valid.txt

Dear friends, today is the 13th of August, 1996, and we are in the Upper Hamlet. We are going to speak English.

The other day after I spoke about the practice of the four mantras. I said that the fourth mantra is more difficult, so I did not talk about it. In fact it is difficult, but not so difficult. After the Dharma talk, when we were about to do walking meditation, there was a gentleman who stopped me on my way and asked me about the fourth mantra. He was very eager to learn and to practice the fourth mantra. He was very curious, because I had said that the fourth mantra is more difficult. But after that I thought it over, and I thought that the children are able to understand and practice the fourth mantra, also. So today I am going to tell them how to practice the fourth mantra.

You need to practice the fourth mantra when you yourself suffer. Remember, the third mantra is to be practiced when the person you love suffers. You only need to go to him or to her with mindfulness, concentration, and you just proclaim the mantra: “Darling, I know you suffer. That is why I am here for you.” But this fourth mantra is practiced when you yourself suffer. You believe your suffering has been caused by the person you love the most. That is why it is so difficult. When the person you love so much says something or does something that hurts you, you suffer quite a lot. Because if it were another person who said something or did something, you would not suffer that much. But this is the person you love most in the world, and he just did that to you, he just said that to you. That is why you cannot bear it. You suffer one hundred times more. This is when the fourth mantra has to be practiced.

According to this practice, you have to go to that person, that very person, the person you love the most, who just hurt you very deeply. You go to him or to her with full awareness, with full mindfulness and concentration, and you utter the fourth mantra: “Darling, I suffer, please help.” This is quite difficult. But if you train yourself, you can do so. When you suffer and you believe that the person who makes you suffer is the person you love the most, you want to be alone. You want to lock your room, and cry alone. You don’t want to see him or her. You don’t want to talk to him or to her. You don’t want to be touched by him or her. Leave me alone! You don’t want him or her to touch you. This is very normal. It’s very human also. Even if the other person tries to approach and to reconcile, you are still very angry. You say: “Don’t touch me. Leave me alone. I don’t want to see you, to be with you.” That’s the real feeling at that moment. Very difficult. I think that you have had that experience.

So is it possible to practice the fourth mantra? You go to him or her, and breathing in deeply, out deeply, become yourself one hundred percent and just open your mouth and say with all your might, your concentration, that you suffer and you need her help, his help. It seems that you don’t want to do so, because you don’t feel that you need his help or her help. You may need the help of all other people, but you don’t need his help. You want to be independent. “I don’t need you.” That’s what you want to say. That is the trouble; because you are deeply hurt. That’s why you cannot go to him and to her and ask for help. Your pride is deeply hurt. And that is why the fourth mantra is so important.

In order to be able to practice this, we have to train ourselves for some time. Your natural tendency is to tell him or her that you can survive without him or her. You can be independent. You will not die because you lack his or her love. That is a natural tendency. But if you know how to look at the situation with wisdom, you see that this is a very, very unwise thing to do. Very stupid thing to do. Because when we love each other, we need each other, especially when we suffer. It would be unwise to do the opposite. You are very sure that your suffering comes from him or her; you are so sure. But maybe you are wrong. She has not done that, she has not said that, in order to hurt you, but you misunderstand. You have a wrong perception. Wrong perception is the word.

I am going to tell you the story of Mr. Truong. It is a true story. It happened in my country many hundreds years ago. The people in my country all know about this story. There was a young man who was drafted into the army, so he had to go to the army and go to war. He had to leave his young wife home alone, pregnant. They cried quite a lot when they had to separate from each other. And they didn’t know whether the man would come back alive, because no one knows. To go to war is very risky. You may die in just a few weeks, or in a few months, or you may get badly wounded. Or if you have a lot of luck, you will survive the war and go home to your parents, your wife, your children.

The young man was lucky enough; he survived. A few years later, he was released from the army. His wife was so happy to learn the news that her husband was coming home. She went to the gate of the village to welcome her husband, and she was accompanied by her little boy. The little boy was born while his daddy was in the army. So the moment when they met each other again, they cried and embraced each other and there were tears of joy. They were very grateful that the young man had survived and come home. It was the first ti saw his little boy.

According to tradition, we have to make an offering on the altar of the ancestors, to announce to ancestors that the family is reunified. He told his wife to go to the marketplace and buy flowers, fruits, and other provisions to make an offering to be placed on the altar. He took the little boy home, and he tried to persuade the little boy to call him daddy, but the little boy refused. “Mister, you are not my daddy. My daddy is another person. He used to come to visit us every night, and every time he came my mother would talk to him a lot, for a long time, and my mother used to cry and cry; and when my mother sits down, my daddy also sits down; when my mother lies down, he also lies down; so you are not my daddy.”

The young father was very sad, very hurt. He imagined another man coming to his home every night and spending the night with his wife. All his happiness vanished just like that. Happiness was very short, followed by unhappiness. The young father suffered so much that his heart became a block of stone or ice. He could no longer smile. He became very silent. He suffered very deeply. His wife, shopping, did not know anything about it. So when she came home, she was very surprised. He did not look at her anymore. He did not talk to her anymore. He kept very cold, like he despised her. She did not understand. Why? She began to suffer herself, suffer deeply.

When the offering had been made, she placed it on the altar. Her husband burned the incense, prayed to the ancestors, spread the mat, made the four prostrations and announced that he was home, safe, with his family. You know, in my country, this is a very important practice. In every home, there is an altar for ancestors. On the altar you put the picture of one ancestor that represents all the ancestors. Maybe that is the grandma or the grandpa, and so on. Each morning, someone would come to the altar, wipe away the dust that had gathered on the table, light a stick of incense and bow, and offer that to all the ancestors. This is a very simple, but important practice every morning. So you always have incense sticks in the home.

Every time you come to the altar and light a stick of incense, you touch your ancestors. Touching your ancestors is a very deep practice. I don’t know whether our Western friends would like to practice this way, but if they do, they will have the chance to touch their ancestors every morning. Spiritual ancestors like Jesus, Buddha, the patriarchs, and the teachers. Blood ancestors like grandpa, great grandpa, great grandma, and so on. In Vietnam, this is a very popular practice. Every morning you light a stick of incense. You offer it to your spiritual ancestors and blood ancestors. You breathe in and out, and you touch your ancestors. This is very important, because if you get cut off from your ancestors, you will get sick, like a tree without roots. So I just propose this to you, to see whether it makes sense to set up a family ancestral altar in a European home or in a North American home.

Maybe this practice can help us to get healthier, and bring harmony back into the family. Every time there is something happening in the family, you have to go and announce to your ancestors. This is our practice. It has been there for many thousands of years. If your little girl or little boy gets a strong fever, of course you need to ask a doctor to come and help, but you have to announce this to your ancestors. You have to light a stick of incense, come to the altar, offer it, breathe in and breathe out, and you have to announce to your ancestors that the little girl, the little boy, is has a fever. You have the duty of announcing this to your ancestors because they have the right to know, because that is their great, great granddaughter or son. If you are about to send your son to college, you also have to announce that to your ancestors. They have the right to know. Or if you are about to marry your daughter to someone in the next town, you have to announce that to your ancestors. That is the practice. That is why when the young man came home to be reunified with his family, they had to prepare an offering to be placed on the altar and announce that kind of return to the ancestors.

After having offered incense, prayed and made four prostrations, the young father rolled up the mat and did not allow his wife to do the same, because he thought that his wife was not qualified to present herself in front of the ancestral altar. The young woman felt very ashamed—humiliated—because of that, and she suffered even more deeply. According to the tradition, after the ceremony has ended, they have to bring the offering down, and the family has to sit down and enjoy the meal with joy and happiness; but the young man did not do so. After the offering, he just left the house, went into the village, and spent his time in a liquor shop. The young man got drunk because he could not bear the suffering. In the old times, when they suffered so much, they used to go to the liquor shop and drink a lot of alcohol. Nowadays, people can use many kinds of drugs, but in the olden time alcohol was the only thing. He did not go home until very late, something like one or two o’clock in the morning, and he went home very drunk. He repeated that for many days: never talked to his wife, never looked at her, never ate at home, and the young lady suffered so much she could not bear it. On the fourth day, she jumped into the river and she died. She suffered very much. He also suffered very much. But no one was thinking of coming to the other person and asking for help, because pride—you have to call it by its true name, pride—was an obstacle.

