Know your body, know your mind - Wake Up Earth Retreat - Sister True Dedication - 2016.08.06

With respects to Thay, to Sakya Chan Khong,

and to all our ancestral teachers

through many generations.

Dear community

Today is the 7th of August,

in the year 2016.

And we are in our wake-up earth retreat

in the Still Water Meditation Hall

of the Upper Hamlet.

They call me Sister True Dedication,

and I'm made of non-me elements.

So it's not really me sitting here today,

but it is all the elements who have made me

including our wonderful sangha,

my sisters and brothers, our teacher,

and also my parents, my mother, my father.

I come from England, when the sangha had a

chance to visit my parents in England,

there were many brothers and sisters

who then said: "Ah!............ "

"Now I get it!"

"Now I know why you are like how you are."

We are made of our mother and our father.

And many of us have a beautiful aspiration

in our own lifetime to transform and heal

and repair some of the weaknesses

of our parents.

And my own experiences was that

I didn't spend enough time cherishing

their qualities well.

Our father and mother have transmitted

many wonderful qualities to us.

I can sit here because my father

transmitted courage.

And as I was breathing, my heart was

beating, and my breath was very short.

And we have a practise to breathe with

often our fathers' lungs Thay would invite us

as we sit in meditation.

I breathe with my father's lungs,

I sit with my father's back,

but my father has short breath.

So this morning

I breathe with my mother's lungs.

My mother has very big lungs,

and it help me a lot.

I am also here with the energy of the sunrise

from this morning.With the wonderful food

that have been eaten and

many of us have been preparing.

So we inter-are,I inter-am with you all.

And you all inter-are

with me and with everything in the cosmos.

Thay has a wonderful line that I really

like.

He says you can't be by yourself alone.

You have to

inter-be with the whole cosmos.

You inter-are with the whole cosmos.

Thay would often point to the flower

on the podium and say every flower

is made of non-flower elements.

And my first reaction I have to confess

is "but I'm not a flower".

But it is still true that

we are made of non-us elements.

And that is the good news

that is a delight, it is a joy, it is something

that we can discover and touch everyday.

I was very touched when I heard Thay say

that we all need a spiritual dimension in our life.

And hearing that I thought

"Yes,I am thirsty

for a spiritual dimension to my life".

My soul is thirsty.

And in our life here in a practise center

like Plum village,

we have so many opportunities to

keep the spiritual dimension of our life

alive, nourished and connected.

We have this meditation poems that we use

throughout the day.

When we touch running water,

perhaps we are taking some water to drink,

or we're opening the tap to wash our face,

and we comtemplate the water,

and we have a beautiful poem.

"Water comes from high mountain sources,

water runs deep in the earth,

miraculously water comes to us

and sustains all life.

My gratitude is filled to the brim."

So we have the simple actions

to serve water, to draw water.

But somehow we look deeply and

with our mindfulness, we connect ourselves

to the true nature of the water.

It has come from the mountains,

it has come from the oceans,

and now it is becoming a part of us.

When I used to work in an office,

I recited this poem at the water cooler.

I was in 6th floor

in the center of the city of London.

And I felt connected to the whole cosmos.

I could have a magical minute.

No one knew I was doing it.

A magical minute as I drank my water.

When we take a shower, we can ask ourselves

whose body is this?

where has it come from?

what was the warmth,

the original warmth that made this body,

it has been handed from generation to

generation, and never got cold.

I am English, and I like to drink tea.

I invented the poem for boiling the kettle.

Often when we have a difficult moment,

culturally, we put the kettle on

It's our first response.

So having a moment to feel spiritual

about boiling the kettle enriched my life.

When we write a poem like this,

we look at all the different elements

that are coming together in the miracle of life

to support us.

So there is the water, there is the energy in the electricity,

where has it come from?

And there is me, where have I come from?

And we have all traveled

since beginningless time

to arrive in this moment,

of making a cup of tea.

So I invite all of us to

write our own poems,

choose one or two things

in your daily actions

that you like to become spiritual moments

for you and your day.

Where there is mindfulness,

where there is deep looking.

And Thay has said that any act we do can

become sacred when we have that energy

of mindfulness to enrich it.

