Hành Trình Vô Ngã by
Vô Ngã Vô Ưu
Transcript of Thich Nhat Hanh English Dharma Talks
19 The Blooming of the Lotus: the Nature of No-birth and
No-death
Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh
on May 3, 1998 in Plum Village, France.
Today is the 3rd of
May, 1998, and we are in the Upper Hamlet in our spring retreat. Today is the
first of three dharma talks to be given in English.
Last year during the
summer there were so many children who came from many countries, and I offered
each of them one lotus seed sent to me from Vietnam, and each little boy or
little girl came up here and received one lotus seed. I gave them instructions
on how to plant the lotus seed, and this year they are going to come back and
report to me how they have done. You know that in Plum Village we have lotus
ponds in the Upper Hamlet, in the Lower Hamlet and also in the New Hamlet, and
each summer we see so many lotus flowers blooming. That is a joy. It has been a
joy for many of us. And many people who come to Plum Village see the lotus
flower for the first time in their lives. A reporter from Paris said in a
television program that lotus flowers grow like mushrooms in Dordogne. That is
not true. The lotus flowers here in Plum Village come from Vietnam in the form
of little seeds, and we have tried to make the lotus flowers bloom in Plum
Village. We have succeeded, and this year we have meditated deeply about the
nature of no-birth and no-death of the lotus flowers. We will continue to do so
throughout the year.
There is a professor
of biology in the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1982 she went to
China, to visit the Biology Institute of Beijing, and she got five lotus seeds
that were described as very, very old. These lotus seeds had been discovered as
a result of excavation in North China, where they found many hundreds of lotus
seeds. So she was able to receive five of them, and she brought them back to
North America. In November 1995, she tried to plant three seeds. One did not
grow, and two of them sprouted. The first one, having sprouted, she took it out
and she burned it at a high temperature, in order to find out how old the lotus
seed was, by a procedure called carbon dating. She found out that the lotus
seed was 1,288 years old. It had been kept in the soil for a long time, and it
could preserve life for that long period of time. It was amazing.
In order for a lotus
seed to sprout you have to cut the skin, or rub the lotus seed against a rock
until the skin of the seed becomes very thin in just one place, so that the
water can penetrate, and only with the penetration of the water can the lotus seed
sprout. Otherwise the lotus seed will stay there for a long time without
sprouting. Or you might use a knife and cut a little bit of the skin so that
you allow the water to penetrate into the lotus seed.
There are many seeds
that our ancestors have transmitted to us, but if we don’t know how to handle
these seeds, they will not be able to sprout. We have the seed of
enlightenment, we have the seed of compassion, of love, of joy, transmitted by
our ancestors, our blood ancestors and also our spiritual ancestors. They are
all in us, because our body and our consciousness are the soil containing these
seeds. Our practice is to look deeply into our body, into our consciousness, in
order to recognize all the seeds that have been transmitted by our ancestors. There
are negative seeds, the seeds of suffering, of despair, of discrimination, of
anger, but there are seeds of love, of forgiveness, of joy, of enlightenment.
That is why in our daily life we should try our best to get in touch with these
seeds and try to handle them with care, with love, and with gratitude.
There are some of us
who believe that they are not capable of loving, they are afraid of loving, and
they believe that the seed of love is not in them. They have tried several
times, and they did not succeed in loving. Every time they tried to love they
suffered, so they are afraid even of love. Meanwhile, the seed of love in them
is very important, it is very strong, and they don’t know how to manage the
seed of love in them in order for the seed to sprout. Just like a lotus seed,
you must know how to handle it in order for the seed to sprout.
So when someone tells
you that she is not capable of loving, that there is no love in her, there is
no joy in her, there is no happiness in her, you have to look at her with your
compassionate eyes and you say to her, "That is not true my dear, you have
the seed of love within yourself, you have the seed of peace, of enlightenment,
of forgiveness, within yourself. You have to recognize them, you have to learn
how to take good care of them and to help them to sprout. The Buddha is someone
that can help you to recognize these seeds and how to make them sprout. Your
teacher is also someone who can help you to do this, and the Sangha, with your
brothers and sisters, is also capable of helping you to look into yourself and
recognize these seeds in you, and to practice in such a way that the seeds will
have an opportunity to sprout and become flowers.