When you suffer, and you believe that your suffering has been caused by the person you love the most, you prefer to suffer alone. Pride prevents you going to the other person and asking for help. What if the husband had come to her? The situation might be very different. That night, he had to stay home because his wife was already dead, to take care of the little boy. He had to search for the kerosene lamp and he had to light it up. When the lamp was lighted up, suddenly the little boy shouted: “Here comes my father!” So he pointed to the shadow of his father on the wall. “You know, mister, my father used to come every night like this and my mother used to talk to him a lot and she cried a lot with him, and every time she sat down, my father also sat down. Every time my mother lay down, he also lay down.”

It turns out that his “father” was only the shadow of his mother. In fact, she used to talk to that shadow every night, because she missed her husband so much. One day the little boy had asked her: “Everyone in the village has a father, why don’t I have one?” So that night, in order to calm the little boy, she pointed to her shadow on the wall, and said, “Here is your father!” and she began to talk to the shadow. “My dear husband, you have been away for too long. How could I alone bring up our child? Please come back as soon as possible.” That’s the kind of talking she used to do. And of course, when she got tired, she sat down, and the shadow would sit down. Now the young father began to understand. A wrong perception was wiped away. But it was too late; the wife was already dead.

A wrong perception can be the cause of a lot of suffering, and all of us are subjected to our wrong perceptions every day. That is what the Buddha said. We live with wrong perceptions every day. That is what the Buddha said. That is why we have to practice meditation and look deeply into the nature of our perceptions. Whenever we perceive anything, we have to ask the question, “Are you sure your perception is right?” To be safe, you have to ask, “Are you sure of your perceptions?”

When we stand there with friends, and look at the beautiful sunset, we enjoy the beautiful sunset, and we may be sure that the sun is setting, or has not set. But a scientist may tell us that the sun has already set eight minutes ago. The image of the sun we are touching is only the image of the sun eight minutes ago. He is telling the truth. Because it takes eight minutes for the image of the sun to come to us—that is the speed of light. We are very sure that we are seeing the sun in the present moment. That is one of the wrong perceptions. We are subjected to thousands of wrong perceptions like that in our daily life. It may be that the other person did not have the intention to hurt you, yet you believe that she has done that in order to punish you, to make you suffer, to destroy you. You carry with you a wrong perception like that, day and night, and you suffer terribly. Maybe you keep your perception until you die, with a lot of hatred toward a person who may be innocent. That is why meditating on perception is a very important practice.

What if the young man had gone to his wife and asked: “Darling, I have suffered so much in the last few days. I don’t think I can survive. Please help me. Please tell me who is that person who used to come every night, and that you talked cried to a lot, and every time you sat down he would sit down.” A very simple thing to do. Go to her and ask. If he had done so, the young lady would have had a chance to explain, and the tragedy would have ended. They would have recovered their happiness so easily, the direct way. But he did not do so because he was so deeply hurt, and pride has prevented him from going to her and asking for help. He had not learned the fourth mantra.

If the man committed that mistake, the woman also committed the same mistake. She also suffered so deeply, but was too proud to ask. She should have gone to him and asked: “Darling, I don’t understand. I suffer very much. I don’t understand why you don’t look at me, you don’t talk to me, you seem to despise me. You seem to feel that I am not there at all. Have I done anything wrong to deserve that kind of treatment?” That’s what she had to do. “Darling, I suffer. Please help.” That is the mantra. If she had done so, the young man, the young husband would have answered like this: “Why? Don’t you know why? Who is that person who used to come every night, and you talked to him?” Then she would have had the chance to explain.

You know, after the young man found out his mistake, he cried and cried and cried. He pulled his hair. He beat his chest. But it was too late! Finally all the people in the village learned of the tragedy, they came and organized a big ceremony to pray for the poor lady. A ceremony of wiping out injustice committed by people like us, out of our ignorance and wrong perceptions. Together they built a shrine for her. That shrine still stands there. If you visit North Vietnam, going by that river you see that shrine.

About 100 years later a Vietnamese king passed by and he asked: “What kind of shrine is that?” And they told him the story. He cried, and he wrote a poem. [Poem in Vietnamese for 55 seconds.] That is the poem written by the king, to honor the lady.

We all have to learn from the suffering of the young couple. We should not make the same mistake. Next time, when you suffer, if you believe that your suffering has been caused by the person you love the most, you have to remember this story. You have to be very careful. You have to learn now to train yourself, to prepare for that time. In that moment, you’ll be able to practice the fourth mantra. Practice walking meditation. Practice sitting meditation. Practice breathing in and out mindfully to restore yourself. Then you go to him or to her and you practice the mantra. “Darling, I suffer so much. You are the person I love most in the world. Please help me.” Without pride. If you let your pride stand in between you and her or him, it means that your love is not really true love, because in true love there is no room for pride. If pride is still there, you know that you have to practice in order to transform your love into true love. The children are young, they have plenty of chance to learn and train themselves for the practice. I am confident that even if you are still young, if you get the teaching and if you practice right now, it will be very easy for you to practice later on, when you suffer because you think that the person you love the most has done that to you, has said that to you. This is the story about Mr. [ph: Tu]. And you may be interested in a translation of the poem I just read. And also the fourth mantra. I don’t think that you are going to use the fourth mantra often, but it is a very important mantra. Maybe you have to use it only once a year, or twice a year, but it is extremely important. So I want you to write it down, and keep it somewhere. And every time you suffer very much, please go and look for that mantra, and try to practice it.

The other day, in the New Hamlet, I was asked by a friend about the meaning of the meditation on the image of Jesus on the cross. What is the meaning of that kind of practice, contemplating the image of Jesus on the cross? At first I thought the question should be addressed to teachers in the tradition. We have often heard that when you contemplate the image of Jesus dying on the cross, you remember the fact that Jesus suffered and died for us. In the Buddhist study and practice concerning suffering, we know that suffering can teach us, we can learn a lot from suffering. If we look deeply into the nature of suffering, we may get insight on how we can get out of our situation. That is why suffering, dukkha, has been called in Buddhism a holy truth. Suffering is holy, because the contemplation of suffering can bring about insight on how to get out of suffering and transform it.

If you do not know how to make use of suffering, if you do not know how to learn from the suffering, then suffering cannot be a holy truth. We can sink into the ocean of suffering, we can be overwhelmed by suffering, and suffering is not a holy truth; it is only something destructive. That is why contemplating on suffering is a very important practice in Buddhism. Contemplating suffering, you will know how that suffering has come to be, because everything is born from conditions. And the contemplation on the nature of suffering will bring us insight on how that suffering has come to be, and the conditions that have brought this suffering to us.

Suppose we have a depression. We have to live with that depression right now. We may ask whether we are able to get out of that depression, make it go away, and the Buddha said yes. If you look deeply into the nature of your depression, you would know how it has come to you. You will look back and see how you have lived your life in the last six months or so, you will find out how that depression has come. When you have insight, you just decide not to feed your depression in the way you have done during the last six months. Then your depression will have to die or go away for lack of food, because everything needs food to survive, including your depression.

If I were to contemplate the suffering that Jesus underwent on the cross, I would ask whether Jesus bears his suffering, the injustice that was forced on him, well. In this summer opening we have had a few Dharma talks on the topic of forbearance. We have learned that if our heart is big, and if we have a lot of peace and joy and love then it would not be difficult at all for us to bear some injustice that people inflict on us. But if we are full of pain, suffering, anger, hatred, then it will be very difficult for us to accept the injustice people inflict on us. So I would find out whether Jesus bears the injustice that was inflicted on him well, whether in his heart there was anger or hatred, whether he is trying to teach us how to learn from our suffering. The image of Jesus dying on the cross may be very instructive, very helpful to us.