In the early mornings here we have

the chance to come to practise

sitting meditation together and

enjoy the beautiful walking meditation

together in the silence of the morning.

And a few years ago in the winter retreat,

Thay was staying in his hut

on the side of the hill.

And that morning he stepped out,

and he saw the sky filled with stars,

and he felt such love for the earth,

for this planet and this beautiful cosmos.

And that day or the next day,

when he gave the Dharma talk,

he said that

he had fallen in love with the earth.

He had realized

he was in love with the earth.

I often ask myself

am I in love with the earth yet?

We speak about the wonders of life,

and when I look deeply and

see the wonderful diversity

of earth manifestations.

How many millions or billions of years

they have taken to evolve.

I have a kind of awe and

wonder of the fertility

and beauty of life.

And I am training myself

to cherish this as much as I can.

But sometimes it's not so easy.

I think I grew up in very cynical environment

in my society in my generation.

Somehow a tree just did't seem exciting.

But I am learning to look

with the eyes of wonder, and to see

the miracle that a tree is or a bug or any

kind of living being,

or even any human being.

So I'm training myself to fall in love

with the earth to learn more about

the earth.

And Thay had said that if we love the

earth enough,then we will know what to do

in order to help protect the earth.

And we will have the energy we need to

protect the earth because love is a

wonderful source of energy.

It sustains us,it nourishes us,

it keeps up happy,

it keeps our mind fresh and delighted.

(Bell sounds)

I came to Plum Village

when I was almost 22 years old.

And I had a lot of questions,

I just graduated,

and I had felt that

my education had cheated me.

I asked myself who am I,

and somehow my university degree

and my school hadn't told me.

I was asking myself what do I want,

what do I really want in my life?

Of course I asked the question

why am I here.

It means why I am here on this planet,

and what am I to do?

Why am I here?

The fact is I wasn't yet

practising mindfulness,

so I wasn't very present at all.

So I don't think I could say

I was even present here

when I ask the question why am I here.

But slowly I am learning

to be more present.

I also wanted to know what can I trust,

what can I count on,what can I rely on.

Mother nature is often smiling to us,

we can usually rely on

the fact nature is smiling to us.

In particular in difficult moments,

in moments of crisis,

in moments when I felt overwhelmed,

I wanted to know what can I rely on.

I also wanted to know where am I going,

what is the direction.

I had this feeling like

I'm being on a conveyor belt,

and I had to do this set of exam,

I have to go to this school and do that

exam and you have to go to a university,

I felt like I was sped out age 22,

the conveyor belt still have a lot of

energy telling me now you need to do this,

you need to have this kind of career,

you need to go there, learn this.

And I felt I hadn't yet stopped,

to really ask myself, where am I going,

and where do I want to go, how much

of these directions until now is me,

and how much is everything around me

pushing me.

We have a story in Buddhist tradition,

about someone on a horse,

riding very fast past cross-roads,

there is a man standing there, he says:

"Where are you going so fast?"

And the rider says:

"I don't know. Ask the horse."

Are we on a horse?

Do we know where our horse is going?

What are the elements

that have given energy to the horse?

What is pushing us?

Have we mastered the horse yet?

Since I've come to Plum village

and been living here,

I have learnt that it takes a while

to learn how to ride.

Take some traning and we can do it.

We can master the horse.

Another question I had was how can I help,

I had a sense that I have some energy

and I see there are problems in the world,

and I want to know what can I do to help?

So slowly here I think there is one peot

who once said

we live our way to the answers.

So I am living my way to

answer these questions.

I hope that we can all actively

live our way to answer these questions.

Some of you may know we have a five year

monastic training program in Plum Village.

It wasn't an option when I ordained

So as we learned yesterday,

I didn't have to suffer

from having too much choice.

Just made a lifetime commitment.

But when it came to five years,

and Thay was convinced that five years is

more than enough to be able to

learn a lot of things,

and then go out into the world,

and continue to be a teacher in lay society.

So when I got to five years,

I had to do a reality check.

and I ask myself what have I learned?

This is what I discovered,

I have learned how to eat.

It's harder than you think.

How to listen to my body?

How to choose the right foods?

How to feel connected when I eat?

