Hành Trình Vô Ngã by
Vô Ngã Vô Ưu
Transcript of Thich Nhat Hanh English Dharma Talks
111 To Make Reconciliation Possible
By Thich Nhat Hanh
European Institute of Applied Buddhism, June 13, 2013
Publish in the Mindfulness Bell #64 Autumn 2013
Good morning, dear
Sangha. Today is the 13th of June in the year 2013, and we are on the third day
of our retreat, “Are You Sure?”
Are you sure that the
best moment of your life hasn’t arrived? If not, when? I think one of the most
wonderful moments of our life was spent in the womb of our mother. At that
time, we didn’t have to worry about anything. We didn’t have to struggle to
survive. And the place was so comfortable. It was very soft and the weather was
perfect. Our mother breathed for us, ate for us, and drank for us. There was no
worry, no fear, no anger. Without fear, anger, and worries, the moment should
be a wonderful moment. The Chinese people call that place where we spend nine
months or so “the palace of the child.”
But when we were
born, things were not the same. They cut the cord that linked us to our mother.
You had to learn how to breathe in for the first time. You hadn’t learned how
to breathe in yet. There was some liquid in your lungs. Unless you could spit
it out, you wouldn’t be able to breathe in for the first time. It was a very
dangerous moment for us. If we couldn’t breathe in, we might die. Fortunately
most of us made it and survived. That was our first experience of fear — the
fear of dying.
We had been born but
we were completely helpless. We had arms and legs but we couldn’t use them.
There had to be someone to take care of us and feed us, otherwise we couldn’t
survive. So that fear was not only the fear of dying but also the fear that you
could not survive by yourself. At the same time that original fear was born,
original desire was born, the desire to have someone to take care of you. There
was the awareness that all alone you could not survive. You needed someone else
to take care of you. That person might have been your mother or your nurse, but
there had to be someone, otherwise you could not survive.
So our original fear
was linked to our original desire. If today we’re still looking for someone,
thinking that without that other person we cannot survive, that is the
continuation of the original desire. If we believe that without a partner we
cannot survive, that belief is a continuation of the original belief.
Peace Is Possible
Many emotions, like
fear, anger, desire, and worry, have been transmitted to us by our father, our
mother, and our ancestors. If we’re having some difficulties in our
relationship with another person, maybe our fear, anger, and desire have to do
with those kinds of difficulties. We want to reconcile with him or with her. We
want to restore communication and bring about reconciliation. But the feelings
of anger, fear, and desire in us may be an obstacle to reconciliation.
The last time Barack
Obama visited the Middle East, he said, “Peace between Palestine and Israel is
possible.” We want to agree with him. But we want to ask, “How?”
When I was in South
Korea last month, I gave a talk about peace between South Korea and North
Korea. I saw that it’s not enough to limit the development of nuclear weapons
programs. We have to address the larger, underlying issue, which is the amount
of fear we have in us. If there’s no fear, anger, or suspicion, then people
aren’t going to use nuclear or any other weapons. It’s not the absence of
nuclear weapons alone that guarantees two countries can reconcile and have
peace. It’s by removing the fear, anger, and suspicion that we can make true
peace possible. North Korea seems to be aggressive because it is testing
nuclear weapons and threatening the South and other countries. But if we look
very deeply, we see that all of that has its roots in fear. When you try to
make nuclear weapons, it’s not truly because you want to destroy the other
side, it’s because you’re fearful that they’ll attack you first.
If you want to help
North and South Korea, if you want to help Palestinians and Israelis, you
should do something to help remove the fear, anger, and suspicion on both
sides. Israelis and Palestinians both have the desire to survive as a nation.
Both are fearful that the other side will destroy them. Both are suspicious,
because in the past what they’ve received from the other side is violence,
killing, and bombing. So to make true peace possible, you have to try to remove
the fear, anger, and suspicion from both sides. Does Obama, as a politician,
have a way to help remove the huge amount of fear, anger, and suspicion that
exists on both sides?