But I also got a new insight. It was during a visit to MonbosMongose? that I made with a few young monks and nuns. We went into the church in Monbos, not very far from here, and we sat there for half an hour. During the time I sat there I contemplated Jesus on the cross, and I had the vision that Jesus should be presented in other forms, not only on the cross. We learned that Jesus had gone to the mountain and practiced meditation alone. During that time he spent on the mountain he may have been practicing walking meditation or sitting meditation. Our friends have to depict him in a sitting position or in walking meditation, radiating peace and stability. An artist within the church has to come forward and bring us these images of Jesus that convey stability, solidity, calm, peace, tolerance. That’s what we need. That’s what the young people in the church need.

Young people are looking for something like stability, like tolerance, like understanding, like love. Maybe they don’t need to contemplate a lot the image of Jesus dying on the cross, but they need a very refreshing image of Jesus Christ, doing walking meditation or sitting meditation or holding children and playing with children. I really think so. Now people are attracted to the image of the Buddha, because the Buddha was sitting in a very solid, calm way, radiating peace and happiness, a half-smile on his lips. That is what we are very hungry for. We are very hungry for stability, for peace, for solidity, for tranquility. Anyone living in our time will feel that. That’s what we need the most. And therefore the young people, when they go to church, they should be able to touch these elements embodied by the clergy and by the images, especially the image of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was young when he died, but not many people have tried to present him as having joy, vitality, peace. Jesus had a great vitality within himself. It was very active during the years of his teaching. He encountered many, many people. He helped so many people. And you know that when you are able to do something for people you get a lot of joy, of peace, of stability. That is why I try to speak for the young people. We need the image of Jesus smiling, sitting, walking, embodying the joy, the peace, the tranquility, the love. The young people need that image very much.

Also, during that question and answer session, there was one question about the necessity of expressing our emotions and anger. The friend who asked me that question began by saying that if he tries to be calm, his child continues to be nervous, but if he begins to shout then his child gets quiet and calm. I did not have the chance to address his question, this approach. I only told him “Well, you shout, and then your little boy gets calm and doesn’t disturb you anymore, and you believe that it works. But if you look deeply into it, maybe it would not work in the future. Because by shouting like that, your child may get an internal formation, a wound within himself. And later on maybe communication between you and him will become difficult.” So we cannot say that it works. It may work for one moment, but it may cause damage in the future.

I said that “when you shout, your shouting may come from love or might come from irritation. There is a difference.” When you shout with irritation in you, that will create some negative things in you and also in your child. You have to measure the consequence of that. You cannot say that because you shout like that he accepts to become calm for a moment and you think it’s a good way to proceed. There are many cases where a son or daughter cannot communicate to a father. Communication is just impossible, because maybe the father has been using his authority a little bit too much. The father has to learn how to deal with the little boy or the little girl as a friend. He needs to practice forbearance, patience. He needs to practice loving-kindness even with his little boy or little girl. He needs to learn how to manage his irritation, his anger. A lot of tragedy has resulted from the way fathers and mothers deal with their children.

When there is a fight between parents and children, the losers are very often the children, because the children don’t have the right to respond to their parents the way their parents do. They cannot use the same kind of language or reaction, because they are at the mercy of their parents—financially and in every aspect they have to depend on their parents. That is why, when their parents express their anger, the children have to receive the violence and they have no means to get it out—to express it, to transform it. If the parents don’t know how to transform their violence, then the children will not know how to transform theirs either, because they have not learned anything from their parents. When children have become victims of the violence brought on them by parents, they suffer, and they don’t know what to do. That violence within them becomes a poison that continues to kill them. If these young people try to kill themselves, it’s mostly because they want to retaliate against their parents. By killing themselves, they want to send a message to their parents: “You know, I am killing myself because of you. You have made me suffer so much, and this is the fruit of your behavior, your way of dealing with me.” So when a young man or young woman commits suicide, there is always that kind of message directed to parents or society or someone else, because the violence in him or her has no way to be transformed.

[Bell]

Most of us who sit here, we are at the same time children and parents. Even if we are still young, we can be already a big sister or a big brother, and already have to play the role of a parent. That is why we have to learn how to be children and to be parents at the same time. We have to learn how to manage, how to take care of the violence in us. The energy of violence, the energy of hatred and anger in us, is something that continues to destroy us, to shape our behavior. That is why we have to learn the practice of how to handle that negative energy and how to transform it. In the Buddhist teachings, it is clear that the practice of compassion and loving-kindness is the only antidote to violence, hatred, and anger. We have learned that compassion and loving-kindness cannot just be born like that, they need the practice in order to be born. That is the kind of energy that should be fabricated by us.

The practice of generating that kind of energy that can transform violence and hatred in us is the practice of looking deeply. Only the practice of looking deeply can bring about acceptance and understanding and love. When you practice breathing in on your cushion and visualize that you are a five-year-old boy or a five-year-old girl, and invite that little boy or little girl to be with you, you might touch that little boy or little girl in you with compassion, because that little boy or girl did suffer during your time of childhood. Your father at some point may have shouted at you, believing that shouting was the best way to keep you calm. He did not know that shouting like that could open up a wound within your little heart. The heart of little boy, five years old, is very tender, very vulnerable. Parents should be aware of these things. When you look at your little boy with a stern look, that is enough to scare him, to create terror in him, and to create a wound within his tender heart. For you, it’s very normal that a father when irritated can shout and can look at his boy with such kind of eyes, but for a little boy of five years old, that may be too much. For a little girl five years old that may be too much.

So breathing in, I see myself as a five-year-old girl or five-year-old boy. And during the whole time of your in-breath, you allow that little boy or little girl to come back. He is still alive in you. I am sure. I know. The little girl, the little boy, is still alive very much, with very much the same kind of need and suffering. When he is there, she is there, you have to embrace him or her in your mindfulness. You have to say: “Darling, I know you are still there, and I am here for you.” The first mantra, the second mantra. Breathing out, I smile to that little boy who was me. That smile is already the smile of compassion. Because when you breathe in, you see yourself as a five-year-old boy or girl, very vulnerable, very fragile. That is why when you breath out, your heart is already filled with compassion, and you embrace that little boy or little girl with your energy of compassion. There is already understanding.

Mindfulness of breathing revives an image, helps you to look deeply into that image, and helps you to generate the energy of compassion with which you embrace him or her. That is very healing, and you may continue this for some time, maybe ten, fifteen minutes.

I have in my hut a picture of me taken when I was sixteen and a half, a young novice. Every time I look at that, I still feel a lot of compassion. He did not know his path yet. He didn’t know what difficulties were waiting for him, because I underwent a lot of difficulties, sufferings. So if you want to practice, you may like to use your family album, you may need a picture of you when you were five or four, and you generate compassion for yourself.

There was a young man who came to the Upper Hamlet, I think about eight or ten years ago, who was given that kind of practice because he hated his father. He could not bear the thought of thinking and writing a letter to his father. At that time all the monks and nuns and lay people received the assignment of writing a letter, a love letter, to his or her father or mother. For him, to write a letter to his mommy might be possible, but not to his daddy. Although his daddy already had passed away, he still could not reconcile with him. He just could not think of his father. He considered his father as the main source of his suffering. There are many men and women like that around us.

During the week that followed, I gave him the other half of the exercise: “Breathing in, I see my father as a five-year-old boy. Breathing out, I smile to that five-year-old boy that my father was.” Maybe you have not had a chance to see your father as a little boy, but before he became an adult, he was a little boy. Very fragile. Very vulnerable, also. Suddenly, that fragile image of your father comes to you, and you see that he’s no different from you. He was also as vulnerable as you, as fragile as you. He may be a victim of your grandpa. Every time his father shouted at him, every time his father looked at him with a stern look, he got a wound in his heart, just like you. He did not know how to transform that, so he was repeating the same kind of thing with you.

