.

And to know that
there is a path.

And that can help
in moments of great difficulty.

But the better way to practice is
to actually touch the happiness

right here and right now.

There's nowhere to go, nothing to do.

Sometimes we feel so much suffering,

I just need to have something
to believe in.

And I think it's a pity

if we just say, 'No, I'm a Buddhist,
I don't believe in anything.'

We can become extreme skeptic.

I don't believe in the Four Noble Truths,
I don't believe in awakening,

I don't believe in all these things.

And ultimately, we may end up
in a very dark place.

We try to reduce everything
to rational understanding.

We think the Buddha is just a scientist

pouring chemicals
from a beaker to another beaker,

and we forget entirely

the possibility of awakening
in the present moment.

And to not fear,

as well allowing ourselves to be happy,
allowing ourselves to be free.

Recognizing that those forces
that are driving us to run,

the fear instilled in us
from a young age

that we are not doing enough,
we're not working enough,

we're not intelligent enough,
we're not smart enough,

we're not beautiful enough,
we're not promoting ourselves enough

or not whatever enough,

is actually hiding there and
it's driving us to this kind of activity

which is not allowing us to be happy,

not allowing us to stop and be free
in the present moment.

I know, because
I have that energy in myself.

And I've spent many years embracing it.

And I know it's still there.

In the tradition they say
that restlessness

is one of the last things to completely
disappear before full awakening.

Not to get caught in ideas
of full awakening or not,

but it's a very helpful,
I found it very helpful to remember that,

that even as a committed practitioner,

something somehow is still-
I want to go somewhere else.

Thay, our teacher, described it,

the attainment of
removing our restlessness

he called it 'froglessness'.

I think there's an expression in Vietnam.

You put a frog on the plate,
and then it jumps off.

You put it back on the plate,
it jumps off again.

So one of the attainments of Plum Village

is that we are able to
remove the frog in us

which always wants to jump off the plate.

We're on the plate,
we're in a very safe place.

Everything we need is there,
and then we jump off.

There's something in us that's
somehow not satisfied with what's there,

so we need to go somewhere else.

That is why Thay encouraged us
to stick together as a sangha,

because when you suffer in the sangha,

when you have a difficulty in your
relationship with the brother or sister,

or the sangha in general,

then you want to jump off the plate,
you want to go somewhere else

just to try to relieve your suffering.

But actually,
your suffering goes with you,

because you find in that new place
the same or very similar situation

to the ones you discovered in
the monastery or at the practice center.

So can you be with the suffering

instead of trying to avoid it,
trying to jump away?

Because the practice is a process of
constant discovery of new blockages,

new places where there are -
The stickiness.

This sticking to your idea
you don't want to let go.

Whether it's the kind of food you eat,
whether it's the kind of language you use,

whether it's kind of people
you think are cool,

whether it's your idea

about what a proper nun is,
or a proper monk.

And you get stuck on that idea.

And because you're stuck on it,

you make your younger brothers
and sisters suffer so much.

I'm guilty of that,

because in my life I've been very attached
to my idea of being a monk.

Because I love so much being a monk,

and I get so much happiness from

practicing the Dharma
and teaching the Dharma.

And I still have a lot of suffering,
but I know that this path,

I'm very sure about it.

Because years and years of practice
have shown me that if I stay,

if I'm patient,

if I avoid jumping off the plate,
if I can just sit there

and be with whatever comes up,

be with whatever difficulty
comes up in my relationships,

it will pass, and I will learn from it.

Usually when I jump off the plate and
I just change, I go and distract myself,

I don't learn very much
about that suffering that came up.

So I miss that opportunity.

So many brothers and sisters
in our community,

when they were leaving

deciding to go and do
into another path, another form

as a lay person, I thought,
'If they could only stay!

Because this is the big one!

That's the big suffering!'

Everything else has been
to prepare you for this moment,

when the suffering is so big

that you just feel you can no longer
live in the community.

And you have to go.

And here you are.
You're given this great gift,

the big one, the big fish.

The big suffering.

And here you turned away!

I don't want to promote hooking the fish,

but, it's like the moment
that you've been waiting for.

And of course, we're not waiting,
but it's the big one.

And you think, Where did my happiness go?
Where did my joy go?

