Breakfast in the Ultimate | Thich Nhat Hanh (short teaching video)

Breakfast is the time of togetherness.

We enjoy our breakfast.

Every piece of bread

we should enjoy it with our mindfulness.

We eat in such a way
that a piece of bread becomes real,

becomes really a piece of bread.

I think this is the intention of...

of our teachers

when they created the tradition of Eucharist.

Jesus broke the bread
and offered to his students,

and he said, "Enjoy this bread.
This is my body, offered to you."

To me, this is a very drastic kind of teaching

It can help you to be awake.

You are touching a piece of bread,

no less than a miracle, a wonder of life.

If you hold your bread in your hand
and look deeply with mindfulness,

you see that the piece of bread
is no less than the body of the cosmos.

The sunshine is in there.

the cloud, the sky are in there.

The great Earth is in the piece of bread,
the farmers.

Everything in the cosmos is present
in that little piece of bread.

You need only to breathe in mindfully
in order to see it in the piece of bread.

A piece of bread is something
no less than a miracle.

That is an ambassador of the cosmos
coming to you.

If you can see like that,
life is full of miracles.

And if the piece of bread has
not revealed herself to you

deeply like that,
don't put it into your mouth.

Smile to it first.

Call it by its true name, "Bread."

Then that will reveal itself.

because when you look mindfully,
you call the name "bread" mindfully,

the energy of mindfulness
brings you back to yourself.

Mind and body together.

When you have produced the true presence,
body and mind united,

what is there in front of you

also becomes very real.

When you are truly there,
something is there also.

That is life.

That is the wonder of life.

So when you breathe
or look mindfully,

or you say something mindfully,
you become home.

You become real.

And the piece of bread is real.
Now, you can put it in your mouth

and you chew it mindfully.

And be sure not to chew anything else.

Not to chew anything else
like your projects or worries.

Just chew the bread.

A real pleasure.

And eat slowly.

That is loving kindness to our body.

Chew your bread carefully
until it becomes something very tasty

before you swallow.

That helps your body very much.

If you eat like that,
you don't have to eat a lot.

And the amount of nutrition would be
enough, or more than enough.

Enjoy every morsel of food like that

and enjoy the community of
brothers and sisters who surround us.

From time to time, we look at
a brother or a sister and smile.

And feel the happiness
of having a sangha in practice.

When we stand in line

waiting for our turn to serve
to take the food into our plate,

we also practice enjoying
our in-breaths and out-breaths.

Not a minute, not a second
of daily life is wasted.

because every minute is a minute of practice.

Standing in line, you don't wait
any second, any minute.

The whole time is for the practice.

The whole time can be joyful.

There's no waiting.
What are you waiting for?

Because life is available
in this very moment.

There are those of us
who are new to the practice

and have come for the first time.

We should not be embarrassed.

Sometimes maybe we don't know
whether to bow, to stand up,

or not to bow,
or not to stand up.

But that is not important.

The right thing to do is not
to bow or not to bow.

The right thing to do is
to do it mindfully.

It's better not to bow
than to bow without mindfulness.

So please don't feel embarrassed.

If you can allow yourself
to settle in the present moment,

that is the best you can do already.

You don't have to imitate exactly other people.

You might profit from some of their experiences,
but you don't have to imitate.

If you can produce true presence,

and enjoy every minute
we are here together,

that is already excellent.

Walking is good
or running is good.

If you can run mindfully, that is good.

The problem is not
between walking and running.

The problem is whether you walk mindfully,
whether you run mindfully.

In Plum Village, in winter,

the monks and the nuns practice
mindful running also to get warm.

Mindfulness practice does not mean
that you have to slow down everything.

But we have to recognize that
in the beginning, to slow down helps.

It's easier to be mindful when you do things
more slowly.

But that does not mean we have to be
slow all the time.

When you listen to a Dharma talk,
that is also the time for enjoyment too.

Allow yourself to sit with comfort.

Don't struggle.

Don't use your intellect.

Don't try to understand.

Don't try.

Don't try to compare.
Don't try to think about it.