That’s what we call the wheel of samsara, the vicious circle transmitted from father to son, from son to grandson. The violence we received, we don’t know how to transform, and even if we hate our father, if we promised ourselves that when we grow up we will do entirely differently from our father, we will repeat the same. We will do exactly the way our father has done to us. That is the wheel of samsara.

I have seen many young men who are very determined that they will do the opposite of their father. But when they grow up, get married, and have children, they do exactly the same. The whole habit energy, the transmission, the samsara. So if you are touched by the Dharma, you have an instrument to cut through the wheel of samsara, you end the samsara, and you will not transmit that violence to the next generation.

“Breathing in, I see my father as a five-year-old boy. Breathing out, I smile to my father as a five-year-old boy.” Vulnerable. Fragile. Fearful. That is the practice of looking deeply, because when you look like that, you see that the other person suffers like you, is also a victim like you. Suddenly the nectar of compassion is born in your heart. Suddenly you feel that you can breathe in and out again. The image of your father is no longer the same. He is now a little boy with a lot of suffering, a lot of fear, a lot of wounds within himself. You have suffered, that is why you can understand the suffering of someone else, and that someone else is your father.

Fathers always have the tendency to love and make their children happy. That tendency is deep, it is natural. But because they have not learned the way to love properly, the way to handle their violence and anger, they have not been able to express their true love, and they have inflicted a lot of suffering on their children. We cannot say that there is no love in them, we can only say that the love in them has no way to be expressed. If we can begin to understand this, our heart will begin to open, and suddenly we can breathe and we can survive, because a drop of the nectar of compassion is already born in our heart. We no longer want to blame, because we have touched his or her suffering. We know that he does not need punishment, he needs help.

During his lifetime, no one has been able to help him, to transform his violence and his anger. He has not had a teacher, a Dharma brother or sister; and if I had not had a teacher, a brother or sister in the Dharma, I would have done like him, you see. So no blaming is possible now. Only compassion is the answer. So suddenly, you are on your cushion, and you feel that you can breathe, you can survive. And you can continue to practice. “Breathing in, I see my father as a suffering child. Breathing out, I embrace my father with my compassionate smile.” This is very healing, very nourishing.

The young man placed on his table a picture of his father. He had asked for a picture of his father to be sent from America. He placed that on his desk. Every time he went out of his room he stopped by the door, looked into his father’s eyes, and began to breathe in and out and visualize his father as a little boy. Every time he went into his room, he turned on the light on the table, looked at that picture, and practiced breathing in and out. A few weeks later, he was able to sit down and write a letter, the assignment. We call it a love letter, the first love letter. And he succeeded in writing the letter. Writing a letter like that untied a lot of bondage in him, because of the nectar of compassion that had been born in his heart. Your heart suddenly expands, there is now a lot of space, and now you can bear the injustice quite easily because you have an amount of understanding, of compassion that can digest, that can transform.

So the practice of looking deeply is the practice of expanding the heart, of putting more space and compassion into our heart. Bodhisattvas who have to bear a lot of injustice don’t have any hatred or anger in their heart. That is why they accept, they digest, injustice and suffering very quickly. In the Christian gospel you read: “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.” They are doing that out of their ignorance. That is also good meditation, a good practice of looking deeply.

When the little boy held the two wings of the butterfly in two hands and tore the butterfly apart, he didn’t know what he was doing to the butterfly. He needs someone to tell him and to help him. I told him: “My dear, don’t you know that tonight the father and the mother of the butterfly will have to spend the whole night waiting for the butterfly to come home? Don’t you think that your parents would worry if you didn’t come home tonight? Please be kind to the butterfly.” The child understood right away. The next day when it was raining hard and a lot of snails were coming out on the path, he was picking up these snails with me and putting them back in the bush, saying we had to be careful, otherwise the snails could not go back to their parents that night.

So people are doing you injustice, are doing awful things to you and the people around. They may think that doing that is good. They don’t know what they are doing. They do it out of ignorance. And hatred, anger, jealousy, all these things are born from ignorance. That is what the Buddha said. So practicing looking deeply is to bring the kind of insight that will help us to understand, to accept, to love, to be compassionate.

[Bell]

When we have the energy of compassion in us, we can relate to the world very easily, because it is exactly that kind of energy that helps us to get out of our prison of loneliness. The people who have no compassion within their heart, they are very alone, because they have no ways to relate to other living beings. Having the energy of compassion in you, you are already a happy person. Every time you can do something to help another living being, the joy always returns to you. The teaching of love in Buddhism is quite clear. And also very deep.

Our love is there for the other person or persons. But according to this teaching, you have to practice looking deeply into the nature of your love. And you can always improve the nature of your love. There are kinds of love that bring us a lot of sorrow, a lot of jealousy, a lot of hatred, a lot of suffering, because they are not true love. True love within the Buddhist teachings has to contain the element of loving-kindness. Maitri is loving-kindness and loving-kindness is the capacity of offering happiness. This is the process of learning, because to make the other person happy, you need to be there. You need to learn how to look at him or her. You need to learn how to talk to him or to her. Making another person happy is an art that we have to learn. It’s not because we bring him or her a lot of money that we can make him or her happy, but the way we live, the freshness we have, the tolerance we have. You are just there by his side or her side, and the other person enjoys your presence, enjoys your company, because your person contains loving-kindness, radiates loving-kindness. And whatever you do can bring him or her a lot of happiness. The word you say, a look you direct to that person, is enough to make him or her very happy.

According to the practice, you have to understand the real needs of that person, and again you have to practice looking deeply. If you do not know what the other person really needs, you will not be able to offer him or her happiness. And if you don’t have time, how can you look deeply into the other person? So take time, practice looking deeply into him or her, and see what kind of needs she has or he has, and just bring him or bring her the things they need. Maybe what they need is not a lot: your attention, your capacity of listening to him or to her, your capacity of talking to her in a nice way. Well, these things are very important, and maybe they just need these things to be really happy. You know that you can train yourself in order to be able to offer these kind of joys and happiness.

The second element of true love is compassion, karuna. That is the capacity of removing the pain, transforming the pain in the person you love. Again, you have to practice looking deeply to see what kind of suffering that person has in him or her. Again, you see that you need to be really there in order to see. Your presence is necessary. Then, if you are mindful, you will know that the person you love suffers, and with some amount of looking deeply, you can identify the suffering in him or her. If you can look a little bit more deeply, you see the nature and the cause of that suffering. Only then can you practice compassion, karuna. If you don’t show that you understand that suffering, then you cannot practice karuna. You have to really understand that suffering, and sometimes you can stop the suffering just by the way you behave, talk, and act.

Maybe you are the cause of that suffering. You have no capacity to listen deeply to that person. You have no capacity of talking to him or her in a calm and loving way; therefore, you cannot understand his or her suffering. Now, if you are able to train yourself and to practice loving speech and compassionate listening, you might by yourself transform the suffering in her or in him. That is true in most cases. That person might confront easily the other difficulties in life if she is supported by you, she is understood by you, she feels that you are on her side. That is compassion and compassion is the fruit of meditation, looking deeply.

The third element of true love is joy, mudita. There are those who love each other, but who cry every day, who make each other cry every day. It means that their love is not true love yet, because the element of joy is not there. True love must bring you joy and happiness, and not sorrow every day. If your love is possessive love, you may behave like a tyrant, a dictator, so you make the person you love suffer every day, you make each other suffer every day, because of your narrow ideas of happiness, your wrong perceptions. That is why your love is not true love yet. The practice of looking deeply will help you to be less possessive, more understanding, and therefore you can offer the other person joy every day. I have seen true love. I have seen people loving each other and offering each other joy every day, maybe every hour, every minute. It is not difficult. It is not difficult. With some mindfulness, with concentration, with some training, you can do that.