Where did my freedom go?
And then you go somewhere else.

And it may not be many many years
until that suffering surfaces again.

And because you left,
because you jumped off the plate,

all you'll know how to do next time
if you haven't grown,

when the suffering gets to be very big
it's just to jump off the plate again,

instead of looking deeply
into that suffering

and seeing its nature, its roots,
it's ancestral roots.

It's not only your suffering,

but it's also the suffering of
your father, your mother, your ancestors.

So not only can you benefit from
their presence in every cell of your body,

but you can also

transform the suffering
they were not able to transform.

Because that big block of suffering in you

is also the block of suffering
of your mother, and your father,

of your parents, your ancestors,
of your entire civilization.

There are collective blocks of suffering.

Many of us here in America
have European roots.

And we suffered great trauma
in Europe religious wars.

Many of our ancestors were peasants
who had very little agency.

And they suffered so greatly
from disease, from hatred, from ideology.

And we suffered so much that we
uprooted ourselves and came to a new land.

We thought, 'We'll just jump off the plate
and go to another land.

Everything there is wonderful,
and we can begin anew.

We can be the boss.
Over there we are just a peasant.

Let's go over to this new place
and become the boss.

Then, if we are the boss,
we will be free from suffering.'

And so we started bossing around,
our ancestors, the native people,

killing, destroying, and enslaving

people of African descent

in order to be the boss,
to grow sugarcane

in places where we could not grow it,

because we are easily susceptible
to malaria and other tropical diseases.

So we believed, with a great ignorance,

that this would relieve our suffering,

this trauma we've experienced
in our ancestral line.

And that is just one example
of tracing the trauma

that is passed from generation
to generation, and how it manifests

and continues to create suffering
not only in those who are oppressed,

but also in the oppressor.

Even more so.
And that is the insight of the Buddha,

that those who create suffering
for themselves and others,

experience more suffering.

It may not look so on the surface,
but it's -

I often remember here in the Americas,

Who is invited and who is the host?

The host also always, in the end,

is the one who is offering the space.

I mean, the Europeans came
mostly uninvited to this continent.

And we brought over enslaved peoples,
they didn't ask to come.

They are not the uninvited ones.

So there's a trauma there too.

This is kind of digging in deeply
into the collective consciousness

and seeing that we are also,
we may be experiencing suffering.

This is my own deep looking
into my ancestors,

to see in order to understand,
not to persecute, or blame or judge.

But to understand
the nature of the suffering

that has been transmitted to me,

so that I don't continue to transmit it
to the next generations.

So this is all the deep beauty
of practicing the Dharma.

That's why I love to practice.
I want to use my life for this practice,

because it's -

I cannot easily believe that
there's something or somewhere else

where I can touch that kind of
freedom or happiness in the world

other than going inside.

We can listen to a sound of the bell.

(Bell)

(Bell)

And being uninvited is not a damnation,

but it should help us
to cultivate humility.

And that is something that is part of
our ancestral culture,

the relationship between
the guest and the host.

And if you have a chance to study
the teachings of Zen master Lin Chi,

he talks about that, the relationship
between the guest and the host.

When we are the host,
and when we are the guests.

But when we learn to be a good host,
but also to be a good guest,

we have a lot of humility and openness.

So that is an invitation to cultivate
humility in our practice of the Dharma,

and not seek to use it to dominate,
or to try to be right.

That is not the purpose
of studying and practicing the Dharma.

It is for our freedom,
and the freedom of others.

Okay. So last week we looked into
the eight negations,

which are a teaching

that has continued through many
generations of the Buddhist tradition.

And one great Buddhist teacher, Nagarjuna,

in the 3rd or 4th century AD,

summarized it very beautifully.
So I wanted to go deeper into that.

Last time, the seventh tenet,
we studied this.

There's a beautiful, very deep text called

The Verses on the Middle Way,
by Nagarjuna.

I encourage you to study and read it.

It is upending the tendency
in the Buddhist tradition

to create theories and philosophies.

The purpose of the practice is to free
ourselves from getting attached to views.

It is not for the purpose of
just abandoning our former views

and taking on new Buddhist views.

But the Buddhist teachings are there to
help us to become free from all views,

so that we can live happily
in the present moment.