Many of us recognize
the Buddha, Shakyamuni, to be one of our spiritual ancestors, and we call
ourselves Buddhists because we recognize the Buddha as a teacher, an ancestor,
a big brother on the path. And we know that he has transmitted to us so many
wholesome seeds. The Buddha has transmitted so many positive seeds that humanity
has not been able to use them all. There are seeds that need very special
circumstances to sprout. Unless there is a fire in the forest, the skin of
these seeds cannot be burned, and the seeds cannot sprout. Everywhere, like in
North America, there is a kind of tree that gives out seeds that cannot be
sprouted unless there is a fire. And after the fire there is always rain. The
fire will burn the skin of the seed, and when the rain falls the seed has an
opportunity to sprout.
I have always taught
that the war in Vietnam was a big fire, and during that big fire many wonderful
seeds transmitted by the Buddha were able to sprout. After the fire there is
always rain, and one of the seeds that sprouted during the war in Vietnam is
the seed of engaged Buddhism, Buddhism engaged in our daily lives. We bring
Buddhism into the situation of utmost suffering in our lives, and we find that
it works. Buddhism can relieve the suffering. Buddhism need not be only in the
monastery--Buddhism can be brought into the situation of utmost suffering. The
expression "engaged Buddhism" was born in Vietnam during the war, and
I was one, among others, who promoted the teaching of Engaged Buddhism. Where
there is suffering, Buddhism must be there, in order to serve. And the seed of
the practice will help us not to surrender to despair, to continue so that
peace and reconciliation can become a reality.
I remember one day
that many young people came to me with a lot of despair. It was in Vietnam
about 1962 or 1963, and they sat around me and they looked at me and they said,
"Thay, do you think that there is a chance for peace at all? Because we
have been working very hard for peace, but there is no sign of peace in
sight." By that time it was very difficult for me to give an answer,
because I also felt very much the same way: we had struggled, we had worked
very hard to end the war, we had done everything we could, yet the situation
did not seem to move at all. And the seed of despair was there, very strong in
all of us. So when I saw young people looking at me and asking the question, I
could not answer right away. I knew that I had to give an answer from my heart,
but in my heart there was not a lot of hope. The element of despair was much
bigger.
In Tra Loc, a village
where our Buddhist social workers used to work hard, the airplanes came and
bombed, and destroyed the village that we had built. Tra Loc is in Quang Tri
Province, not very far from my native village. It was very close to the
Demilitarized Zone. In the vicinity of Saigon we had the School of Youth for
Social Service. We trained young social workers and sent them to the
countryside in order to rebuild the villages that had been destroyed by the
bombing in the war. And among these young social workers were many young monks
and nuns. We practiced engaged Buddhism, we did not practice only in the
meditation hall, but we practiced right in the war zone. And a number of us
died during service. So Tra Loc was one of the villages where we went to work:
we built the village of Tra Loc and after that it was bombed to zero. The
social workers sent news to Saigon and asked me whether they should rebuild the
village or not, and I said, "Rebuild it." So our social workers
rebuilt the village with the villagers, and not long after that the village was
bombed again, for the second time.
You know how we felt
when we heard news like that from our headquarters situated in the vicinity of
Saigon. We could not afford to allow the seed of despair to overcome, that is
why we decided to rebuild it again. And we had to invest a lot of workers,
time, energy, and even money in order to rebuild the village. And after that it
was bombed for the third time, and yet with a lot of suffering in our hearts we
decided to rebuild it for the third time. There was speculation that we were
not very intelligent—why rebuild something that will be destroyed? We heard
this kind of criticism, but we could not afford to have the seed of despair
overwhelm people, that is why we gave the order to rebuild again. It was about
that time that the young people came to me, and they sat around me and they
looked at me, and they said, "Thay, do you think we have any hope at all?
Will the war ever end?" And I looked at them, and I knew I could not tell
a lie. If I allowed my despair to burst out, then all these young people would
be drowned in the ocean of despair, so I sat very still and I practiced mindful
breathing, and I contemplated impermanence, non-self. Everything is
impermanent, including the war: the war has to end someday. So when I saw that
I said, "My dear friends, the war is going to end, because everything is
impermanent. The war is impermanent, therefore the war has to end some day. Let
us try to keep the seed of hope alive. We have to hold to each other in order to
continue." And it came from my heart, from my meditation.