How to nourish and joy

myself and others with food.

How to respect life as I eat?

How to nourish my compassion as I eat?

So I maybe have completely mastered it.

I have made good progress.

How to sleep?

I think only by arriving and living in the

monastry did I discover

how unstable my life was

and I imagine it's the case for many of us.

Are you getting enough sleep?

Are you getting good quality sleep?

Do you know how to prepare yourself

to have a good night's sleep?

How to wake up without headache?

How to smile to yourself

as you wake up in the morning?

I have made good progress on this one.

But I am not a master yet.

As my sisters in the last week

can tell you.

I also somehow learned something about

taking care of my body and mind,

handling my body and mind,

listening to my body and mind.

So it's something about energy,

life is energy,

that horse pushing us is a kind of energy.

And have we learned how to listen to

our unique combination of energies?

So that we can master them

like riding a horse.

So that we can live beautifully,

peacefully,happily as much as possible.

And this is what Thay has said,

what's more important than to know

ourselves,how to generate happiness

in our daily life,

and how to handle difficulties,suffering.

Thay has reassured us, this is possible.

We can learn how to generate

moments of happiness in our day.

We can also learn how to

handle our suffering,our difficulties.

How to not feel overwhelmed?

How we can learn

what to do in difficult moments.

When I first came here,I didn't know

any of these things as a 20, almost 22 year old.

I didn't know how to generate happiness,

I didn't know how to handle my suffering.

Sometimes our suffering may have

come to us from previous generations.

It's not exactly US.

Perhaps the seed of sadness or

despair, this is what I'd discovered.

My seed of sadness and despair

had been transmitted to me.

I'd done a fair bit of helping it grow too.

But I had received a strong seed already

from my parents and from my grandparents,

and probably their parents.

Because even our parents

are not just themselves.

They're also their parents.

Each of us has a treasure trove of elements that we've received from our ancestors.

And we need to know what they are.

We need to know how to handle them.

at least, I needed to know what they were.

I needed to know how to handle them.

So that I can feel free in my life.

So that I could answer

some of these questions.

We learn here that

we are made of many different elements.

And I would like to draw something

on the board to illustrate this.

We can see ourselves as five different rivers,we have our physical body.

Thay often like to draw this with segments of clementine, tangerine

So we have our body

This has been transmitted to us from many generations

That we nourish with everything we eat.

I wish it was a 360 degrees board, but it is not

Body

And the next segment is our feelings

They may come from the body or from our emotions

Our perceptions

So our perceptions is how we are perceiving things,

how we are perceiving the world,

ourselves,

other people,

situations.

Generally most of them are wrong

And then we have our mental formations

so based on our perceptions

and feelings

we give rise to a state of mind,

a mental formation.

It could be something like frustration

or anger

or depression, sadness,

or joy

some positive ones

hope

And then we have consciousness

which is the ground of our beeing

So to share a little more about consciousness

our teacher likes to draw a circle.

But I'm not very good at drawing circles

So I've got some help

I think that was been my English ancestors

rather than my Vietnamese ancestors.

So, our body and our mind

Thay often speaks about two levels of the mind

So we have the upper part of our mind

and the lower part.

And we call the upper part "mind consciousness"

and the lower part "store".

So, here...

we are talking a lot about store consciousness.

And this is were we have all the seeds.

These elements that have been transmitted to us

that we carry

and that are potentials in life

So we have seeds like ...

Joy

and Hope,

Mindfullness,

Peace,

and some other ones like .... Anger,

Fear,

Anxiety.

Any others we can think of ?

Jealousy .... very good,

Sadness,

Compassion,

Desire, Craving.

Sometimes we crave

we usually crave sensual pleasures

but we may also crave money, status, fame, power... craving...

So it is a little bigger than the other ones

Any more ?

Doubt,

Pride ... oh, wonderful,

How big is that ?

And we have Doubt.

So we have a lot of seeds.

And somehow our store consciousness

is both individual and collective.

We also share it.

So, when the seed of fear in society is very strong,

our own seed of fear will be

will take more place, will be more active.