Look deeply into what's going on,
beyond signs, and words, and concepts.

So at the beginning of that text,

The Verses on the Middle Way,
there's a phrase

which summarizes these eight negations.

And since we're having fun
learning some Sanskrit,

I'm going to write them
as well in Sanskrit.

[1 anirodham
2 anutpādam]

So, anirodham, anutpādam, anucchedam.

[3 anucchedam
4 aśāśvatam]

Aśāśvatam.
It's nice having a long board.

In Sanskrit, 'a' at the beginning
of a word means 'not'.

'Nirodha' is 'cessation'.

When things -

It's the opposite of arising, 'uppada'.

So anutpādam, anirodham.
So not arising, not ceasing.

Anucchedam. It means 'not destroyed',
aśāśvatam, and 'not eternal'.

So not annihilated, not eternal.

[5 anekārtham
6 anānārtham]

'Eka'. 'Eka' is 'one'.

And 'nānā' is 'many'.

So, not one, not many.

[7 anāgamam
8 anirgamam]

'āgama' means

not coming.

'Ga', 'gam' is 'to go'.

'Anirgam', not going.

No coming, no going.

# No coming, no going.
# No after, no before. #

So Thay tried to create poetry
that would express these deep concepts.

Because he didn't want people
to just make ideas about it,

just like Nagarjuna
was trying to free us from philosophy,

philosophizing.

He was trying to help us to see how
at the root of our thinking

we can find these eight concepts of
arising, ceasing,

annihilation,

everlasting or eternity.

One and many.

Coming and going.

For example, to come back to
the image of the frog on the plate,

we tend to think we have a separate self.

And as we go from one place to another,
we bring that self along with us.

So what I am now is what I also am when
I walk over there, or I go to that place.

With the practice we start to let go of
that concept and we see that,

actually, our ideas about ourselves
are only that, they're only concepts.

And we allow ourselves
to change in every moment,

for the possibility of some,

not to hold on to
this or that idea about ourselves.

So with that insight, we also begin
to look at others with new eyes.

We see at every moment
that person is changing,

and our ideas about who they are
and what kind of things they like,

what they don't like.

Who they are, where they're from,
all these things can fade away

if we allow the possibility for
our perceptions to change.

Most of the suffering
we have in our relationships

are because we have a fixed idea
about that person.

We think that person is like that,
or that other person is like this.

And we hold on to that firmly.

But that person is not a separate self,

they are impermanent,
like a flower, like a tree.

And they're always growing and changing.

And yet we continue to hold on
to our idea, this is that person,

this is what I love about that person,
or this is what I hate about that person.

So every time we see that person,
we feel feelings of love

and we want to impose on them
our idea about them,

rather than open ourselves up
to the possibility of change,

of new growth, of new possibility.

So this teaching on no coming, no going,

Thay often used the example of a flame.
I didn't bring matches today.

When he created enough conditions
to strike the flame,

strike a match,
so the flame manifests,

and he would ask the flame:

'Dear flame, where did you come from?

Did you come from the north? The south?
The east, the west? Above, below?'

And by looking deeply,
the flame could respond and say:

'Dear Thay, dear sangha,
I have not come from the north,

nor the south, nor the east, nor the west,

neither above, nor below.
When conditions are sufficient I manifest.

And when conditions are no longer
sufficient, I cease to manifest.'

That is a direct example of
the teaching of no coming, no going.

We can say, 'Ah! The match
that left the matchbox

is the same as
the match that's burning with the flame.'

But that would not recognize
the change that has happened,

the impermanent nature of it.

Because we have added
the last condition,

which is to strike the match
on the striker.

In a gross, obvious way,
the matches change. It begins to burn.

And that burning wood material,
along with the fuel of oxygen in the air,

becomes heat and light
for us to witness.

But even at a more subtle level,
we can say that, at every moment,

and this is the insight of Nagarjuna,

at every moment
there is change happening.

If we recognize that
there is no separate self

in this body, these feelings,
these perceptions,

these mental formations,
this consciousness,

we also can recognize that
in all thing that is also true.

In the flower.

If I remove the sun, if I remove the rain,
if I remove the water, the earth,

then there are not enough conditions
for the flower to manifest.

