Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh

Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on November 20, 1997 in Plum Village, France.

The good, beautiful, and true is in us
© Thich Nhat Hanh

Dear friends, today is the 20th of November 1997, we are in the New Hamlet. There is a French writer whose name is Antoine de Saint Exupéry. He said that to love each other doesn't mean we sit and look at each other, but it means we both look in the same direction. We have to look deeply to see whether in our experience this is true or not, and if it's true, to what degree it is true. When we love each other, we have a natural tendency to look at each other. Because each one of us has lacks, needs, desires. We want beauty, we are thirsty for beauty. We respect and look up to truth, and we are thirsty for truth. We are thirsty for sincerity. So we are looking for something sacred, something beautiful, something good, and something wholesome. And then we will feel we don't lack, and we will feel less lonely, at a loss.
The beautiful, the true and the good which we look for is something we look for in a person, and we think that there are few people who have that thing. But we have a wrong perception. Because sometimes the beauty we think is real beauty is not true beauty. The truth is not real truth and we think it's real truth. And the wholesome, we think it is true, but it's not real goodness. So if we are basing on our wrong perception then our love can arise based on that wrong perception. And when we have lived with that person for a period of time, we discover that we have failed. Because that person is not able to symbolize for us the beautiful, good, and true that we were looking for and we say that person has deceived us, and we suffer. And then we go and look for a second object.
Every one of us in the beginning feels that we lack something, that we are only half a person. And we wander around in this world to look for our other half. We're like a saucepan that hasn't got a lid, and we're always going looking for our lid. That is why we feel we lack the other person. But if we observe carefully, we see that this feeling of lack arises from a wrong perception. We have an inferiority complex, that the true, the good, and the beautiful do not exist in us. That is a very deep complex in every one of us. We have a perception that we are not worthy. No truth, no beauty, no goodness is in us. And there is no way that we can have confidence in ourselves. We don't say these things, but it is what we feel. We feel that we haven't any beauty, goodness and truth.
But we always want to do something in order to have these things. And so we feel that we are deceiving people. We are showing other people that we are good, that we are beautiful, but we feel that we are only showing that on the outside. In ourselves, we are not really beautiful, not really good. And so we go and look for different cosmetics in order to adorn ourselves. We go to shops which sell cosmetics, and we buy powder, we buy lipstick and we put it on our lips. Or we use some kind of operation to make us look more beautiful, like a facelift. This is to do with our body. But as far as our soul, our spirit, our mind is concerned, we can go and learn more philosophy, more science to have more knowledge, or we can go and study religion. We go and study with this master, then we go to that master. And we also make it look as if we have virtue, that we love others. As far as physical appearance is concerned, we can adorn ourselves, with cosmetics, make ourselves look beautiful. And as far as our mind, our spirit is concerned we can also find cosmetics to adorn our mind, because we want people when they look at us to see us as something good and beautiful and true. And we deceive each other.
In this world, on this earth we are deceiving each other. Deep down we feel there is nothing good, beautiful and true in us. But on the other hand, we are trying to show people all the time the good, beautiful, and true that we are. And so we deceive ourselves from generation to generation. And when we are deceiving others, we are also being deceived by others. We are each other's victims. We are all deceiving each other, we are all trying to make ourselves up so we will look less ugly, and at the same time others are doing the same.
Sitting at the foot of the bodhi tree on the night when he realized the truth, the Buddha discovered something which is very surprising to him and to us. He saw that the good, the beautiful and the true are to be found in everyone. But very few people know that. People think that the true, the beautiful, and the good exist somewhere else, it is in someone else. They do not know that in the deep levels of themselves there is the true, the beautiful, and the good. And because we are not able to be in touch with these things, the good, the beautiful, and the true, in ourselves, we have the feeling that we lack something, that we are a saucepan without a lid. And the whole of our life we are looking for someone else to replace that lack. How strange, all living beings have the fully awakened nature, but none of them know it. And because of that they drift and sink from lifetime to lifetime in the great ocean of samsara, in suffering. And that is what the Buddha said the moment when he realized the path.
And so when we are able to recognize that in us there is the essence of the good, the beautiful and the true, we will be able to stop going in search. We will stop feeling that we lack something and we will stop running around in the world, in the universe looking for something. The truth is that we return to ourselves in order to be in touch with the good, beautiful and true that are in us. And at the moment we are in touch with those things, we are able to stop wandering around feeling we lack something. And we are able to stop deceiving others. We don't have to adorn ourselves, make ourselves up anymore, because we have discovered the true, the beautiful, and the good right here within us.