I had a disciple
whose name was Nhat Tri. He was a monk, a young monk, and he was an excellent
social worker in the School of Youth for Social Service. One day he was walking
in the city of Saigon, and an American soldier standing on a military truck
spat on his head. At that time the press and other media tried to describe the
Buddhists as supporting the Communists, and disguised as Buddhists in order to
defeat the American forces in Vietnam. That is why the American military men
saw Communists everywhere, and they saw a Buddhist monk and they thought that
this monk must be a disguised Communist, so out of anger the soldier spat on
the head of Brother Nhat Tri. And Brother Nhat Tri was deeply hurt. He came
home and he cried a lot, and he could not contain his anger. He said that he
was going to join the National Liberation Front to fight the Americans. And I
had to hold him for a long time, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, and I said,
"My son, my child, you were not born to hold a gun. You were born in order
to hold compassion, a lotus flower. It is with a lotus flower that you can best
serve humanity and your people. Violence will lead to violence. You have to
stick to our conviction that only compassion, love and understanding can
respond to hate and violence." After that he agreed to stay on with the
School of Youth for Social Service. He is the big brother of many monks and
nuns here, but he was lost in mission, and we could not find him anymore.
Finally the war
ended, and many of us were not allowed to continue our service in a formal way,
because the new government did not allow us to continue social service. They
said they don’t need us. The School of Youth for Social Service was not allowed
to continue, so we organized the kind of work which is considered to be without
form. Our social workers continue to help people, but silently, and over here
our friends try to support the work in Vietnam in several ways. They have
continued to work without having a name, without having a form, until today.
Working like that is to continue to nourish the seed of compassion, of love, of
understanding, in each of us. We continue to help villagers to build schools
and bridges. We have built quite a lot of bridges called "The Bridge of
Understanding," "The Bridge of Love." We have continued to build
schools with the assistance of the villagers, and we have invented the time of
"school –home," where the children come and live for one day, the
whole day there, and have a meal at noon. And they go home to sleep. The next
morning they come back to learn, and at meal time they have a meal, and we try
to give each of them one glass of milk a day. A glass of milk is very important
because many children are undernourished, and one glass of milk is very
helpful. I always tell my students here that they can do a lot, they don’t have
to feel helpless because there are many things they can do: to offer a child in
a poor village in a remote area a glass of soy milk or cow milk is very
important. And our social workers, who take the children in the morning, and
feed them at noontime, they put their love into the work. They cook lunch in
such a way that the lunch can provide some nutrition, so the children will not
suffer malnutrition. They always try to provide a glass of milk.
My mother came from a
village not very far from Tra Loc, the name of the village is Ha Trung. It’s a
very poor village, and once when I looked very deeply at the faces of many
children in the village, little boys and little girls, each little girl became
my mother. My mother had been a little girl like that, and if you could give
her a glass of milk every day she would be able to give birth to a little boy
like me, but if she is not given a glass of milk, then she will not be able to
give birth to a healthy child. So I asked my students, my social workers, to
take care of the little boys and the little girls in the village, because each
of them is my mother, each of them is my father. And that is not only true in
the village of Ha Trung, but it is true in every village.
If you feel helpless,
you cannot do anything for the world. You know that that feeling of
helplessness should not be there, because in fact there are many ways you can
be of service to the world: You can give me a glass of milk when I am still
very young, one or two years old, so that in the future I will be able to grow
up normally and become a good citizen of my country and of the world. And there
are ways to do it, to assist monks and nuns and lay people and social workers
in Africa, in Asia, in underdeveloped countries, in order to change the
situation in a significant way. There are always dharma doors through which you
can enter reality and improve the quality of life.
(bell)
There is a seed
transmitted by the Buddha, that we try to grow here in Plum Village: The
teaching on how to live deeply in the present moment, to establish ourselves in
the here and the now, to live deeply every moment of our daily life in order to
touch the depth of life in every moment drsta dharma sukha vihari, 'living
happily in the present moment'. There are many Buddhist centers where we
practice in order to arrive at a state of being that may only be possible in
the future, or we wish to be reborn in the Pure Land of the Buddha after so
many years of practice. But the practice in Plum Village is different. We know
that the pure land is in the here and the now. Enlightenment, understanding and
awakening, all of that should be found in the present moment, and therefore we
have to go back to the present moment in order to touch them. If you know how
to do that then you can have peace and stability and compassion right away in
this moment. Every step you make can bring you stability and freedom and joy. And
you can practice so that during the time that you have lunch, peace and
stability and joy can be possible also. The teaching of dwelling firmly in the
present moment is a kind of seed transmitted by the Buddha, and in Plum Village
we try to make it sprout for the happiness, for the joy of so many people.