And the flower has not come from
anywhere, and it's not going anywhere.

It's not coming from a seed
and then going back to the earth.

In every moment it is manifesting

fully according to the conditions
that are sufficient.

If there is more rain,
if there is more sunlight,

that will stimulate
more growth in the plant.

So the invitation is to look at
every instant as a new manifestation.

And that the plant that
just an instant before we saw,

is somehow...
the change is continuing to happen.

And we cannot say that

that plant is the same plant as the one

that was there just an instant before.

And Thay called this
the cinematographic nature of reality.

Which also applies to our mind.

We perceive things in motion and moving.

But just like in the cinema,
they are instances of -

many instances which
we in our mind in order to reduce

the bandwidth of our comprehension,

we blur into one continuous motion.

Just like somebody
who's holding a candle

and they move it in a circle in the dark.

They move it quickly,
it looks like a complete circle,

but actually, at each moment,
if you take an image,

it's just one light,
one flame of a candle.

So the invitation of no coming or going
is to see each moment like that.

That there is a -

We cannot say that
what was over there, which went over there

is the same as what it was before it left.

Because it is already -
There's no permanent self there,

it is already changed.

So to believe in coming,

that things truly come from here
and they go over there

is also, at a deep level,
a belief in a separate self still.

There's still something permanent,

something that I can call 'me',
or 'mine', or 'the flower',

or 'the flame' that is essential.

And these eight negations
are interpenetrating.

So already we are talking about
not the same and not different

when we ask, Is the match
that is now burning

the same as the match
before it starts to burn?

And Thay would go further,

and take one flame,
and then light another match.

Usually when we went on tour with Thay,
Thay would buy very long matches.

So whenever I'm in a store
somewhere in the world,

and I find these kind of matches
that are very long, I think of Thay.

And I always buy them
just to have them on hand,

because -
I didn't bring them today,

but it's helpful to have a long match
that can burn a long time.

But he would light the second match
and then say,

he looked at the two flames and said,
'My dear flame,

this new flame. Are you the same flame
as the one before

or are you a different flame?'

And by looking deeply we can see

that we cannot say that the new flame
is entirely different than the original flame.

But we cannot say
that it is entirely the same neither.

Same and different are extremes.

Looking more deeply we can see that

neither one of them
can completely describe

the relationship between
these two flames.

The same is true of people.

I remember Thay often gave the story of,

There was a couple.
They took their vows to practice

together in their marriage
and to help one another to -

If one of them is angry, not to water
the seed of anger in the other person.

A kind of peace treaty

that we offer to many of our practitioners
who are living in a couple relationship.

So there's a kind of ceremony for that.

And we also have a ceremony called
The Five Awarenesses, where you-

It is like a wedding,

but it's more the commitment
to practice together as a couple.

So that ceremony
took place in the retreat.

And at the end of the retreat,

Thay invited the couple to come up.

And one of the partners said to the other,

Am I the same person that you married
yesterday? Or am I a different person?

And the other answered, 'My dear,

you are neither the same person
that I married yesterday,

nor a completely different person.'

And that is much closer
to the reality of things.

If we can look at our partner and
our loved one every day with those eyes,

with that insight,
then we will suffer much less.

We will learn to let go
of our concepts, our prejudice,

our judgment about the other person
and see them as a wonder of nature.

A wonder of life always growing,
always changing.

And we let go of our ideas
of sameness or otherness.

Not arising, not ceasing.

We tend to look at our life like a line.

At this point,

we are born.

We live our life,

grow old and then at this point
suddenly we die.

So we have a simplistic idea that

down here there is the realm of non-being.

[non-being]

And up here this is the realm of being.

[being]

Somehow from the realm of non-being,

at some point we come
into the realm of being

when we are born.

And then, we spend a lot of -
Actually, very brief time

overall in the realm of being,
and then, at some point,

we go back into the realm of non-being.

So we say

that we have a birthday,
and we also have a death day.

And on the birthday, from non-being
we come into being.

And on the death day, from being
we go back into non-being.

That is -

For most of us,

that is our fundamental way
of looking at birth and death.

But when we look more deeply
with the eyes of interbeing,

we see that

every aspect of this body is

from the earth, from the sun,
from the rain,

from ancient supernovas.