Like a wave on the ocean. It feels that it is fragile, that it is ugly, the other waves are more beautiful, more high, with more value. It has an inferiority complex, the complex that it's not worth anything. But when this wave is able to be in touch with its true nature, which is the water, it sees that water goes beyond all concepts of beautiful, ugly, high, low, here and there. Whether it's a large wave or a small wave, half a wave or a third of a wave, it is still made out of water. Once it knows that it is water, it has a very strong faith that it has absolute value because water is without birth and without death. A wave is really only water, and as far as water is concerned, all waves are equal because all waves are water. So everyone who lives in this world-- women, men, rich, poor, intellectual, those who have been disabled, those whose body is in good health-- they all have this basis of good, beautiful and true. Just as the small wave, the big wave, the high wave, the low wave, all waves are equal, wholly equal as far as water is concerned, as far as their true nature is concerned.
[Bell]
When we are looking for someone to love and we find that person, we are very happy because we feel we have found our lid, the lid of our saucepan. We are happy because we think that the person we have discovered has the true, the good and the beautiful in them. There is a song: "You are as gentle as a nun..." But it's not so sure that a nun is gentle. When you have lived with that person for a short time, you see that that person is quite fierce, not gentle at all, and not beautiful and not wholesome like you thought before. And then we no longer have faith in our lid. We say the other person is deceiving us, they have deceived us into thinking they are good, beautiful, and true. But we have already written the contract and we are caught with that person, and we have a lot of irritation, and we have a feeling that we have been deceived. And it is very painful for us to have to live with that person. We want to divorce them and go and live with somebody else. And we feel like that our whole life. We never feel we have found the good, the beautiful and the true in the other. Because everyone wants to adorn themselves with good, beautiful and true in order to show others that we have those things which the other is looking for. But we don't really believe ourselves that we have those things, and that is where our suffering starts from. We don't have faith that we have the things we are showing others we have. And we are looking for those things in another, and then we feel we've been deceived just as we deceive others. And so we fall into the same situation, the one who looks and the one who is looked for. After we have failed many times, we have felt tired of this person, we feel they don't have the essence we are looking for.
Then we go and look for a religious teacher. And when we find a religious teacher, we kneel before him, and we feel we have found our real lid. But there are many religious teachers who are fake, many religious teachers who do not have faith in the goodness, truth and beauty in themselves but try to show others that they have beauty, goodness and truth. So there are disciples, students, who after a time of learning with that teacher, discover he hasn't got the things they were looking for in him. There's not something really beautiful, something really true, something really good in that person. So we abandon that teacher and we go and look for another one. And if we continue like that, we are constantly throughout our life looking for someone.
Then one day we meet a very special religious teacher. And that religious teacher says, "Don't go looking anymore, don't go seeking anymore, don't keep looking outside of your anymore, because within you the thing you are looking for is already there." And that teacher is our root teacher. Our root teacher tells us: "All living beings have the pure, clear, complete nature within themselves." And everyone has to return to themselves in order to be in touch properly with that beautiful, good and true which is within them. And when you have been in touch with it, you will put an end to your going in search and there will be a steady faith that you have happiness, you have peace. And this searching which has been going on for so many lifetimes will come to an end.
The World Honored One is a religious teacher who doesn't want us to be slaves the whole of our life. He doesn't want people to just lean on him. So the Buddha is a special teacher. He says that: "You have what you are looking for within yourself." So a real religious teacher, someone who is worthy of being called a religious teacher, is a teacher who has the capacity to show us that in our own nature there is a teacher we can return to and take refuge in. And we don't have to look for this teacher outside of ourselves. And that is a teaching which is very basic to Buddhism. That the beautiful, the wholesome, and the absolute good are present in ourselves, and we only need to return and be in touch with them. You need to have faith in the basic goodness, the basic beauty, and the basic truth which is in you. You have to go back to yourself and discover that. It is your own ground of being. It is your basis.
When we look at the person we love, we need to begin to look with these eyes. We look at the person sitting in front of us, and we say: "This person has the basic goodness, the basic truth, and the basic beauty, but that person doesn't believe in those things, and that person is using cosmetics to adorn themselves for us." And we are the same. We do not believe in the good, beautiful and true which is in us, but we are putting on cosmetics to adorn ourselves for the other person. And when we can do that, then real love begins to arise in us. We say to the other, "Let's not live in this narrow way anymore. Let's both return to our own basis. Let's not deceive each other anymore." We don't need to deceive each other because the thing we are looking for is already there in us, and we have to become friends on the path of the practice. And that path of practice is not to lead us on an outer search but to lead us on an inner search.