The teaching of the
Buddha is based on the Four Noble Truths and in Chinese it is translated as the
Four Holy Truths. And the First Holy Truth is suffering, pain, dukkha. The
first truth is that suffering is. The question may be why suffering is
described as a holy truth. What is so holy about suffering? Can we see the
element of holiness in suffering? Why do we call suffering a holy truth, when
people suffer everywhere? It is because in the teachings of the Buddha, it is
by looking deeply into the nature of our suffering that we can find a way out.
If you throw away suffering, if you try to run away from your suffering, then
you will never have a chance to see the way out of suffering. Stay with your suffering,
hold it, and look deeply into it: that is the only way to transform the
suffering, to get out of suffering. And that is why suffering is a holy truth.
If you allow yourself to be drowned in the ocean of suffering, if you allow
suffering to overwhelm you, then suffering will not be holy anymore. Suffering
is holy when you know how to handle it. How to embrace it, how to look deeply
into it. And the practice is about looking deeply into the nature of our
suffering, not trying to run away from it. The moment when you stop running,
the moment when you have the courage to look into the nature of your suffering,
holiness is there. The moment when mindfulness becomes an energy in yourself,
the moment when you use the energy of mindfulness to look into the heart of
suffering, the element of holiness is there. Holiness is not something that
only the Pope and the Dalai Lama have, holiness is there every time we generate
the energy of mindfulness in order to look, and to touch life.
Mindfulness brings
about understanding, compassion, and forgiveness, we know that. That is why
mindfulness is holy in its nature. When you use the energy of mindfulness to
look into suffering, you make the element of holiness real. One day a young man
asked Mother Theresa, "Are you a holy person?" and Mother Theresa
said,"Yes, and so are you too." And that is true, we all have the
seed of holiness within us, and if only we know how to touch the seed of
holiness, holiness will become an energy. And to me, mindfulness is one very
important seed of holiness. The moment when you begin to walk mindfully, the
element of holiness is in you. When you walk mindfully with every step you get
more solidity, you get more peace, you get more freedom, and holiness is with
you. In the Catholic mass the priest always says, "God be with you,"
and the audience responds, "And with you too." Here is not a
statement, here is not a wish, here is a practice. The moment when you go back
to your breath and you breathe mindfully, holiness is there, because mindfulness
is the substance of holiness. God is there, the Holy Spirit is there at the
same time. And when you sit mindfully, enjoying your breathing, I am sure that
the element of holiness is there, protecting you, making life possible at that
moment. And when you walk mindfully, the element of holiness is there,
protecting you, making you more stable, and more open. And holiness is our
practice.
We have to keep the
element of holiness alive in every moment of our daily life, for our sake and
for the sake of the people around us. The Buddha was a human being, like all of
us. Because he practiced mindfulness, concentration and insight, the element of
holiness was in him. And in Buddhism we speak of a race called "the race
of holy beings".
(Thay writes Chinese characters for "holy truth" and
"race of holy beings.")
This is the word for
holy truth. It is interesting to see the Chinese mentality. "Holy" is
made of an ear, a mouth, and a king. When you become the king of your mouth and
your ear, you are holy. When you speak mindfully, when you listen mindfully,
you master the art of speaking and listening, you are holy person. This is the
ear, this is the mouth, and this is the king. You should be the king of your
mouth and your ear, and you will not cause a lot of suffering to other people.
This is "Holy Truth", and the race of saints. If you belong to a
sangha, a community that practices mindfulness, you belong to the race of the
holy people, the Buddha, the bodhisattvas, the patriarchs, the disciples and
the disciples of their disciples. They are always devoted to the practice of
mindfulness, of concentration and insight, therefore they perpetuate the race
of the saints, the holy people. And we have the duty to keep that race
continued.
We should not have
any kind of complex. Every time we are animated we are inhabited by the energy
of mindfulness, the element of holiness is in us. The energy of mindfulness,
can be described as the energy of the Holy Spirit, because when you are
animated by the Holy Spirit you are alive, you are compassionate, you have the
power to understand, to forgive. And the same thing is true with the energy of
mindfulness: when you are mindful you are attentive, you are concentrated, and
therefore you have the capacity of seeing things deeply, of understanding, of
accepting, of forgiving, of loving. Our practice is to be holy in every moment
of our daily lives. When I see you walking mindfully, or doing things
mindfully, I am inspired by your being, and I begin to be mindful myself. That
is why it’s very important that when our friends come to Plum Village they see
everyone walking mindfully, doing things mindfully, and breathing mindfully, or
cooking mindfully. By being mindful you are capable of living deeply each
moment of your daily life. You get the protection, you are able to forgive, to
understand and to accept and to be compassionate towards the people around you.