The heavy metals in our body
and the Earth

came about because
of the immense pressures and heat

generated from the explosion
of ancient stars.

And that material
is in every cell of our body.

And this body is only one of many
manifestations of that material.

And that is only at the material realm.

At the realm of feelings we know that

the feelings that we experience
are a continuation of the feelings

in our mother, our father, our ancestors,

going back to something like a monkey,
something like a fish.

Those are ways of responding
to certain situations

that have continued and been passed down

in order to keep us free from fear, free
from danger, from difficult situations,

from being eaten, and so forth.

The same for our perceptions,
our mental formations, our consciousness.

These are all also coming
from the collective.

We have a collective fear, and
fear can travel like a wildfire

through the collective consciousness.

And we can get fear, if we're not careful
how to take care of our mind,

we allow the fear from the collective
consciousness to enter our consciousness.

And that fear is also
existing in the collective consciousness,

sometimes over many many generations,
thousands of generations.

And it continues to manifest
in different forms like a flame.

So all of these things are what
we are inheriting in the present moment.

And those things have never truly been
in the realm of non-being.

They have continued to manifest
since beginningless time.

That is the insight the Buddha -

He said that if we look and
we take this body, or we take things,

and we try to separate them
from the rest of reality,

then it looks like
there's birth and death.

But if we go deeper and we look
with the eyes of interbeing

we see that this fear
that I experience today

has not come from the realm of non-being.

It seems like from nothing,
it becomes something.

But actually, it is already there
in a seed form.

It's just not directly perceptible.

Just like the cloud,
that never dies,

that becomes the rain,
as we already learned many times.

It's just so helpful as an image,

so we keep coming back to it.

The cloud becomes the rain,
becomes the river, becomes the ocean,

and then, evaporates again,
it becomes a cloud.

But on the surface level, it looks like
the cloud is being born by the evaporation

and then dying or disappearing
as it comes down as rain.

But if we see that
it's only a change in form,

then we no longer have
the fear of losing our cloud.

The same is true with this
concept of birth and death,

arising and ceasing.

When we look deeply,

we see the non-arising
and non-ceasing nature of all things.

It means that nothing is lost.

Everything just transforms,

including this body, these feelings,
these perceptions, and so forth.

Then we can get rid of this
artificial line between birth and death,

between being and non-being, and see that
by making being, we make non-being.

By making arising,
we automatically make ceasing.

If we remove our concepts of arising,
and look more deeply and see that

there's only transformation,

then also the concept
of ceasing disappears.

And with it goes our fear of death,
our fear of this body dying.

We see that every moment
is this transformation.

And when this body is born
from the womb of our mother,

and when it goes back to the earth,

actually, at every moment our skin cells
are going back to the earth,

our cells are dying actually.

Thay often say we don't have enough time
to have funerals for all the cells

that are dying in our body.
And that's very true.

It's this whole ecosystem of our body,
a biome, is constantly being born.

Biologists say that

from one of our legs
up to about the knee,

all the cells that are
in that part of our body

are all the cells
we can truly call our human cells.

The rest of our body is just all kinds
of other things: bacteria, fungi.

The many things that make up
the ecosystem of our body.

But because we have a very simplistic way
of looking at things,

we think, 'Oh! This body is me.'
Actually, we are an ecosystem.

And we are interacting with each other

through facial expressions,
through vocal language,

through consciousness.

So it's not true to just fall into
looking at things at the surface level,

and say, 'This body is something separate
from this other body.'

Thay often said, Thay didn't have
children, blood children,

but Thay has many spiritual children.
They are born from Thay's teaching.

And when we listen and practice the Dharma
we become a continuation of Thay,

because Thay is not in this body,
in those feelings, in those perceptions.

Thay is the Dharma.

That is the nature of it.

Remember the
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta,

Putting in Motion
of the Wheel of the Dharma.

The Buddha said, 'I have put in motion
this wheel of the Dharma

which cannot be stopped by
gods, men, devas, asuras...'

any kind of being that you can imagine
cannot stop this Dharma wheel.

It is continuously going on and
if we are open we can receive the Dharma

and allow in ourselves to practice it.

And then we become
a continuation of the Buddha.