Ananda was the cousin of the Buddha. One day he was going on the alms round. He stopped at a well because he was thirsty in order to ask for some water. Sitting by the well was a young woman called Matanga. She belonged to the pariah class, the untouchable caste. The higher castes were not able to touch her or come near to her on the path because she would pollute them. When the higher castes are going on the road and they see an untouchable, they have to keep out of their way so as not to be polluted. And when Ananda asked for water, she said, "No, I can't give it to you because I am an untouchable and it will pollute you." And Ananda said, "In our teaching, there is not a caste division and the Buddha has told us that we are all equal, and therefore you can give me water, I won't be polluted, so don't be afraid." Matanga was very happy. She lifted the water with a ladle and gave it to him to drink. He joined his palms and thanked her and went home. But after that Matanga started to fall in love with him. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat, because she kept seeing Ananda, how beautiful, how good, how kind he was. Matanga was very beautiful. Her father had passed away, she lived with her mother. And when her mother saw she couldn't sleep or eat for many weeks, she asked why. The girl wept and said because she is always thinking about Ananda. And because the mother loved her daughter very much, she did her best to help her daughter. So they decided together to invite Ananda to come and to make offerings to him. And one day they met Ananda as he was going on the alms round, and they invited him to come to them so they could make offerings. And when he came into the house, they gave him a bowl of tea. But that tea was made of a kind of herb which would take away our clarity when we drank it. And if we lack our clarity, we can do things we don't want to do. When Ananda had drunk this tea, he felt he had made a mistake and he didn't know how he was going to put it right. When he saw what had happened, he knew that he had to practice. So he didn't say anything, he didn't do anything. He sat in the cross-legged position, and he began to follow the practice of following his breathing, because he knew he was in a very dangerous position. And the Buddha was in the Jeta Grove and wondered why Ananda had not returned. So he ordered two other monks to go and look for Ananda. And the other two monks were able to find Ananda sitting in meditation in the house of Matanga. They led him back to the Jeta Grove Monastery. And they saw Matanga weeping so they also brought her back to the monastery. When Ananda came back to the monastery the effect of the tea was already wearing off, and he prostrated to the Buddha, and he thanked the Buddha for sending the two monks to send him back because it could have been very dangerous if they hadn't. And then Matanga came in, and the Buddha asked Matanga to sit down. And he said, "Do you love Ananda so much?" And Matanga said, "Yes, I love him very much." And Buddha said, "What do you love in Ananda? Do you love his eyes or his nose?" "I love his eyes, I love his nose, I love his ears, I love his mouth, I love everything. Everything to do with Ananda, I love. I think I cannot live if I don't have Ananda." She was a very beautiful girl although she belonged to the untouchable caste. She was quite naive too, she was about 18 or 19 years old. The Buddha said, "There are many things in Ananda which you have not seen and which you would love even more if you could see them." And she said, "What?" And Buddha smiled and said, "Like Ananda's love, like Ananda's bodhicitta. All you've seen is eyes, nose, ears, mouth. As a young man, he has given up his life in a wealthy family in order to become a monk, with the aim of helping many people. Ananda could never be happy with one or two people because that happiness is so small. That is why he became a monk. He wants to be able to help many, many people. He has a mind of great equality. He wants to love, but not love one person. He wants to love thousands and thousands of people. And that bodhicitta of Ananda is very beautiful, if only you could see it you would love Ananda even more. And once you had seen that you wouldn't want to make Ananda your own anymore. You would respect Ananda, and you would do everything you could to help Ananda realize his deep aspiration as a monk, to help him realize the bodhicitta. Ananda is like a cool breeze in the air, and if you love that cool breeze in the air and you want to put it into a small box and put the lid on and turn the key, then you will not have that cool breeze in the air anymore. Ananda is like a cloud floating in the sky, the blue sky, very beautiful. If you want to catch that cloud and put it in a box and turn the key, then you will kill Ananda, because you have only seen the things about Ananda which are not the most beautiful things. You have not seen the most beautiful things about Ananda. If you were to see them you would love him more, and you would love him in a way which would help him be Ananda, just as you can help a cloud be a cloud floating in the beautiful blue sky. Don't think that Ananda is the only one who has that beautiful aspiration. You are the same. You have that beauty too. You can also live like Ananda if you really love Ananda and you are able to see the bodhicitta of Ananda. You will be able to return to yourself and see you have the bodhicitta in yourself, and you can vow to Ananda that you will live in such a way not just to make one person happy but to make many people happy."