The sunshine embraces all vegetation and it helps the vegetation to grow and to
become green. The energy of mindfulness is like that also. If we allow the
energy of mindfulness to be within ourselves, every minute, every second of our
daily life will be deep, and peace and stability and freedom can be there for
us and for the people who live around us.
(bell)
Enlightenment, compassion
and understanding should not be abstract ideas -- they should become reality in
our daily lives. When you pay attention to your inbreath and outbreath, that is
already a form of enlightenment. Breathing in, I know I am breathing in,
breathing out I know I am breathing out, and I enjoy my breathing. That is
already the beginning of enlightenment. There are so many people who breathe in
and breathe out and yet they don’t know that they are breathing in and out.
When you breathe in, you know that you are breathing in and you feel that you
are alive. And to know that you are alive is a wonderful thing to practice,
because so many people live and yet they are not aware that they are alive. To
be alive, and to know that you are alive, is the greatest of all miracles. When
you sit, breathe in and become aware of the fact that you are still alive.
There will some day be a moment when you are about to die, and no matter what
you try you will not be able to stand up and sit and enjoy your breathing in
and out, and enjoy your mindful walking anymore. And no matter what your
friends try to do they will not be able to help you to stand up and make steps
like you do during walking meditation. So during the time you sit, or you walk,
become aware of the fact that you are alive. To be still alive, and breathing
in and out and making steps on this planet is a wonderful thing, and that is
already an enlightenment; that enlightenment brings a lot of joy and peace to
you.
When you are mindful,
you are fully present. When you are fully present, life is available to you.
When you drink a glass of water mindfully, you are there, one hundred percent
of yourself. And since you are there one hundred percent of yourself, the glass
of water is also there one hundred percent of itself, and the encounter between
you and the water is very deep. The fact that you drink the glass of water in
mindfulness is a holy thing in itself. There are many ways of drinking your
water, but there is only way that can make life possible, that can make
yourself and the water holy, and that is to drink it mindfully, and you know
that you can do it. Every time you lift up a glass of water and drink it, drink
it in mindfulness, that is your practice.
And when you have
your lunch, spend one hour or forty-five minutes eating in such a way that
every moment of your lunch becomes a holy moment. You are totally yourself, you
are totally present, so the lunch is present, and the community with whom you
share the meal is also a holy community. During that time all of us are
protected by the energy of mindfulness. We generate the energy of mindfulness
that will protect us, that will make life deep, and anyone who comes and
touches the Sangha in that moment, will touch holiness, and they will have a
chance to go back to themselves, also generating the energy of mindfulness. So
remember what Mother Theresa said to the young man, when he asked her,
"Are you a holy person?" and she smiled without complex and she said,
"Yes, I am, and you are too." Everyone can be a holy person when they
are mindful, when they are truly present and living deeply every moment of
their daily life
The energy of
mindfulness carries within itself the energy of concentration. This is easy to
understand. When you look at something mindfully, when you drink some water
mindfully, you are concentrated on what you see and what you drink, and
therefore mindfulness is pregnant with concentration. And if you live
concentrated in every minute of your daily life, then insight will come,
because when you are concentrated you begin to see things more deeply. The true
nature of reality will reveal itself to you, and when you can see things deeply
like that, you will no longer make mistakes. You will no longer be a victim of
ignorance. Understanding things as they are, free from craving, you will become
an instrument of the dharma for the world. Everyone you touch, everything you
touch will become holy, just because there is the element of holiness within
yourself. Everything, everyone you touch can be healed, can be transformed. It
is reported that anyone who was touched by Jesus Christ was healed of his or
her illness. We can believe it, because in the person of Jesus Christ there was
the energy of the Holy Spirit, and when you are motivated, when you are inhabited
by the Holy Spirit, you have the power of being there, of looking deeply, of
forgiving, of being compassionate, and all these elements have the power of
healing. Everyone of us is like that also. If we allow the energy of
mindfulness to be born in us, if we know how to live each moment of our daily
life mindfully, then the elements of concentration, insight, liberation,
compassion will be in us, and everyone we touch will be healed, everything we
touch will recover its beauty and sanity. So our practice is crucial, and the
Buddha has instructed us on how to practice mindfulness, concentration and
insight.