The Buddha didn't say,
'Ah! I invented this Dharma!'

He discovered what was already there.

He said he's clearing away

a path for others to follow.

It's very interesting. The Buddha didn't
say, 'I came up with this idea,

it's so great, and
I'm going to tell it to everybody.'

He said, 'No, no, no.
This Dharma is already there.

All i did was help clear away the brush.'

There are other buddhas or others
who realized the Dharma,

but sometimes they didn't
clear it so clearly for others to follow.

So he did his best to use words,
use his physical actions, his thoughts

in every moment to try to
create a clear path for us to follow.

But it's up to us to follow it and
to allow the Dharma to come in.

That is a beautiful example
of no birth and no death.

In this present moment
if we open ourselves up

and then we allow ourselves to let
the seeds of the Dharma be touched

by the rain of the Dharma,

then they just grow naturally.

Already those seeds of compassion,
understanding, are already there.

We just find a way to allow them
to be watered by the Dharma.

So our concept of arising and
passing away are also just ideas.

And anucchedam, aśāśvatam.

Not annihilated and not everlasting.

So we tend to go to extremes,

use words like, 'I never said that,
I would never do that!',

or, 'I always do that!'

Always be careful with never and always.

Is it really true that you never did that?
You never would do such a thing?

Are you always...?
Even in our language

we have embedded
concepts like annihilation,

or everlasting. We think that -

We go back and forth between

something always being true
or never being true, never possible.

And then, we say, 'Never, never, never.'
And then, suddenly, oh!

There's the exception.
And it happens.

Like people think -

Sorry, it's what comes to my mind now,
people think, 'Oh!

Fascism is something
that happened in Europe at a time,

it could never happen in America.'

You get beliefs like that.

And when you start to see the signs
of hatred, of authoritarianism,

of prejudice, you look the other way,
because it can't possibly be happening!

Your belief, your adherence to that view

doesn't allow you to see what is going on
around you and within you.

So underneath these concepts
of always and never

you have this basic belief
in something always being true

or never,
everlasting or annihilated.

This is just to help us to get unstuck.

These eight negations of Nagarjuna

are to help us to look deeply
into the nature of our thinking

so that we can become free
from the attachment to views,

to see the real essence of our suffering,

which is in attachment
to our concepts and views.

And we can just flow.

A lot of the Dharma is just
learning how to be with what is,

instead of trying to impose our views,
our concepts unto reality.

So in the eighth tenet
we learn how to actually

put these eight negations into
that we've learned in the seventh tenet

into practice

with the teaching
on the three concentrations.

So the eighth thesis, the eighth tenet:

The concentration on emptiness,

[8 The concentration on emptiness,]

signlessness,

[signlessness,]

and aimlessness

[and aimlessness]

help us to touch nirvana

[help us to touch nirvāṇa]

and the unconditioned.

[and the unconditioned.]

These three concentrations are called
the three doors of liberation,

because they open a way for us.

When we are caught in our view,
caught in some attachment

to ourselves, to another person,
to a way of looking at things,

we can meditate on
the concentration on emptiness.

Last class we learned that emptiness
is not nothingness, it's not non-being.

Emptiness is

the absence of a separate self.

So it is not a concept
to base a philosophy on,

but it is a practice.

We look into all things, like the cloud,

and we see that the empty nature of
the cloud is that the cloud is made up of

the water evaporated off of the ocean,

the sun which provided
the energy to evaporate it,

the capacity of the air
to hold the water droplets, and so forth.

And all these conditions,
the temperature, the right air pressure,

combine for the cloud
to be there, to manifest.

If I remove any of those conditions,
the cloud cannot manifest.

That is the empty nature of the cloud.

It is empty of, to say,

it is full of everything except
one thing, which is, a separate self.

It cannot be by itself alone.

And that is a meditation
that we do as practitioners.

So we use an example of the cloud, or
the flower, or the food that we're eating,

but to go more deeply,
I like to turn it back to my body.

And see that this body is also empty.

It means it's full of the entire cosmos,
but it's empty of just one thing,

and that is a separate self.

There's no essence that is somehow there,

that can somehow -

that is not dependent on anything else.

Everything depends on everything else.

For this body to manifest, for these
feelings to manifest, and so forth,

and the five skandhas.