Just allow the Dharma talk
to come to you naturally like...

the earth welcoming the rain.

The best way to listen to a Dharma talk
is not to use the intellect.

Using the intellect is like using
a sheet of nylon to receive the rain.

It prevents the rain from penetrating
into the soil of our consciousness.

It is confirmed that the seed of understanding,
the seed of enlightenment,

...the seed of love and joy
are already there in our consciousness,

in the soil of our consciousness.

Maybe in the past

not many people have been able
to touch them and to help them grow.

That is why they have not become
significant enough in our life.

But if we allow the Dharma rain
to penetrate into our consciousness,

into the soil of our consciousness,
and touch deeply the seeds inside,

the best the teacher can do is to help

the seed of enlightenment and love in the student

to come up, to be touched,
and to manifest.

The morning when the Buddha
attained Perfect Enlightenment,

he said something to himself.

Translating his surprise,
he said, "How strange!

Everyone has the capacity of
great understanding and great love,

yet they allow themselves to sink
further and further into the ocean of suffering.

That statement made by the Buddha
on the morning of enlightenment

reminds us that we all have the capacity
of understanding and love, of being happy.

We should allow these seeds to be touched
and to grow and to manifest themselves.

And the purpose of the practice is to do that.

The purpose of a Dharma talk
is also to do that:

to create opportunities for
the most precious seeds in us

to be touched, to grow, and to manifest.

Even if you feel sleepy during Dharma talks,

that's still much much better
than to use your intellect

because the Dharma talk in that case
can sneak into you, easily.

But with intellect, there's no chance.

There is another line of the gatha
that I have mentioned,

"I have arrived, I am home.

in the here, in the now.

I am solid, I am free."

The last line is:
"In the Ultimate I dwell."

"In the Ultimate I dwell"
is a deep practice.

There are two dimensions
to the same reality.

The first dimension, we call it
"the historical dimension."

And the second dimension,
we call it "the ultimate dimension."

And they both are aspects of the same reality

like the wave and the water.

The wave is a wave.

But she is, at the same time,
the water.

From the side of the wave,
we can see beginning and ending,

we can see whether the wave is high or low,
more or less beautiful,

this wave or the other wave.

But on the side of the water,
we cannot see that.

We cannot say that the water has
a beginning and an end,

high or low,
more or less beautiful,

because the water is the very ground
of being of the wave.

So it is natural that
the wave can live the life of a wave,

but she can do better than that.

She can, at the same time,
learn how to live the life of the water.

And if the wave can bend down
and touch the water within her,

which is her very ground of being,
she will lose all her fear, all her sorrow.

Because as far as the water is concerned,

there is no beginning,
there is no end.

There's no up, there's no down.

There's no this, there's no that.

There is no before, there's no after.

And each of us is a wave like that.

We have our historical dimension...

We can live our life in the historical dimension,

but we may feel a lot of fear, suffering, and discrimination.

But if we are able to touch
the ground of our being,

the substance of
no birth and no death within us,

we will lose all our fear,

and we get the greatest relief
we can get from the practice.

In the language of Christianity,

that ground of being is God.

Do not be afraid.

It is me.

You are God.

That is the voice of the water talking to the wave.

And if you can touch your ground of being,

then the ups and downs,
the idea of being and non-being,

can no longer make you suffer.

Touching Nirvana is the practice.

Touching of the ground of
no birth and no death,

we should be able to train ourselves
to touch the ultimate dimension,

so one day we can get
the greatest relief.

Free from all kinds of fear.

"In the Ultimate I dwell."

That is the last line.

Let us sing together the song
so that we...

those of us, who are not used
to this practice, can memorize.

"I Have Arrived"

"I have arrived, I am home,
In the here and in the now.

I have arrived, I am home,
In the here and in the now.

I am solid, I am free,
I am solid, I am free,

In the ultimate I dwell,
In the ultimate I dwell."

One more time, please.

"I have arrived, I am home,
In the here and in the now.

I have arrived, I am home,
In the here and in the now.

I am solid, I am free,
I am solid, I am free,

In the ultimate I dwell,
In the ultimate I dwell."