We should learn to
live and practice as a Sangha, as a family, and this is very important. When
you look into a lotus pond, you realize that the lotus flowers, the lotus
roots, the lotus leaves, they practice very much in the same way: they support
each other, they nourish each other. In the beginning, as we say, there were
only one or two lotus seeds. And we know how to handle them, and that is why
the lotus seeds have sprouted, and now we have two lotus ponds in the Upper
Hamlet, one big lotus pond in the Lower Hamlet, and two in the New Hamlet. Now
it is the month of May, and lotus leaves begin to show themselves in a kind of
rebirth.
Visualize yourself as
a lotus leaf, at the surface of the water. You are green, you are beautiful,
you breathe, you receive the sunshine, and you grow. Underneath you are
connected to the lotus roots. In every moment of your daily life you enjoy the
sunshine, you enjoy displaying your beauty, your health, and at the same time
you nourish the roots underneath. You are being nourished by the lotus roots,
but you also, by your life, nourish the lotus roots. Usually we tend to believe
that the leaf is the child of the tree, but in fact the leaf is also the mother
of the tree. The water and the minerals brought into the tree by the roots will
be sent to every leaf, and the leaves have to work to receive the sunshine and
the gas in the air in order to transform the water and the minerals into
elaborated sap, to nourish the sap, and to send it back to nourish the trunk of
the tree, the root of the tree. So we can say that the tree, the trunk, is the
mother of the leaves, but we can say also that the leaves are the mother of the
tree – they nourish each other. So it is the lotus root that sends up the young
leaf, and by living its life, receiving the sunshine and the gas, and becoming
alive in every moment, that young leaf nourishes itself and the roots
underneath, and somehow it nourishes the other flowers and leaves as well.
So let us visualize
ourselves as a lotus leaf, and in our daily life we practice walking, we
practice breathing, we practice smiling, and we practice sitting so we can
bloom like a beautiful leaf. At the same time we nourish our teacher, we
nourish our younger brother, we nourish our big sisters. And that really is
what we do every day. You are connected to every member of the Sangha in a very
wonderful way, and you have to be able to see it. Every smile you make, every
compassionate look you can offer can bring joy to your teacher, to your
brothers and to your sisters. It is not for you alone, it is for all of us.
Every time you are capable of overcoming an irritation, and you can smile, you
nourish all of us. Not only do you nourish yourself, but you also nourish all
of us. Every time you can address your words with kindness and compassion to
your brother or your sister in the Sangha, you are really nourishing us, you
are bringing a lot of joy, a lot of nutrition to all of us. And in fact we
inter-are.
On the surface it
looks like this flower and this leaf are two different entities, but if you go
deep into reality, you know that this is because that is, and that is because
this is. That is the teaching of interbeing. The flower also displays her
beauty, the flower also fabricates the lotus seeds. But you cannot say that
only the flower fabricates the lotus seeds. You, as a leaf, fabricate the lotus
seed also, because while you are there you are nourishing the whole Sangha of
lotus roots, and that is how you contribute to the manufacture of lotus seeds.
You cannot say that only the lotus flower makes lotus seeds, all the roots and
all the leaves contribute to making the lotus seeds. So you are nourishing the
whole sangha by your being there and by your practice. You have to see yourself
in every member of the Sangha. And you are extremely important. If you suffer,
if you experience a setback, the whole Sangha will receive that. And if you are
capable of being joyful, of being liberated, then it will be for the sake of
all of us in the Sangha. So not only do you live for yourself, but you live for
all of us, and you produce not only a flower, you also produce many other
leaves and flowers. And it continues. And that is why when the time comes for
you, this leaf, to disintegrate, you continue to be in the flower, in the
roots, in other leaves. So there is no birth, no death, there is only a
continuation, and the Sangha has been like that for two thousand and five
hundred years.