North Korea is deeply
suspicious. The last time South Korean President Park visited Obama, North
Korea thought it was an attempt to do something that could harm the North, even
though President Obama and President Park may not have had that intention at
all. Our fear, anger, and suspicion distort everything and prevent us from
seeing the truth. If the South would like to help the North, it should be able
to do something to help remove that huge amount of suspicion, fear, and anger
in the North.
All of us have heard
about the event in Newtown. A young man went to a school and killed a lot of
children and teachers. After the event, Obama tried to make the kind of law
that limits the right to buy guns. That can be helpful, but will not by itself
resolve the underlying issue, which is the violence and anger in the people.
Can Congress make some kind of law that can help remove the fear, anger, and
violence in the younger generation?
I think people buy
guns not because they genuinely like guns per se, but because they’re afraid
and they want to protect themselves. So the main, driving issue is not nuclear
weapons or guns, it’s fear. When the United States and South Korea put forth a
condition for peace negotiations that says, “We will negotiate only on the condition
that you stop testing nuclear weapons,” something is not right with that kind
of policy. If Iran or North Korea are trying to make nuclear weapons, it’s not
because they really like doing it, but because they have a lot of fear. To
begin negotiations may help a little bit to reduce that fear. But I don’t think
it’s helpful to put forth that condition.
In a relationship, if
reconciliation seems to be difficult, it’s not because the two people aren’t
willing to reconcile; it’s because the amount of anger, fear, and suspicion in
each person is already too big. You can’t say that the other person doesn’t
want to reconcile. She wants to reconcile, but it’s because she still has a lot
of anger, fear, and suspicion that you haven’t been able to reconcile with her.
According to our experience of practice, if you want to help someone reduce
their fear, anger, and suspicion, you first have to practice in order to reduce
the amount of fear, anger, and suspicion in yourself.
In Busan, South
Korea, I gave a talk called “Peace Is Possible” to a crowd of eleven thousand
people. The monks who helped organize the public talk asked me to announce a
prayer ceremony that would happen in the month of September. They planned to
have something like fifty thousand people attending this ceremony of prayer for
the sake of reconciliation between the North and the South. I told the crowd
that to pray is not enough. You have to practice, you have to organize a
session of practice that might last a month or so in order to help remove the
amount of fear, anger, and suspicion on both sides. That huge energy of fear,
anger, and suspicion exists not only in the North, but also in the South. You
should convene the kind of retreat to which wise people are invited to come and
practice compassionate listening. You should allow people to come and express
their suffering, their fear, their anger, their suspicion. We should look
deeply into the block of suffering that we have in the South. Because of that
amount of anger, fear, and suspicion, we have said things and done things that
have given the North the impression that we want to be aggressive and take over
the North.
The North has a huge
fear of being destroyed, and they have the desire to survive. If the South can
practice listening to her own suffering, fear, anger, and suspicion, then the
South can transform that and heal, and will be in a position to help the North
to do the same. Otherwise, everything you try to do to help the North will be
misunderstood.
Suppose you want to
send the North a large shipment of grain and other foods, saying that the North
needs a lot of food for the poor people to survive. You are motivated by the
good intention to help the population of the North not to die of hunger. But
the North may see it as an attempt to discredit them, as saying that the North
isn’t capable of feeding its own population. Anything you do or say can be
distorted and create more anger, fear, and suspicion. Our political leaders
haven’t been trained in the art of helping to remove fear, anger, and
suspicion. That is why we have to call for help from those of us who are
spiritual, who are compassionate, who know how to listen, and who know how to
transform fear, anger, and suspicion in ourselves. When fear and anger become a
collective energy, it’s so dangerous, and a war can break out at any time.