The fourth and last element of true love is freedom, equanimity. If by loving, by being in love, you feel that you are losing your freedom, you have no space to move anymore, that’s not true love. That is why in true love you have to offer yourself and the other person space and freedom. You know that when you arrange flowers, you should allow each flower to have some space around it in order for the flower to radiate its beauty. A person is also a flower. If he is deprived of freedom, and then he will not feel happy; therefore love in such a way that you can retain your freedom and that person also can retain her or his freedom. And this is possible.

There is a poem that I like about the moon. The refreshing moon, beautiful moon, is sailing through the ocean of the sky. The Buddha is the full moon that goes across the immense sky. If the river is calm, then the image of the moon will be reflected clearly in the river. Something like that. The image I like is the full moon traveling in the sky. You feel the freedom of the moon, because the moon has a lot of space around her. And the moon can benefit many people, can bring a lot of happiness to many people. It shines on everyone. It does not discriminate. It shines on the mountain and on the rivers. On this side of the frontier, on the other side of the frontier. That is equanimity. No discrimination. True love is upeksa, non-discrimination, and therefore no dictatorship.

There is a lot of Dharma talk in the air and there is a lot of air in the Dharma talk.

Today is August 22, 2001 at Deer Park Monastery. There is a sutra with the title Yasoja – that’s the name of a monk, the Sangha leader. This sutra, Udanakarmad is found in the collection called Udana, Inspired Sayings. Yasoja was a Sangha leader of a community of monks, about 500. One day he led the 500 monks to the place where the Buddha lived, hoping that they could join the three-month retreat with the Buddha. It was about ten days before the retreat began and they arrived very joyfully, thinking that they would see the Buddha and the other monks. There were lots of greetings, lots of talking and from his hut the Buddha heard the loud noise. He asked Ananda, “What is that noise? It sounds like fishermen landing a catch of fish.” Ananda said that the Venerable Yasoja had come with 500 monks and they were greeting and talking with the resident monks, which was why there was such a great noise.

The Buddha said: “Ask them to come to me.” And when the monks came they touched the earth in front of the Buddha and they sat down. The Buddha said: “You are to go away. You cannot stay with me: you are too noisy. I dismiss you.” So the 500 monks touched the earth, went around the Buddha and left the monastery of Jeta Park. They went to the kingdom of Vajji, on the east side of Koshala, and it took them many days to reach this territory. When they arrived on the bank of the river Vaggamuda they sat down and then they began to build small huts for their rain retreat. During the ceremony of starting the retreat the Venerable Yasoja said: “The Buddha sent us away out of compassion. You should know that He is expecting us to practise deeply and successfully. That is why he sent us away. It was an expression of his deep love.”

All the monks were able to see that and they agreed that they should practise very seriously during the rain retreat to show the Buddha that they were worthy to be His disciples. So they dwelled quietly and practised very deeply, very ardently, very solidly. After only three months’ retreat the majority of the monks had realised the three enlightenments, the three kinds of achievement. One is about remembering all past lives. The second is to see the lives of human beings as other beings – how they have come and after a time they go – and to see this very clearly. The third realisation is achieved when basic afflictions within the practitioner have ended: no more cravings, anger and ignorance.

One day after the rain retreat the Buddha told Ananda: “When I look towards the east I notice that there is some good energy – the energy of light and goodness – and when I use my concentration I see that the 500 monks that were sent away by me have achieved something very deep.” Ananda said: “That is true Lord, for I have already heard about them. After being dismissed they settled down in the Rajghir territory and began serious practice. Now they have all realised the three realisations.” So the Buddha said: “That’s good. Why don’t we invite them to come over for a visit?”

The 500 monks, when they heard the invitation of the Buddha, were very glad to come and visit him. After many days of travelling they arrived at about seven o’clock in the evening and found the Buddha sitting quietly. They found out that the Buddha was in a state of concentration called imperturbability. In this state you are not perturbed by anything – you are very free and very solid. Nothing can shake you, including fame, craving, hatred or even hope. When the monks realised that the Buddha was in the state called imperturbability they said: “The Lord is sitting in that state so why don’t we sit like him?” So they all sat down like the Lord, in the Jeta Park, very beautifully, very deeply, very solidly. All of them entered into the state of imperturbability and sat like the Buddha. They sat for a long time. When the night was very advanced and the first watch was finished, the Venerable Ananda came to the Lord and knelt down and said: “Lord, it is already very late in the night. Why don’t you address the monks?”

The Lord did not say anything and they all continued to sit. The second watch of the night had gone by and it was about two or three o’clock in the morning. Again Ananda came, knelt down and said: “The night is very far gone. It is now the end of the second watch. Please address the 500 monks.” But the Buddha kept silent and continued to sit. All the monks continued to sit also.

Finally the third watch of the night passed and the sun began to appear on the horizon. Ananda came for the third time and he knelt in front of the Buddha and said: “Great Teacher, now the night is over why don’t you address the monks?” The Buddha opened his eyes, looked at Ananda and said: “Ananda, you did not know what was going on. That is why you have come and asked me three times. This is what was going on: I was sitting in a state of imperturbability and all the monks sat in that state of being, not disturbed by anything at all. That is the best situation we can have. We don’t need anything else. We don’t need any communication. We don’t need any greetings. We don’t need any talk. It is the most beautiful thing that can happen between teacher and student. We just sat like that, each of us dwelling in a state of peace and solidity and freedom.”

I find that sutra very, very beautiful. The communication between teacher and disciple is perfect. What a student should expect from a teacher is nothing less than the freedom of the teacher. The teacher should be free from craving, free from fear, free from despair. When you come to the temple you should not expect small things like having a cup of tea with the teacher or having him say that you are a good person who has many merits and so on. These things are nothing at all. You should expect from a teacher much more than that. If your teacher has enough freedom, enough peace and enough insight, then that will satisfy you entirely. If he does not have any solidity, any freedom, then he should not be your teacher and you should not accept him or her as your teacher because you’ll get nothing out of him.

As a Dharma teacher or a big brother or sister in the Dharma what do you expect from your students? Again, you should not expect small things. You should not expect him or her to bring you a cup of tea, a good meal, a cake or some words of praise. They are nothing at all. You should expect from your student their transformation, their healing and their freedom.

When teacher and students are like that they are in a perfect state of communication. They don’t have to say anything to each other. They don’t have to do much. They just sit with each other like that, in a state of solidity, imperturbability and that is the most beautiful aspect of a teacher-student relationship. I have found this sutra very, very beautiful.

When a student practises well he can see the teacher in himself, in herself. Likewise when a teacher practises well he can see himself in the student. They should not expect less than that. If you always see the teacher as someone outside of yourself, you have not profited much from your teacher. You have to see that your teacher is in you, in every moment. If you fail to see that, your practice has not gone well at all. So too, if as a teacher you look at your students and do not see yourself in those students, your teaching has not gone very far.

When I look into the person of a disciple, whether she is a monastic or a lay person, I would like to see that my teaching has only one aim – to transmit my insight, my freedom and my joy to my disciples. If I look at her and I see these elements in her eyes, I am very glad. I feel that I have done well in transmitting the best that is in me. Looking at a disciple’s way of walking, of smiling, of greeting and of being, I can see whether my teaching has been fruitful or not. That is what is called “transmission”.

Transmission isn’t organised by a ceremony with a lot of incense and chanting. Transmission happens every day in a very simple way. If the teacher/student relationship is good, then that transmission is realised in every moment of our daily life. You don’t feel far away from your teacher. You feel that he is, she is, always with you because the teacher outside has become the teacher inside. You know how to look with the eyes of your teacher. You know how to walk with the feet of your teacher. Your teacher is never apart from you. This is not something abstract: it is something that we can see for ourselves. If you look at a monk or a nun or a lay disciple and you see Thay in him, you know that he is a full disciple of Thay. But if you don’t see that, you may be a newly-arrived person who does not have any Thay within himself and is filled with curiosity.