So if you are someone
who has just joined the community, the Sangha, you should practice looking
deeply in order to see that when you come with us in Plum Village and become a
member of the Sangha, you can become one with us, because your practice will
make our happiness and our growth possible. And the practice of every other
member of the Sangha will help you to grow and to be more beautiful. Suppose
you are the teacher. As a dharma teacher, in principle you have to help other
members of the Sangha to learn the Dharma and to practice the Dharma well; you
have the duty to nourish your brothers and sisters in the Dharma, especially
the younger brothers and sisters in the Dharma. But from the perspective of
interbeing, it can be said the other way around also. Every leaf, every flower
is doing the work of nourishing you as well, because each leaf, each flower is
breathing, is alive, in order to manufacture the substance of life, nourishing
the roots, nourishing other leaves, and nourishing you. So the teacher, while
trying to nourish the students, is being nourished by his students as well.
It’s very clear. When there is a student who is happy, who can smile, who can
forgive, who can bloom like a flower, the teacher profits a lot from it, and he
or she is nourished by his or her students. It’s like the leaves and the tree:
the tree is the mother of the leaves, but the leaves are also mothers of the
tree. So we inter-are in a very deep way. By being the Sangha we no longer risk
to die, or to be born. Birth and death become just appearances.
In winter, we did not
see any lotus flowers, we did not see any lotus leaves. Everything seemed to be
disintegrating and becoming mud. That is because we looked only from the
outside. If we touch deeply the reality of the lotus we know that the lotus
roots underneath continue to grow, to get ready for the month of April, of May,
and now, when you look into the lotus pond you see that the lotus leaves are
beginning to come out again. That is rebirth, that is reappearance, and you can
see a continuation, you can recognize yourself. The lotus leaf of last year can
recognize herself in the lotus leaf of this year.
All our teachers are
within us, all our ancestors are within us. The Buddha is within us. Every time
we practice mindful walking, we nourish the Buddha within us. We allow the
Buddha to continue to be alive. We need the Buddha of course, but the Buddha
needs us to continue. Without us, how could the Buddha continue? This is clear.
We need our ancestors to be, our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors,
but our ancestors need us to be. If we feel free, if we feel solid, our
ancestors feel free and solid. They need us very much. Therefore it is our duty
to live, to be alive, to live with freedom and stability every day, in order to
make it possible for our ancestors to be free and to be stable every day. How
about our children and their children? Our children and their children are
already in us, and if we know how to practice walking mindfully, breathing
mindfully, doing things mindfully with stability and freedom, then we are
nourishing our children, even if we don’t see them yet. But they are already
there within us.
There are two
dimensions. First, there is the dimension of time. We are here as the continuation
of all our ancestors. All of our ancestors are in us. We are here representing
all our children and their children, the future generations also in us. So
every minute of our daily life we live for all of them also. You don’t see it,
but the Buddha needs you in order to be carried to the future generations. The
Buddha has been transmitted into many generations, and now that we have
received the Buddha within ourselves, the seed of mindfulness, we allow the
Buddha to have a chance here, and to have a chance in the future also. So this
is the line representing time. And this is another line representing space,
those that we can touch in the present moment. Not only are we all our
ancestors and all our children, but we are all our brothers and sisters that
are here and now in the present moment. And every minute of our daily lives,
every thing that we practice is for the sake not only of our ancestors and
children, but also for the sake of all our brothers and sisters that are there
with us today. If we know how to live like that, despair, loneliness will
disappear totally, because we embrace not only time, but also space. We embrace
everyone.
Vimukti is a Sanskrit
word meaning liberation, freedom. Do we have any freedom at all? Is there a
seed of freedom in us that we can touch so that we can really enjoy our
freedom? Sometimes in our daily lives we have the feeling that we have no
freedom at all. Something carries us away from ourselves. We are being pushed
all the time by tendencies within us. We tend to be forgetful. We tend to say
and to do things that we don’t want to say and do. We cannot be ourselves. We
cannot be what we aspire to be. We are always defeated by our habit energies.
Is there any freedom available to us? Where can we touch our freedom? And where
is the key to unlock our freedom in us? We feel that we are always victims of
our loneliness, our fear, our anger, and our suffering. And we want to be free
from all these afflictions. What is the practice that can help us to be
liberated from these kinds of afflictions? The answer is mindfulness, because
mindfulness is the only freedom we have. Every day we do things like washing
the dishes, washing our clothes, sweeping the floor, cooking, and writing. And
we may be just enslaved by doing these things, but the moment we know how to
generate the energy of mindfulness, we begin to have the element of freedom in
us. Yes, you are scrubbing the floor, like yesterday, but today you do it
mindfully. So during the time you scrub the floor like that, you begin to enjoy
your liberty. Today you breathe like yesterday, but today you know how to
breathe mindfully. I breathe in and I know I am breathing in. I breathe out and
I know I am breathing out. The element of freedom becomes possible. That is the
only freedom that is available to you. You are yourself, you are not a victim
of your habit energy, of the world, of society, of education.