Deep Listening and
Loving Speech
I was in the United
States on September 11, 2001. My book, Anger, had just been published the week
before. After the events of September 11th, I could feel the huge collective
fear and anger in North America. I saw that the situation was extremely
dangerous. If the American people were carried away by that collective energy
of anger and fear, then there would be a war very soon. Four days after
September 11th, I gave a public talk in Berkeley that was attended by four
thousand people. In that talk I said that the first thing I would advise the
United States to do is to practice the eighth exercise of mindful breathing:
recognizing the fear and the anger and trying to calm down.
Not many days later,
I gave the same kind of talk at The Riverside Church in New York. I said that
the first thing the people of the United States have to do is try to calm down
and not allow the collective energy of anger and fear to carry them away. Then
they should sit down as a nation and ask themselves, “Why have these people
done such a thing to America?” There must be something wrong in your foreign
policy, something wrong in the way you interact with the Middle East. The
United States should ask the question, “What have we done to make them so
angry?” They must be very angry, very afraid, and full of despair to have done
such a thing. The amount of fear, anger, and violence in them is huge.
Otherwise they wouldn’t have done such a thing. But in the United States the
suffering, anger, and fear was also huge. There was a lot of violence and
feelings of injustice, anger, and fear within the American nation itself.
America has not had a
chance to sit down as a nation to listen to its own suffering, fear, anger,
despair, violence, and so on. In the public talk I gave in Berkeley, I proposed
that the United States organize a session of deep listening to the American
people’s suffering. They should invite people representing those who feel that they’re
victims of discrimination, violence, anger, fear, social injustice, and so on,
and give them a chance to speak out. They should invite the best American
people, those who know how to listen with compassion, who have no prejudices,
and who have the capacity to understand and to listen. They could organize
several such sessions of compassionate listening. If need be, the session could
be televised so the whole population could participate. If we don’t understand
our own suffering, fear, anger, and despair, then we can’t help the other side
to do the same. This was also exactly what I recommended to the people in South
Korea last month. The South has to listen to itself and transform before it can
listen to the North and help the North to remove fear, anger, and suspicion.
Then when the United
States has listened and understood its own suffering, Americans can turn to the
Middle East and use the kind of language called gentle, loving speech. They can
say, “Dear people over there, we know that you are very angry with us. If you
weren’t so angry you wouldn’t have done such a thing to us. We know that you
too have suffered a lot, otherwise you wouldn’t be so angry, you wouldn’t have
done such a thing to us. We suffer very much. We don’t know why you have done this
to us. Have we said or done anything that gives you the impression that the
United States has been trying to destroy you as a religion, as a civilization,
as a way of life? We may have said or done something that has given you that
impression. But in fact, we don’t have the intention of destroying you as a
religion, as a civilization, as a way of life. Dear people over there, please
help us and tell us what wrong we have done to make you suffer that much.”
That is the kind of
language that in Buddhism we call loving speech, gentle speech. It’s not an
expression of anger, fear, or suspicion; it’s an effort to try to understand.
If you can speak with that language, and if you’re sincere, then they will tell
you what wrong you have done to them. Then you have a chance to find out the
roots of their wrong perceptions, and you will have a chance to offer them real
information so they can make use of it to correct their perceptions. If they
can reduce their suspicion and remove their wrong perceptions, then they can
also remove their fear and their anger. The practice offered by the Buddha, of
deep listening and gentle speech, aims at restoring communication and bringing
about reconciliation and peace. It can be applied not only to couples and
individuals, but also to nations and ethnic groups.
“Tell Me What Is in
Your Heart”
Suppose a father is
having a lot of difficulties with his son. Son has made father suffer a lot,
and at the same time father has made son suffer a lot. The son doesn’t dare to
go close to his father because he’s afraid he’ll have to suffer again. And the
father doesn’t understand that kind of fear. He thinks that his son is trying
to defy him or boycott him. So suspicion and wrong perceptions continue to
build up every day.