And if our parents have transmitted to us a strong seed down here

then it will be more strong perhaps than in

other people and our mind is receiving

information from sense doors from our

eyes our ears, our ears, our nose, our tongue,

and from our body

So information is coming in all the time

So when we watch a news bulletin, or we

listen to the radio, that will come in

and it may water the seeds of fear in us,

or the seed of anger in us, and that seed

will then come up and manifest in the

upper level of our consciousness. So when

we want to learn how to handle our mind,

we need to know what to do when this

happens. First of all we need to know

anger has come up.

Fear has come up. Sadness has come up.

So we have to recognize, we have to identify

that it happened. And that's why we need

the energy of mindfulness. Mindfulness

helps us to know what is going on.

So the energy of mindfulness is another seed

and if we say that it's the seed of

anger that has come up, we can say that

mindfulness comes up and embraces

the anger. So you have one energy which is

anger, and we have the other energy which

is our compassion. I said compassion

because the antidote to anger is

compassion.

So we have mindfulness embracing anger

and if we can generate an energy of

compassion that will help cool the anger.

So what I have been learning here is to

have a strategy for when different

mental formations come up and to know

how to invite certain seeds to come up

in order to embrace the one that has manifested.

So many different seeds have different antidotes.

We could say that

when we have restlessness, the antidote

might be relaxation.

If we feel restless maybe we could spend 10 or 20 minutes to relax.

If we feel sadness, perhaps five or

ten minute bath in the present moment

will refresh us. We can nourish ourselves

with the wonders of life. But if the

sadness is a bit stronger and it takes

the form of despair, we have to have a

even stronger strategy.

And I've learned that the antidote to despair we have a

bodhisattva who is fearless and persevering.

So we have an energy of hope

and we are fearless and we don't give up

And that is how we handle our seed of

despair. That is how i have learned to

handle my seed of despair.

And we have many wonderful practices to cultivate

non fear, like the five remembrances

aware that we are of the nature to grow

old, to get sick, and to die and to be

separated from those we love. We have a

contemplation on that, and that helps us

strengthen our non-fear. We accept the

reality and we cultivate courage and non-fear.

And sometimes the seeds that come up are

very big and overwhelming and some of us

may have had that experience there's not

even space for mindfulness to intervene

and those are the moments when we need

to practice a kind of emergency practice

and for me my emergency practice has

been something that has taught us to do

which is deep belly breathing. So when

our mind has a seed running riot we have

to come down from here which has become

a chaos of a thunderstorm and we have to

bring our energy down to our breathing

so we take our energy down from the

upper level of our consciousness and we

just breathe and we trust in

the good seeds down here who have some

space to help respond to the situation

so if necessary we lie down we take

ourselves out of this situation that has

triggered our anger or sadness or our

despair and we put our hand, I put my

hands on my belly and I'm bring all my

attention 100-percent to the rising and

the falling of my abdomen

And I often give myself the challenge

that I have to follow the breath all the

way through and all the way back again

strictly no thinking and it's not very

easy but if we have our hands on our

belly and we are fascinated by the

experience of our in-breath and are out

breath

I've discovered that with practice

it's possible to breathe 10 times in and

out with not a single thought and I do

it like snakes and ladders so if I have

a thought I have to start again and

count from one. And i started doing this

because i thought if i cannot even

master my breathing

Who am I to know what to do in this

situation

my mind is not clear. I haven't

got a grip on my mind. So I shouldn't

trust my mind in this situation it has

no right to have a voice until it has

breathed 10 times

and the amazing thing is that after ten

breaths there's clarity there is

stability it made on a bad day it may

take 20 minutes or 25 minutes to have 10

clear breaths

but after that there is clarity and we

know what to do and what not to do. So

somehow i have learned not to trust my

mind but to trust my breathing

if in doubt breathe. And it has never

failed me and that has given me a real

solid basis something I always know I

can trust and I don't need to be afraid

because I always know that the breathing

when I breathe fully 100-percent will

help calm clarifying and give me courage

(bell sound)

So what we are taking in, through our

sense organs

it's a kind of food. And that is going to

affect how our mind is going to operate.