When we look into ourselves, we can see it also – we can see whether our way of walking or smiling or thinking has that element of freedom, of joy, of compassion – and then we know that Thay has been taken into ourselves as a true continuation of our teacher. You don’t need another person to tell you: you can know it by yourself. And when you look at the other fellow you see it by yourself also. If the teacher/student relationship is good, then the transmission is taking place in every moment of daily life.

Every time we take a step we know, by ourselves, whether that step contains peace, joy, solidity or not. You don’t need your teacher to tell you. You know whether your step is a real step, containing solidity and freedom, or not. If your step does not have freedom, you know it doesn’t. If your step doesn’t have the element of solidity, you know it doesn’t. It’s not hard: it’s so obvious.

Your step is like a cup which can be empty and some juice or tea can be poured into it. If there is something in the cup, it is obvious. When there is tea in the cup, you can drink and enjoy it. First I make a step here, a step here, a step here (Thay takes a few steps as he talks). My practice is to fill each step with the element of solidity and peace. For I know very well that every step like that is highly nourishing and healing. When I make a step I say: “I have arrived” or “I am home”. So there is the element of arrival here and you know whether you have arrived or not. You don’t know how to enjoy every step you make because you’ve been running all your life. Now you have become a student of the Buddha, you want to make real steps and every step should be full of the element of arrival, full of the element of here and now, full of the element of stability, solidity and freedom.

In the time of the Buddha there were no aeroplanes, there were no buses, there were no cars. And the Sangha just walked from one country to another country. They spent time in many countries and yet they only walked. They had their way of walking and they were able to enjoy every step they made. The Buddha was a monk and his disciples were monks. They walked together like this from one place to another as travelling monks, stopping only for the three months’ rain. So they had plenty of time to practise walking meditation and wherever they went they inspired people because of their way of walking and sitting. You can arrive fully when you are sitting and when you are walking. You are not in a hurry, you are not looking for something else outside yourself. You know that everything you are looking for is in the here and now and that is why every step you make helps you to arrive in the here and now. That is why the teaching and the practice of arrival is so wonderful, so marvellous.

Our society is characterised by running. Everyone is running, running to the future. You want to assure a good future and since you see other people around you running, you cannot resist running. If you do not have peace you are not capable of being in the here and the now and touching life very deeply. Running like that, you hope to arrive. But running like that has become a habit and you are not able to arrive any more. Your whole life is for running.

In this teaching, in this practice, the point of arrival is not over there. The point of arrival is here in every minute, in every second. Life is a kind of walk: it can be found here, here, here, here and here, in every step. We continue like this (Thay walks slowly). So life can be found in a step and in the space between steps. If we expect to see life outside of these steps and the space between steps, we don’t have life. It is very clear, yet the great majority is running. That is why the practice of arrival is so important. It’s a drastic kind of medicine for healing our society because you carry, in each of you, the whole of society. The whole of society is running, and therefore we are running. So awakening can bring the desire to resist, to stop.

The teaching of the three doors of liberation is crucial: the door of emptiness, the door of signlessness and the door of aimlessness. Aimlessness means that you are not running any more. You are not running after anything at all because what you want to become you already are. What you are searching for is already there in the here and the now. Your peace, your happiness, your solidity, your freedom is available in every step. Aimlessness is your chance to stop. You should not run any more. If you think of gaining peace and freedom, peace and freedom are right here, right now. The belief that peace and freedom is in the other direction is an error. That is why every step you take should bring you to the place where freedom and solidity exist. Freedom and solidity are the ground for true happiness: without solidity, no happiness is possible; without freedom no happiness is possible. Every step can generate stability and solidity. Every step can generate the energy of freedom. If you are walking correctly, then the energy freedom and solidity can be generated in every step and happiness is there, in every step.

Another person looking at you walking is able to see whether your steps have the element of solidity and freedom. The Buddha need not tell you. You don’t need her or him to tell you .You yourself know very well whether the step you take has, or has not, the element of solidity. You are walking but you have already arrived, with every step, and walking like that is your daily practice. Arrival is achieved in every step. It would be very nice to send Thay a postcard to say: “Thay, I have arrived.” It is the thing that will make him happy. “I have arrived; I don’t run any more.”

The habit of running has become very strong. It is a collective habit, a collective energy. Mentally you find it normal to run but it is not normal because if you continue to run like that, happiness will not be possible, peace will not be peace. This contributes to the collective suffering and the individual suffering. So it is very important to learn how to stop.

The Buddha and his monks did not have a lot to consume. They did not have a bank account. They did not own big buildings and houses. Each monk was supposed to have only three robes, one begging bowl and one water filter. They travelled around with only these things. The monks and nuns of our time try their best to follow this example.

If you want to become a monk or a nun you should not have a personal bank account. No one at Deer Park has a bank account. No one has a personal car. Even the robes we wear do not belong to us: they belong to the Sangha. If you need a robe, the Sangha will provide you with one but then it still remains a robe of the Sangha. Even your body is not your personal property, it does not belong to you. You have to take care of your body because it is part of the Sangha body. Other monks and nuns have to help take care of your body and you have to allow them to take care of you. They can intervene in the way you eat and drink because your body belongs to the whole Sangha – the Sanghakaya. You don’t own anything at all, including your body, and yet happiness is possible, freedom is possible. Happiness is easier if you don’t own many things. Usually if you don’t own anything you are fearful, you are very afraid, you don’t feel secure. But the practice of a monastic is the opposite: what guarantees your wellbeing is not possessions but the giving away of all possessions.

I remember when Sister Thuc Nghiem, Sister Susan and many other sisters like Emilie became nuns. They took everything from their pockets and they gave it to Thay: 25 cents, the key of their car. To become a nun or a monk you should give up everything: you should not have an apartment or a car or anything. You have to donate everything before you can be accepted as an ordained novice and you are asked not to donate it to the temple where you are to become a monk or a nun but to some other organisation. One day Thay gave an exercise for all the monks and nuns: “Tell me of your daily happiness. Use a sheet of paper and a pencil and write about your daily happiness.” Many of them built up more than two pages. I remember that one of the things that Sister Susan wrote down was: “My happiness is that I don’t have any money any more.” That is true. Before she became a nun she handed over a very large sum of money but she had not had peace. She did not have happiness. She gave away all these things to become a nun and she gained a lot of liberty, a lot of freedom, and that is the foundation of happiness which is why she wrote “My happiness is that I do not have any money any more.” She really felt this happiness.

Many people believe that practising as a monk is the hardest path … but that is not the case. It is easy to practise as a monk or a nun. First you have entrusted yourself entirely to the Sangha. You don’t have to worry about anything at all – food, shelter, medicine or transportation. Also, everyone around you is practising – practising walking mindfully, enjoying every step. It would be strange if you didn’t do the same. So mentally you are transported by the boat of the Sangha and even if you don’t want to go in the direction of peace and freedom, you go anyway! You have left behind your family – your father, your mother, your friends, your job – in order to become a monk or a nun and your purpose is to gain freedom because you know that true happiness is not really possible without freedom. You aspire deeply to freedom and freedom here means freedom from afflictions.

Of course political freedom is enjoyable but if you not free from your afflictions then political freedom is not worth anything to you. Say you are a refugee who cannot go anywhere you want and it is your deepest desire to have an identity card or passport. You may wait ten, twenty, thirty years and still you don’t get that passport to become free, to go anywhere you want. There are other people who have that passport, that piece of paper, but who don’t feel any happiness and some of these people even commit suicide. Political freedom is enjoyable but if you not free from your afflictions – namely craving, despair, jealousy – suffering will still be there within and around you. That is why the purpose of the practice is to get free … to get free in order for the Kingdom of God to be available to you in the here and now. Get free in order for true life to be possible for you in the here and now … for the pure land of the Buddha to be available to you in the here and now.