If the son can see
the suffering in his father — the existence of anger, fear, and suspicion — he
may like to help his father. He knows that his father has suffered a lot
because he doesn’t know how to handle the amount of anger, fear, and suspicion
he has in himself. If the son has had a chance to listen to the Dharma and to
practice and understand his own fear, anger, and suspicion, then he’s in a
position to help his father. When he’s able to see the amount of suffering in
his father, his way of looking at his father will not be the same. He no longer
has anger when he sees his father; in fact, because he can see the suffering in
his father, he’s motivated by a desire to say something or do something to help
his father suffer less.
Since he has
compassion in his heart, he can say something like, “Daddy, I know you have
suffered so much in the last many years. I haven’t been able to help you to
suffer less. In fact, I have reacted with anger and stubbornness and made you
suffer more. Father, it’s not my intention to make you suffer. It’s just
because I haven’t been able to see or understand the suffering in you. Please
tell me what is in your heart, your difficulties, your suffering, your fear,
your anger, so that I’ll be able to understand. I believe that if I can understand
your suffering, I’ll be more skillful, I won’t say or do things to make you
suffer like I have in the past. Father, I need you to help me because if you
won’t help me, no one can help me.” That is the way we can begin to try to
restore communication. The South can begin talking to the North like that;
Israelis can begin to talk to Palestinians like that. The one who initiates
should be the one who has tried to understand his or her own suffering.
In our retreats of
mindfulness, the teaching of deep compassionate listening and loving speech is
always offered to participants. In the first three days, practitioners are
encouraged to go back to recognize and embrace the pain and suffering within
themselves. By doing so, they’re able to calm down their feelings and emotions
and come to understand the roots of their strong emotions like fear, anger,
loneliness, and so on. When you can recognize and understood the suffering in
you, it’s much easier for you to recognize and understand the suffering in the
other person. That person may be your husband, your wife, your father, your
mother, your daughter, or your son. On the fifth day of the retreat, during the
Dharma talk, we always advise practitioners to put into practice the teaching
of compassionate listening and loving speech to restore communication with the
other person and reconcile with him or her. The miracle of reconciliation
always takes place in our retreats.
On the morning of the
fifth day, we say, “Ladies and gentlemen, you have until midnight tonight in
order to do this.” If the other person isn’t in the retreat, then you’re
authorized to use your portable telephone. The miracle happens everywhere — Thailand,
Japan, Macao, Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles, and so on.
I remember very well
a retreat that took place about ten years ago in Oldenburg in the north of
Germany. On the morning of the sixth day, four gentlemen came to me and
reported that the night before they had used their telephones and were able to
reconcile with their fathers. One gentleman told me, “Dear Thay, I didn’t
believe I could talk to my father with that kind of language. I was so angry
with him that I had decided never to see him again in my life. Yet last night
when I called him up, I was very surprised to find that I could talk to my
father that way.” He had said something like, “Father, I know you have suffered
so much during the last five or six years. I wasn’t able to help you to suffer
less. In fact, I have reacted in a way that made you suffer much more. Father,
it was never my intention to make you suffer. It was because I didn’t see and
understand your suffering. Father, you should help me and tell me about your
suffering. Help me to understand your suffering so that I won’t be foolish and
react the way I have in the past. I’m so sorry.”
Then he said to me,
“Dear Thay, when my father heard me say that, he began to cry. Then I had a
chance to listen to him in the way you recommended. We have already reconciled,
and the first thing I’m going to do after the retreat is to go and visit him.”
The process of the
practice is simple. You have to understand your own suffering first. After
that, you’ll be able to understand the suffering of the other person much more
easily. Recognizing the suffering in him or in her, you are no longer angry at
that person. And then you can very well use the kind of language that can help
restore communication and make reconciliation possible.
Mindfulness of
Compassion
We learned a lot in
Plum Village when we sponsored groups of Palestinians and Israelis to come and
practice with us. The day they arrived in Plum Village, they couldn’t look at
each other. Both groups had a lot of suspicion, anger, and fear, because both
groups had suffered so much. So for the first five days, the recommended
practice was the practice of mindful breathing and mindful walking to get in
touch with their suffering and to try to calm their feelings down. Many of us
who aren’t from the Middle East walked with them, sat with them, breathed with
them, ate with them, and supported them in their practice of getting in touch
with the wonders of life, to heal, to nourish, and to embrace the painful
feelings and emotions inside.