That is not for the purpose of ontology,

or trying to prove a theory
for being and non-being,

but as for the purpose of freeing
ourselves from our attachment to views.

It's a meditation, a guided meditation
that we can do with everything.

You continue to practice it.

And especially with those things
that you feel,

'No, no! But really there's really
an essential brother () there!

I cannot let go! The essential brother ()!
Or teh essential Thay!'

Or whatever it is. So whatever that
thing is that you're most attached to

you use that as the object of
your concentration on emptiness.

And you look deeply into it,

and you see that
it is only made up of non-it elements.

Then you become free of your attachment,

because you see that when
conditions are sufficient, it manifests.

And when conditions are no longer
sufficient, it will cease to manifest.

You touch the impermanent nature of it.

Emptiness is the doorway
into the nature of impermanence,

and helps us to become free from
our attachment to that thing.

Emptiness, signlessness.

And in Sanskrit emptiness is -

I'm going to erase this.

[śūnyatā]

Śūnyatā.

And signlessness is animitta.

[animitta]

'Imitta' is a like a mark or a sign.

So 'animitta' is seeing
the signless nature of things.

Seeing that our labels that
we put on the flower, are not the flower,

that our ideas, our theories, about things
are full of wrong perceptions.

They're just vague approximations
to the reality of life.

So anytime we -

Of course, we can think of
one and one makes two,

and that's helpful.

It's a tool in order to understand
the nature of addition.

If I have one flower,
and I take another flower,

that makes two flowers.

But in a deeper sense, we know that

those flowers are also just
transformations of other things,

and we cannot say that
the one flower is only one.

Looking deeply, we see that
it is made of non-it elements,

and that is made up of
vast billions and billions of atoms,

and that to talk about just one flower
is a little bit simplistic.

So letting go of the signs that
we attribute to that one flower,

we see a vastness.

And we're allowing our mind
in a very open, light way,

to allow for all other types
of possibilities to manifest.

Actually, everything that you need to be
happy is available in the present moment.

It's just that you don't see it because
you're caught in your ideas,

and your concepts, the sign of thing.

It's functional.

The human brain has a certain bandwidth,
so in order to just function,

we roughly estimate.
That's the nature of our mind

to make rough estimates just enough
for us to avoid danger

and to get the food and the sustenance
that we need every day.

And to be warm, to sleep
in a dry, safe place.

But more bandwidth,
we don't want to waste.

We only have so many joules
generated from the glucose burning

in our cells to power our brain.

We have to prioritize decisions all the
time. That's in our evolutionary makeup.

So to reduce the bandwidth -

If we paid attention to
everything that's there,

we would just be completely dazzled.
And some people have disorders like that.

They have such difficulty
to just focus on one thing.

We've evolved in nature to be able to
focus, but we have a limited bandwidth.

So we make rough approximations.

For example, our vision.

In both of our eyes there's a black spot

where our retina connects
to the optical nerve.

And yet, we don't see that spot at all
in our daily life.

It's because our brain is filling in
information from the periphery.

When we look across the room,
we get information.

And that information is being filled
into the black spot,

the blind spot in our eye.

It happens completely behind the scenes.

So we have to use special techniques

in order to actually
experience the blind spot.

Because our brain is filling in
the missing information.

That is what we're doing
all the time,

that is how our wrong perceptions
come about.

Our brain fills in the extra information
just approximating.

Then we suffer,

because, ultimately, our brain
is just creating a model

of experiential, empirical reality.

So those approximations, those models
in our mind, we attach to them,

and we think the reality is like that.

Signlessness, the concentration
on signlessness

helps us to become free from those models.

It means, we let go of our desire to try
to obtain, to attain things,

get money, or fame, power,
sex and all those things

because our deeper wish is
to get understanding.

In order to do that, we need to let go

of those things that drive us
to grasp after outside things.

We just approximate
understanding the stock market,

understanding the nature of the economy,
understanding the nature of our career,

understanding what kind of thing
will get us into a good school.

It's just a series of approximations
in order to create a performance

that will impress people
in order to get what we want.

But the concentration on signlessness
frees us from that.

It means we see, we are very sure that

in us are all the conditions
that I need for happiness,

and I don't need to perform anymore.