You take a step, and
you become aware of the step that you take, and you take that step with
freedom, because mindfulness is there in your step. The seed of freedom is
there in the form of mindfulness, and that is the only way you can cultivate
freedom and become a free person. First of all, you are free from your
forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is the kind of veil, the kind of darkness, that
overwhelms us, envelops us in our daily life. Forgetfulness is the opposite of
mindfulness. And now we have a key in order to unlock the door of freedom, and
that is mindfulness. So we should learn how to breathe mindfully, how to walk mindfully,
how to drink our water mindfully, how to look at our brother and our sister
mindfully, and suddenly the element of freedom is there. Mindfulness is the
only liberty we have. And if we continue to cultivate mindfulness, our liberty
will grow, and we will be able to transform all our afflictions, including our
fear, our sorrow, our anger, and our despair. Mindfulness helps us to see
deeply into the nature of ourselves, of our Sangha, and helps us to remove the
idea of self, and of mind. The ideas of self, of me and of mine, are ideas that
separate, that bring fear and despair. Once we enter into the reality of
interbeing, all these fears and despair will vanish, and freedom finally
becomes the freedom from fear, from isolation, and from despair.
I take refuge in the
Sangha. This is not a statement of faith. I take refuge in the Sangha - this is
a matter of practice. You must be intelligent in order to practice taking
refuge in the Sangha. In your daily life you have to look and touch in such a
way that you can see that you are one with your brother, you are one with your
sister, and every moment of your daily life is to nourish your Sangha, and be
nourished by your Sangha. Anything you do for your brother is for yourself, is
for the Sangha. Everything you do for yourself is also for the Sangha and for
your sister. And in the period of one day, twenty-four hours, there are a lot
of opportunities for you to touch that truth. You know quite well that if the
teacher is not happy, you cannot be happy, if your brother is not happy you
cannot be happy, if you are not happy your brother and sister will not be
happy. You know the truth of interbeing, and that is why you can practice
according to your insight. Everything you do, everything you do not do, has an
impact on your Sangha. Building a Sangha means building yourself. If the Sangha
has stability and joy, then all of us will enjoy that stability and joy.
A young nun told me
that since she has been a nun in Plum Village she has had the opportunity of
having her mother, her father, her sister and her brother come to Plum Village
and practice. If she had not become a nun, then her family would not have come
to visit her and touch the Dharma and the practice here. So being a nun is an
opportunity for your family to touch the Dharma and practice the Dharma, and by
doing so you nourish not only your Sangha but also your blood family; you bring
your family into the Sangha and your Sangha becomes part of your family, and
your family becomes part of the Sangha. Practicing being stable, being
peaceful, being joyful, you can write a letter home, and when your brother,
your sister, your mother read that letter, they will be touched by your wisdom,
your joy, and you are doing the work of nourishing your family. So everything
you do in your daily life has the power of nourishing your blood family and
your spiritual family.
You may not seem to
do a lot, but by practicing mindful living in your Sangha, you are helping the
world, you are serving the world. Because when we have a Sangha like that, a
Sangha full of vitality, of mindfulness, and of understanding, then that will
provide hope for many of us in the world. Many in the world are lost, and they
don’t know where to go. They don’t believe that freedom is possible. They don’t
know that compassion and joy are possible. But when they come into contact with
a Sangha that has joy, that has harmony, that has compassion, they have a
chance. They realize that freedom is something possible, compassion is
something possible, and joy is something possible, and they are able to find a
meaning for their life. Because many people tend to believe that happiness is
made of money and sensual pleasures, and they run after money and sensual
pleasures and they suffer quite a lot and they don't see any meaning to their
life. Now they have a chance, when they come in touch with a Sangha which has
compassion, stability, and freedom, they begin to see a meaning to their life.
They may devote their life to the cultivation of freedom, of compassion and of
joy. That is why your daily practice is very important, every step you make,
every breath you take, everything you do in your daily life in mindfulness will
have a tremendous impact on yourself, your Sangha, and on the world.
0 Comments