When you’re a
beginner in the practice, the energy of mindfulness that you generate isn’t
powerful enough to embrace the huge amount of fear, anger, and suspicion inside
you. You need the collective energy of mindfulness generated by the Sangha to
be strong enough to recognize and hold the energy of fear, anger, and
suspicion.
About ten days into
the retreat we initiated them into the practice of listening with compassion
and using loving speech. One group speaks and one group just listens. The group
that practices compassionate listening is instructed to listen with only one
purpose in mind — to help the other group to suffer less. That is the practice
of compassionate listening. You give them a chance to speak out and suffer
less. You play the role of the Bodhisattva of Deep Listening. Even if the other
person says something wrong or provocative, you still continue to listen with
compassion.
You’re able to do
that because you’re practicing mindfulness of compassion. To practice
mindfulness of compassion means that during the whole time of listening, you
practice mindful breathing and remind yourself of only one thing: “I am
listening to him with just one purpose, to help to give him a chance to empty
his heart and suffer less. I may be the first person who listened to him like
this. If I interrupt him and correct him, I’ll transform the session into a
debate and I’ll fail in my practice. Even if there’s a lot of wrong information
in what he says, I’m not going to interrupt and correct him. In three or four
days I may offer him some real information to help him to correct his
perception, but not now.”
If you can maintain
that alive in your heart during the time of listening, then you are protected
by the energy of compassion, and what the other person says won’t be able to
touch off the energy of irritation and anger in you anymore. In that way you
can listen for one hour or more. And your practice of listening will have a
quality that can help the other person suffer less.
In fact, when one
group listens to the other group like that, we recognize for the first time
that the children and adults on the other side have suffered exactly the same
kind of suffering that we have on this side. Before, we had thought that the
other side didn’t suffer, that they just make our side suffer. But by listening
like that, we now know that on the other side they are human beings just like us
and they have suffered exactly the same way as we have. When you’ve seen that,
you won’t look at them with suspicion, anger, and fear anymore, and you easily
can use the kind of language we call loving speech.
We advise the group
that has a chance to speak out, to use the kind of language that can help the
other side to get all the information they need. The other group has a lot of
suspicion and this suspicion has given rise to a lot of anger and fear. So the
purpose of your speaking is to give them as much information as possible to
help them to correct their perceptions of you. You should refrain from
expressing your bitterness and anger; you should refrain from blaming and
accusing.
During these
sessions, many dozens of us who were not Palestinian or Israeli would sit there
and lend our support and offer them our energy of mindfulness. We could see the
transformation and healing going on in these sessions. Both groups now were
able to look at each other with understanding and compassion, and they could
sit down and share a meal together and hold hands while doing walking
meditation together. It’s very beautiful. On the last day of the retreat they
would always come up as one group and report to the whole Sangha about the
progress they had made during the last many weeks. And they always promised
that when they returned to the Middle East, they would set up a Sangha and
organize the same kind of practice so that other people could come and practice
and suffer less.
I think if political
leaders knew the practice, they would be able to help both sides of the
conflict to remove the suspicion, wrong perception, fear, and anger so that
peace could truly be possible. The situation in the Middle East has been
dragging on for so many years. And the same can be said about the situation of
North and South Korea. But we know from our own experience in our retreats that
five days are enough for you to transform yourself and transform the other
person in order to bring about reconciliation.
Dear friends, this
practice is found in the Fourth Mindfulness Training. The practice of the
Fourth Mindfulness Training is recommended by the Buddha for us to be able to
restore communication and reconcile with the other person. Let us go a little
bit deeper into the study and the practice of this teaching. This practice not
only is able to help reconcile two people in a relationship but also can
reconcile ethnic groups and nations.
Edited by Barbara Casey, Sister Pine, and Sister Annabel (True
Virtue)
0 Comments