What I want to do is
understand my mind, and be free.

So I let go of those signs, I don't need
to attach myself

to the outer form of things,
the outer characteristics of things.

I want to go deeper.

And then, I feel more free and happy.

So that is the second door of liberation.
Animitta or signlessness.

And the last one is

just as tasty as the other two.

Aimlessness.

[apraṇihita]

Apraṇihita.

There's nothing to attain.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do,
no longer in a hurry.

# Happiness is here and now,

# I have dropped my worries.

# Nowhere to go, nothing to do.

# No longer in a hurry. #

That is the concentration on aimlessness.

There's nowhere to go, nothing to do,
so I don't need to hurry.

We're rushing all our lives
to try to get somewhere,

to get something, to attain this goal.

And when we get there,
we're still not happy,

we want to go to the next thing.

And the next thing, and the next thing,
all the way until -

And we waste our lives, our whole lives
and many, many lifetimes,

the life of our son, our daughter,
because they follow our example,

because of our wanting to get that fancy
car, to get that position, to get that,

to go to that party that
nobody else is invited to.

We suffer so much. We push ourselves.

Then, when we get there,
we're not happy.

One of the young people in the Wake Up
movement, at the very beginning

he was a consultant for
an international consultancy firm.

And he was living in Dubai.
He said that

the more that he lived there,
the more he discovered

these special, secret VIP executive rooms
that were hidden in the hotel

that he was living in.

Then, he would discover an even more
special and secret hidden VIP room,

and then, an even more, higher, deluxe
penthouse executive VIP secret suite.

He said, 'There's always just one more
secret, more special, more VIP secret suite

that I could just, if i could just,
if i could just know the right people,

if I could just be that good in my job,
I'll get to get into that suite,

I'll get to get into that room

where there's, I don't know, a hot tub,
and fancy bars of soap,

and maybe lots of alcohol,
and, I don't know, beautiful women.

I don't know what's there,

but he realized that in his mind,
and his mentality,

he had got to be so ridiculous

that he was pushing himself
just to to get to these,

that secret special thing that says,
'I am the most important person.

I am the most important person.'

And he suffered so much.

That's why, he let it all go,
and he quit his job,

and he joined the Wake Up movement.

We are responsible for a lot of
young people quitting their jobs.

So, be careful!

This concentration on aimlessness can be
very liberating in very concrete ways.

We realize that

what we've aimed for in our life
is not bringing us happiness.

In 2013, when Thay was invited to speak
at the World Bank, he asked them,

'Do you want to be -'
To the world bank staffers,

'Do you want to be number one
or do you want to be happy?

You have to choose.'

Most of them want to be number one
and they want to be happy.

And that is true for most of us.
We want everyone to admire us,

to think we're the most important person,
and we also want to be happy.

But the reality is that

the ones that are most admired,
that are most loved,

they are often very, very unhappy people,

because they cannot get an end to the
admiration that they crave from others.

There's always somebody
who has more likes on YouTube,

there's always somebody who has

a more witty tweet,

that gets more views.
There's always somebody.

I mean, it's a concrete manifestation
of a psychological process

of trying to attain,
be the most important.

And you are there and you still suffer,

because you want to do even more,
and more, and more.

So the concentration on aimlessness

follows naturally from
the concentration on emptiness,

no longer believing

in the existence of a separate self.

Concentration on signlessness.
No longer getting stuck

with the outer form,
the characteristics of things.

And you naturally let go of
trying to attain anything,

even nirvana.

We don't have to even touch nirvana.

We don't have to go anywhere
because it's already there!

Thay always said we have been nirvanized
since beginningless time.

We just don't know it.

So it's a matter of waking up
to what is already there.

That is the beauty of the Dharma,
you don't have to go anywhere,

you can be in a cell with
just a few square meters around you

and you can practice walking meditation.

You can practice mindful breathing,

letting go of your thoughts,
your attachments,

and touch freedom.
You don't need to go anywhere.

So that is the eighth tenet,

developing of the concentration on
emptiness, signlessness and aimlessness.

We'll stop here because
we're gone a little bit over time,

and we'll continue to look deeply into
these three doors of liberation,

these three concentrations
in the coming classes.

Thank you,
dear brothers and sisters.

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