Sometimes the pure land of the Buddha and all its marvels seem to be very close. In fact everything in us and around us is a miracle: your eye is a miracle; your heart is a miracle; your body is a miracle; the orange you are eating is a miracle; and the cloud floating in the sky is a miracle. If they do not belong to the Kingdom of God then to what do they belong? From time to time we have the clear impression that the Kingdom is here, is available in our daily life. But since we are running all the time, we do not have the freedom to enjoy it – it is not available to us.

I would say that the Kingdom of God is available to you but you are not available to the Kingdom of God. That is why we need to learn to live, to walk, in such a way that we become a free person. That is the meaning of all the practice.

To practise is not to become a Dharma teacher: a Dharma teacher is nothing at all. It does not mean to become a Sangha leader: to be a Sangha leader does not mean anything at all. What is the use of being the head of the big temple if you continue to suffer deeply? The purpose of practice is to become free and with your freedom, happiness is possible. With your freedom and happiness, you can help so many people for you have something to share, to offer to them. You don’t share your ideas; you don’t share what you have accumulated from your Buddhist studies. Even professors of Buddhism may suffer very deeply because Buddhist ideas have not helped them at all. What you need is freedom and, whereas Buddhist studies may be helpful, our happiness is the accumulation of peace, including what we study and the authority we are given in the Sangha and in society. Many people in our society are not truly happy and many of them commit suicide. Our way should be different: it is the way of freedom.

Is it possible to be free? Looking into the person of a practitioner, whether a Dharma brother, a Dharma sister or your teacher, you can see how much freedom he has, how much freedom and happiness she has. We would like to have true Dharma brothers and sisters because sitting close to them, living close to them, we profit from their happiness and freedom because their happiness is based on their freedom and not on anything else, like change, authority, power. What we profit from in a Sangha is the opportunity to do what the other people are doing, namely sitting, walking, smiling, greeting – all of these aimed at gaining freedom, at stopping.

What is the meaning of wearing a brown jacket? It’s not to declare that I am an ordained member of the Order. That’s nothing. It’s like the value of a student identity card: you got into a famous university and you were given a student identity card but if you don’t study, what is the use of having the identity card? Having the ID is about making use of the library, sitting in the classroom and having professors and the means to study. So, when you are ordained, you receive the fourteen mindfulness trainings and get the jacket. These are identity cards which allow us to profit from the Sangha, from the teaching, from the practice.

There are Dharma centres, there are monasteries, there are teachers, there are Dharma brothers and sisters who practise and being a member of the Order of Interbeing helps us to profit from all of these in order to advance on our path of freedom. With enough freedom we can make others around us happy. We know that practising without a Sangha is difficult so we try our best to set up a Sangha around us, where we live. To be an OI member is wonderful . To be a Dharma teacher is wonderful. Wonderful, not because we have the title of OI membership, or of Dharma teacher, but because we have the chance to practice and to organise.

As an OI member you have to organise the practice. Wherever you are it is your duty to set up a group of people to practise, otherwise it does not mean anything to be an OI member. An OI member is expected to organise the practice in his or her area – for five people, six people, ten people, twenty people – and to practise very reliably, at a local level and sometimes at a national level. You have to take care of the Sangha and support the Sangha because the Sangha is what supports you in your practice. So building the Sangha means building yourself. If the Sangha is there, you practise with the Sangha so as a Sangha-builder you enjoy the benefit, the opportunity to practise.

Being a Dharma teacher is also an opportunity to practise – you cannot not practise! You need to practise in order that your teaching has content. How can you open your mouth and give the teaching if you don’t do it yourself? The teaching is an opportunity: even if you are not an excellent teacher yet, being a Dharma teacher helps very much when you speak about the Dharma, for you have to do what you are sharing, otherwise it looks odd. It’s like a monk living with other monks: when everyone is doing walking meditation it would look strange if that monk did not do the practice. So, as a Dharma teacher, you have a great opportunity to practise.

Every member of the Sangha can be create favourable conditions for you, whether that member is good at the practice or not. A person who has a strong practice may inspire you to be at least like him or her and another person who is very weak in the practice may draw you to help them. So being a Dharma teacher is a good thing.

It would be strange if you got the transmission and you got a jacket and you didn’t build the Sangha to practise with. It would be exactly like getting a student ID and never going to the library or the classes, saying: “You know I am a student of that famous university.” So Sangha building is what we do and Sangha building is our practice. Sangha building means to identify elements of the Sangha and to invite and help each element of the Sangha to join the practice. You are like a gardener: you take care of, you help the growth of, every member of the Sangha. There will be members who are very easy to be with and to deal with and there will be members who are difficult to be with and to deal with but as a Sangha builder you have to help everyone. There will be members of the Sangha whose presence you can enjoy deeply. There will be other members of the Sangha with whom you have to be very patient.

Please don’t believe that every monastic or lay person in Plum Village is equally easy for Thay! That’s not the case. There are monastics that are very easy to be with and to help and there are monastics who are so difficult. But a teacher has to spend more time and energy with those who are difficult. You may find you get angry and you want to say “no” to these difficult elements. But that is to surrender. You cannot grow into a good Dharma teacher if you want only the easy things. In a Sangha there must be difficult people and that is normal. The difficult people are a good thing for you for they will test your capacity for Sangha building and practising.

One day you will be able to smile and you won’t suffer at all when that person says something unpleasant to you. Your compassion will have been born and you will be capable of embracing him or her within your compassion and your understanding. Then you will know that your practice has grown and you should feel delighted to be able to see that such a sentence, such an act, no longer makes you angry because you have developed enough compassion and understanding. So that is why we must not be tempted to eliminate the element whom we think to be difficult in the Sangha.

Sangha building needs a lot of love and compassion. If you know how to handle difficult moments, you will grow as a Sangha builder and you will grow as a Dharma teacher. Thay, speaking to you out of his own experience, can say that he has developed a lot more patience and compassion and that his happiness is very much greater because he has more patience and compassion. You should believe Thay in these respects. We suffer because our understanding and compassion are not great enough to embrace the difficult people. But with the practice, your heart will grow, your understanding and compassion will grow and you will not suffer any more. You will have a lot of space and you will give others a lot of time and space in order to transform. Thanks to the Sangha practising, thanks to your model of practice, those you found difficult will transform. That is a great success, much greater than with pleasant people. Love is not only enjoyment – we enjoy the presence of pleasant people. Love is a practice of generating more compassion and understanding. You must always remember that love is not just a matter of enjoyment. Love is a practice. And it is that aspect of love that can bring you growth and happiness – the greatest happiness.

There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way. Happiness should be found in every moment of your daily life and not at the end of the road. The end of the road is the stopping because life is now, in every second, in every moment. Peace is every step; happiness is every step. It is so clear; it’s so plain; it’s so simple.

Suppose I draw a circle representing my root Sangha where I was ordained in the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, where I had a teacher and many Dharma brothers and sisters. I was born of that place. The root Sangha is my spiritual birthplace and every time I think of it I should feel joy, pure joy and hope. Every time I think of it I feel inspired; I feel happiness. All of us should have such a place which we carry around within us, everywhere we go. That place is situated not just in space: it is internal within us. Those of us who do not carry such a place in our hearts do not have enough happiness. It is a pleasure to go back to the root Sangha and to be there. Because I have my function, my role in society, I am here. I am here but I hold my root Sangha within my heart, as a source of inspiration, a source of energy for me.

Around me I have built a local Sangha. I am aware that, although it is my local Sangha, it will be the root Sangha of many other people. Whether it is in Chicago, in Buffalo or somewhere else, my local Sangha will become the root Sangha for friends who come here to learn the practice. So the root Sangha is not out there: it is here in me. The seat of my root Sangha in me will help make this local Sangha into a root Sangha for others. I am a member of the OI. I have to make it into a home for those of my friends who constitute my Sangha here and my Sangha here reflects the image of my root Sangha there.