so our sense impressions, what we watch

movies, websites, what we listen to, music,

or even conversations, what we smell

you'll notice that some you are very

sensitive to certain kinds of smell, what

we eat, so the kinds of foods edible

foods that we eat, they are nourishing

something in us, so if we eat food that

has violence or suffering in it then

somehow we r that is becoming a part of

us and that is affecting who we are but

if we are able to eat with compassion

then our seed of compassion here will grow

so every day you can have a day without

meat you can say to yourself I have

nourished my seed of compassion today,

and i have not nourished my seed of

violence or suffering, and we know that

the animals suffer deeply when they are

killed, and that is what we are eating,

and when we eat meat that it is

destroying our planet to cultivate that

meat, then we are also eating something

that is not wholesome, we are not

nourishing our compassion and our care,

so we can learn about four kinds of

nutriments

so the first is edible foods

edible foods and drink,

so this includes orange juice and alcohol

okay so we know that it takes a lot of

grain to make liquor and maybe that

grain could be better used for something

else. Our earth is in need for our help.

Our sense impressions, that's all the movies,

the movies, the music and so on.

even now I still remember movies I

watched 20 years ago. they come up

sometimes even in my meditation and i

think god how did I let that come in.

because once its come in, it's somehow

they're in our memory and it's very

trusting of us we go into a cinema we

even pay for the privilege for someone

else to then put all this stuff into our

consciousness that may be violent or

disturbing unpleasant. so we have to be

very careful when we choose what to

watch and feel free to walk out i guess

i didn't have enough courage to walk out

of cinemas or to switch off movies but I

think we need to be able to switch them

off

Third Kind is volition.

This volition comes from the world will, like

"volonté" (in French). it's a kind of technical word

but it just means our deepest desire

do you know what you want to do with

your life what you really really want to

do with your life?

what is your deepest desire, and our

deepest desire is like a seed that we've

planted in our consciousness and when we

can identify it and take care of it it

will be a great source of energy in our

life, and we need to know what we want to

do.

life is precious we don't know how much

of it we have. we would like to think

that we will all live to 80 but maybe

that won't be the case. so what do you

want to do, we have this one body, we had

this life, and what we do with it.

A terrorist is someone who has the

intention to revenge vengeance.

That is a kind of deep desire. A terrorist

also have seeds of compassion, of

kindness, of peace, of joy, of love. but

they have watered another kind of seed

that drives them to do something very

violent. so we can see the power of this

kind of energy and each of us we need to

know what we want to do with our life.

how would we like to live. what talents

that we have been transmitted would we

like to cultivate. we are a wonder of the

earth, and how will our particular flower

in the garden of humanity sing her song.

what is your song? How will you be a flower

on this earth?

what would you like to cultivate and to

offer? and its deepest desire, our volition

I came here because I wanted to

transform and to live

leanly we have a wonderful word in English.

It means some simply, just what

is necessary in order to have more

energy to act, to help, to not destroy

with my way of consuming. and the final

one is consciousness

so we've been learning the consciousness

is both individual and collective and

here it's mostly we're talking about

collective consciousness.

The environments we are exposed to, our kind

of food coming into our being,

if you've ever been on a protest for

social justice when everyone is

collectively having a very strong energy

sometimes in in a protest there is also

an energy of anger of demanding and you

may feel that you are carried by this

collective consciousness or like now we

have a lot of fear and anxiety in the

world at the moment, so that is coming in

and triggering our own fear and anxiety

or in our family, if something is

happening in our family, certain seeds

may be stronger at one time then another.

jealousy or anger, or at work, or in our

friendship group is a kind of collective

energy and we need to be aware what is

being triggered in us by our environment

so we need to learn when to walk away,

when to step out of the room, when to

switch off the television. that is our

freedom, that is empowering us to be the

kind of person would like to be. that is

how we protect our mind and our body.

because when we have things that make us

tense or afraid or anxious, we live that

also in our body.

this evening we will have a presentation

on the five mindfulness trainings and

they are a wonderful path of practice

showing us how in our daily actions we

can cultivate our mind. so that we can be

the kind of person we would like to be.

so that we can have more compassion. so

that we can have more inner space,

more freedom, more courage to be able to

make wonderful use of this precious life

that we have. and to be able perhaps to

deserve the earth in ways that we would

like to serve the earth. she needs our

help, we need her, and she also needs us.

Thank you for listening.