Love, Desire, and Intimacy | Thich Nhat Hanh (short teaching video)

We have said in the beginning

that sensual pleasures,

sexual desire is not love,

but our society is organized in such a way

that sensual pleasure becomes

the most important thing.

They want to sell their products

and they do advertisements,

they water the seed of craving in you;

they want you to consume

so that you will have sensual pleasure.

But sensual pleasures can destroy you.

What we need deeply

is understanding -

mutual understanding,

trust, love,

emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy.

But we don't have the opportunity

to meet that kind of deep need in us.

Many young people in our society

want to have cosmetic surgery

in order to meet the standard of beauty.

There are women's fashion magazines

that tell us that in order to succeed,

you have to look like this,

and to use these kinds of products.

And if you want to be a successful woman,

you have to look like this.

And that is why many young people

suffer very much, because they cannot

accept their body, they want their bodies

to be otherwise, because the people

expect another kind of body.

And that is why they want to have surgery

in order to transform their body.

When you do not accept your body as it is,

you are not your true home.

Your body is a kind of flower,

every man, every child is born

in the garden of humanity as a flower.

And the flowers differ from each other.

Breathing in, I see myself as a flower.

Breathing out, I feel fresh.

Everyone is a flower in the beginning

and she has to accept herself as a flower

different from other kinds of flowers.

And if she accepts her body,

then she has a chance

to see her body as home.

If you don't accept your body,

you cannot have a home.

If you don't accept your mind,

you cannot be a home to yourself.

And there are many young people

who do not accept their body,

who do not accept who they are.

They want to be someone else.

And how can you be home for yourself?

And how can you be home
for the other person?

And that is why in educational circles,

we have to tell the people

they are already beautiful as they are,

they don't have to be another person.

Thay has a calligraphy:

"Be beautiful, be yourself."

Be beautiful, be yourself.

That is a very important practice.

You have to accept yourself as you are.

When you practice

building a home in yourself,

you become more and more beautiful.

You have peace, you have warmth,

you have joy, you feel...

wonderful within yourself.

And people will recognize the beauty

of your flower. Because you are born

as a flower in the garden of humanity.

The monks, the nuns

when they receive

the bikkshu or the bikkshuni precepts,

they want to live a holy life.

If you see that a monk is beautiful

it's because he has brought in

the spiritual element in his life.

If you see a beautiful nun,

it is because she has brought in

a spirituality element within her life.

Spirituality here means

mindfulness, concentration and insight.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings...

are recommended for everyone,

not only for monastics, but also for lay people.

Mindfulness is the kind of energy

that can help you go home to yourself -

to be in the here and the now, so that...

so that you know what to do

and what not to do,

in order to preserve yourself,

in order to build your true home,

in order to transform your own afflictions

and to be the home for other people.

The 5 Mindfulness Trainings are

the very concrete way

of practicing mindfulness.

And they make you holy.

People speak of holiness,

but people do not know exactly

what it means to be holy.

In the buddhist tradition,

holiness is made of mindfulness.

And mindfulness brings within itself

the energies of concentration and insight.

Mindfulness, concentration and insight

make you holy.

So holiness is possible

with the monks and nuns

but also with the lay people

who practice the precepts.

Holiness does not exist only with celibacy.

There are those who are celibate

but who are not holy.

Because they don't have enough

mindfulness, concentration and insight.

There are those who live a conjugal life,

but if they have

mindfulness, concentration and insight,

they have the element of holiness in them.

If the monks observe celibacy

- not to have sexual relationships -

that does not mean

that sexual relationships cannot be holy.

But because as a monk,

you have to behave like that... celibacy.

It's like an astronaut: going to the sky,

you should not be pregnant.

If you are pregnant,

you cannot be an astronaut.

It's not because being pregnant

is something bad.

The human body

can be something very beautiful.

I have said before that the human body

is a real flower.

We have seen many

beautiful things around us.

A tree can be very beautiful.

A flower can be very beautiful.

The snow, the river, the willow...

many beautiful things.

A bird, a swan, a horse, a deer

can be very beautiful.

And the human body is one of
the most beautiful things that we can see.

But we have to learn how to treat beauty.

We are afraid to contemplate beauty.

But we should not behave in such a way

that we destroy the beauty.

Sexual intimacy can be a beautiful thing

if there is mindfulness,
concentration and insight,

mutual understanding and love.

Otherwise, it will be very destructive.

In the sutra, they described the moment

when Queen Maha Maya was
pregnant of the Buddha.

In her dream, she saw a white elephant,
very gentle.

Maha Maya dreamt of a white elephant.

And [his] trunk was holding a lotus flower

and the elephant touched her
with the lotus flower,

and entered into her very, very softly.

And she was pregnant of Siddharta.

That is the way they describe

the sexual relationship in the palace

before Siddharta was conceived:

gentleness, beauty.

But as we have learned from the beginning:

sexual intimacy should not occur

before there is communion, understanding,

the sharing of emotional and spiritual level.

Then the physical, the sexual intimacy

can become also holy.

To practice buddhism as a monk

is always easier than
to practice as a lay person.

In the Vietnamese saying,

[Vietnamese sentences]

"To practice as a monk is easiest;

to practice as a lay person

is much more difficult."

So to refrain from all sexual activities

altogether, is much easier

than to have sexual relationships,

because to have sexual relationships

in the context of mutual understanding

and love, you need a lot of practice.

Otherwise you create suffering

for him, for you, for her.

Parallax asked me to speak about fidelity.

In buddhism, we speak of

the four - we have the teaching of the four

the four elements of true love

the Four Bramaviharas.

Love without frontiers.

There is a journalist who had four...

four lovers at the same time, in France.

One in Bordeaux, one in Lyon,

one in Marseille, and so on.

And the one who lived in Paris,

she loved him very much.

And he told her very frankly

that he had four lovers,

and that she was only one of them.

And that lady truly loved him.

But one day,

before he wanted to sleep with her,

she said:

"Now, let's sit together and breathe,

and look deeply to see

what we really need.

Darling, I really need you.

I need you to be by my side,

to understand me, to take care of me,

to help me when I have difficulties.

That's what I need.

And when you are not there in that way,

I suffer.

And several sessions of sitting like that

helped him to understand

[what he has been doing] is not love.

This is only desire.

And because she's a practitioner,

she helped him to understand.

And finally, he decided to marry her

and release the other three people.

There is a woman doctor in Switzerland.

She came to practice in Plum Village

and she has suffered several times
out of relationships.

She could not say no to a man

when he asked for sexual relationships.

Since the time she was young,

every time she was asked

to have a sexual relationship with a man,

she had to say yes

even if she did not feel ready,

because she was afraid.

Many teenagers in our time feel that way.

They don't like it, they don't want it,

they don't feel ready for it.

But they do not dare to say no

because they are afraid to be looked upon

as weird, as strange,

as abnormal.

Many young people are afraid of it,

but they do not dare to say no.

They don't want to be rejected.

They want to be accepted.

That is a psychological fact

that parents and teachers
have to be aware of.

We have to tell our children,
our students, the young people,

that they should learn to say no

when they are not ready,
when they are afraid.

Otherwise, they will destroy
their body and their mind.

In our time, it is very difficult
for them to say no.