In my Sangha people know how to enjoy every step, every breath. They know how to take care of each other. They know that the purpose of the practice is to get freedom and nothing else. I build my Sangha out of love, out of my deepest desire. That is the path I undertake, the path of freedom, and I devote my time, my energy, into building the Sangha whereby the root becomes a reality. If brotherhood is not there happiness cannot be possible. The mark of an authentic Sangha is the brotherhood. Those who come to the Sangha do so not to become proficient in the Sangha but because they want to have brothers and sisters in the practice of freedom. If the practice is correct, then the brotherhood should be built and should be strong. It is that brotherhood which sustains us, to help us stand firm in our practice.

We know that a little further away there is another local Sangha and there is another OI member who is doing just what we are doing here. So, weekly, we practise with our local Sangha. We organise local events – days of mindfulness, short retreats, Dharma discussion, tea meditation, walking meditation – all at a local level. From time to time we invite other Sanghas to join us to make it into a regional activity.

So we have the local and then the regional level. And of course we combine our talents and experience with other OI members, with other Sangha-builders, to make the regional events. Everyone can contribute and everyone can learn a lot from activities on the regional level.

Then from time to time we organise, together with our root Sangha, national activities on a national level. You might use places like Deer Park, the Green Mountain Dharma Centre or Plum Village for your national activity. Finally there will be activities on an international level. Then we might meet with practitioners from Sidney, from Denmark, from Germany, from England and we can learn a lot from each others’ practice and experiences.

So there are four levels of practice: local, regional, national and international. Happiness should be possible at a local level, in our daily practice. We recognise and we take into account the difficulties, the suffering that is going on in and around us. Our practice is just to deal with what is … because the practice is not to get away from our real problems, our real difficulties, our real suffering. The practice, according to the path shown by the Buddha, is to recognise suffering as it is; to call it by its true name; and to learn the Dharma in such a way that the Dharma should be able to ease the deep causes of suffering, always. The division in families, the violence in schools and in society – all these have to be confronted with our mindfulness in order for us to see deeply the nature of suffering, how suffering has arisen, the making of suffering.

Illbeing, that is the first noble truth. The second noble truth is the making of illbeing. We should develop a deep and very clear understanding of the making of illbeing. We have to consider every cause that has led to the suffering – things like alcoholism and drugs, AIDS, violence, the breaking up of families. We have to look deeply into suffering to see exactly what are the causes. We have to call these by their true names. Understanding the nature of suffering is the practice – it is the second noble truth. When understanding of the second noble truth is deep, then naturally the path will emerge: the fourth noble truth – the path leading to the cessation of illbeing. This is the same as the birth of wellbeing. So with understanding of the nature of illbeing, the path leading to the cessation of illbeing becomes apparent. The third truth is just the cessation of illbeing.

It has been repeated and repeated that once the second noble truth is understood then the fourth noble truth will reveal itself. That is the true Dharma. The true Dharma should be embodied by the Sangha leader, by the OI member. You have to organise your daily life in such a way that that way of life can express the fourth noble truth – the path, the living Dharma.

It will bring great happiness if someone in the Sangha can embody the living Dharma. Your Sangha may be five people, ten people, twenty people, fifty people. If one of you can embody clearly the path, the living Dharma, that is wonderful. Then everyone can look to him, can look to her, in order to practise. Very soon the Sangha will carry the Dharma within itself; the Sangha will embody the Dharma. Once this happens, the Sangha will have become that most convincing element, the true Sangha, the living Sangha – the Buddha and the Dharma being contained within it. A true Sangha always carries within herself the true Buddha and the true Dharma.

So, if you are a Sangha-builder, be sure that in the Sangha there are those that can embody the living Dharma. They live in such a way as to make the Dharma apparent – the Dharma not only in cassette tapes, books and Dharma talks but the Dharma in the way they live their daily life.

So when considering training, OI members should remember that training does not mean taking in a lot of Buddhist studies, although Buddhist studies can be very helpful. We are looking for something more than Buddhist studies. At the Green Mountain Dharma Center, Sister Annabel offers teaching and training for OI members and for those who practice in mindfulness centers. She doesn’t just offer Dharma talks. People go there and practise walking and sitting and other practices so they see that the living Dharma is more than a set of theories.

We can organise training on a local or regional level so that OI members can learn, can be trained. Members-to-be can be offered a chance to learn also because after practising for one year a person might like to apply for ordination to become a member of the Core Community. If during that period of one year he or she has had no chance to train, then ordination would not be possible because it is based of the training and not on the desire to become a member of the Core Community alone. The desire is good but it is not enough. There should be training. So if you are a member of the Core Community, it is your path to train people in your local Sangha so that he or she knows what is the true Dharma, the practice and how to apply the Dharma in their family life and in social life. So the Dharma should be a very concrete way of life – the art of mindful living.

Many of you have met to talk about how to organise a regional event. This might be a gathering of seven or ten days for regional-level OI members and aspirants for ordination to come and receive training. You might ask one, two or three sisters from the root Sangha to come and help you. Or you might do it yourselves because among you there are OI members who are Dharma teachers, who are capable of training.

It is always possible to invite a few members of the root Sangha to come and help you and, of course, on a national level the root Sangha has to be involved in some way. There should be documents and materials to ensure that the training is done in very concrete terms so that during the training transformation can really become possible. In principle, OI members should be able to benefit in this way: to transform and heal during the time of training.

In any five-day, six-day retreat we see a lot of people transform – like the one we just offered at the University of Massachusetts when 850 people came for a retreat of six days. The quality of the retreat was very high and people enjoyed it so much. Reports on transformation came every day – many, many cases. Reconciliation was made among members of the family; reconciliation took place even with people who were not there, by a telephone call. If you had been at the retreat you would have experienced how the presence of those of us who have a solid practice is very helpful to other retreatants. There were at least 70 monastics at this retreat, which is quite a large number. Many OI members attended as well as other experienced practitioners. Then again there were so many people new to the practice who had just read books and came to a retreat for the first time with no experience of practice, of vipassana or anything at all. They simply took part and enjoyed it very naturally – like a stream joining a big river. They are very happy and from many streams of society and there were plenty of young people – about 28 young people took the three refuges. If you talk to people such as the sisters and brothers who attended the retreat you will hear many stories of transformation, and these make us very happy.

I remember one day I invited all the children to come to sit on my deck – something like one hundred of them – and I invited all the schoolteachers to come as well – 100 of them. I asked them to talk to each other about their expectations and experiences. It was so wonderful.

Many people cried during the retreat because they heard about their own suffering and they learned the practical way out of suffering. And they got a lot of energy and they got many good seeds in themselves watered. Many of them regretted that the retreat did not last longer.

So, on the regional level we get a training not only for helping other people but to help us also. At the end of a retreat we should come out as a stronger practitioner, a stronger Sangha-builder, a stronger and more skilful Dharma teacher. This should be organised regularly.

So please do use your intelligence, your power of organisation, in order to arrange this because Sangha building is the most noble task. The most precious thing we can offer to our society is Sangha. So everyone has to learn to be a Sangha-builder. There are many monks, nuns and lay people who are excellent Dharma teachers – who can teach Buddhism very well – in Vietnam and in other countries, but not many have the skill of Sangha building.

My fixation, my desire is that every OI Member should learn the art of Sangha building because Sangha building should bring you a lot of happiness. With Sangha building you acquire a lot of merit because what we need desperately in our society is Sangha where people can come and feel embraced and feel understood and learn to see the path of emancipation. A true Sangha is what we need because a true Sangha always carries within itself the Buddha and the living Dharma. It is the living Dharma that makes the Sangha into a true Sangha, a living refuge for us and for our society. So if you have time left for discussion, please give your attention to the questions of training and Sangha building.