When Matanga heard that, she was very surprised. She said, "I don't have any worth. I belong to the lowest caste. I cannot make anybody happy." He said, "Yes, you have already done it. You already have that beautiful, good and true in yourself. Everyone has that. And if we return, and we are able to be in touch with that basic goodness, truth and beauty in ourselves we will have faith in it, and we will know that we can make happiness for many people." And when she heard that, she said, "Is that really so? Can I really do the same as Ananda? Can I really leave the family life, become a nun and help thousands of people like Ananda?" And the Buddha said, "Yes, why not? If you can be in touch with the true, good and beautiful in you, and you give rise to the bodhicitta you will be like Ananda, you will be able to do like Ananda and bring happiness to many people. " Her insight was opened by the Buddha, and she touched the earth before the Buddha, and she asked to become a nun under a bhiksuni so that she could do like Ananda, so that her love could open up and become wide, become measureless. From then on Matanga was accepted into the bhiksuni Sangha which was led by Mahagautami.
And that is Buddha's method. In the first place people are infatuated by an image which they say is beautiful, and they want to be a possessor of that image, and they suffer because of that. But afterwards they wake up and they see that this is deceptive, and they put away that image and they look for another object. And then they wander the whole of their life, from lifetime to lifetime, not able to find the real object of their love. The Buddha showed people that when we are able to come across someone who has a steady faith in their own goodness, beauty and truth, we can look at that person as a mirror in order to return to ourselves and be in touch with the basic goodness, beauty and truth in ourselves. And then we will be happy, we will be able to put an end to our wandering. And like the other person, we can become someone who loves all species, not the one object of love of one person. And we become someone who serves others. We become an associate lover with the other. The Buddha is someone who loves all species and his action is the action of love. That is all he does in his life, and he rescues beings all his life. And when we see the beauty of the Buddha, the goodness of the Buddha, the truth of the Buddha, when we hear the Buddha say that you also have that goodness, beauty, and truth and if you can go back to yourself, you will find it, then you can become an associate of mine and together we will use our love to help others suffer less.
Love is not a matter of two people loving each other but a matter of collective love. When we enter the monk-hood or nun-hood, it is because we want to love others. And the object of our love, of course, is ourselves and is all species. That is why we have the expression "associate lovers." Buddha is someone who loves, and the Buddha's love is so great, so beautiful we want to take part in that love. We want to be a participator in that love. And the Buddha says, "Yes, why can't you participate in that love? Why don't we become lovers together?" And we take the hand of the Buddha, like teacher and disciple, and we love each other but we love all species, so we and the Buddha are associate lovers. When we are participators in the sangha, we are associate lovers. We protect ourselves, we protect each other, we give faith to each other, and we bring to others our transformation and their transformation when they are in touch with us.
In the time of the Buddha, there was a monk whose name was Vaikali. After Vaikali became a monk, he became very attached to the Buddha, but his love was narrow, just superficial. He saw the Buddha as something like a realm of light. When he sat near the Buddha, he felt very happy, and that's all he wanted. He didn't really listen deeply or carefully to the dharma talks. He just spent his time looking at the Buddha, gazing at the Buddha. He felt so peaceful, so happy, so content sitting by the Buddha. But he could only see the small beauty of the Buddha. He didn't see the great wisdom, the great love of the Buddha. And after a time, when the Buddha had been looking at him, the Buddha saw that this disciple was still very weak. Wherever he was, he just wanted to be with the Buddha. Wherever he sat, he just wanted to sit near the Buddha. He was attached to the Buddha, but he was just attached to the shadow of the Buddha, not to the real, deep level of the Buddha. Then the Buddha decided he wouldn't allow Vaikali to be near him anymore. If he was going to the Jeta Monastery, he wouldn't allow Vaikali to go with him. And he did not allow him to be his attendant, he said, "Now another monk will be my attendant." So he felt the Buddha had thrown him off, that the Buddha didn't love him. And when he had been refused by the Buddha, he felt like committing suicide. The Buddha knew that this was happening so he tried to find a way to save him. And when he was about to commit suicide, the Buddha came and said, "What are you doing?" And he gave teachings to Vaikali. And that is when he learned that his love was not the deep love of a monk but a superficial attachment. After that, he practiced properly. The Buddha showed him that in his own self, deep down, there was the beautiful, the good and true, and he should be looking for that instead of running out after an image of good, beautiful and true outside of him. The Buddha said he always did that himself and he taught others to do that. A good religious teacher is someone who can show us that in our own self we have a religious teacher, and we have to take refuge in that religious teacher in ourselves and we should not be attached to a religious teacher outside of us. Because that religious teacher outside of us may not be true, may be a fake. And if he is a true teacher he will always encourage us to go back to ourselves, to be in touch with the true teacher within ourselves. The best teacher is the teacher who can help you to see that there is a real teacher within yourself. We take refuge in that teacher within ourselves, and then we will never be disappointed. If a wave has faith in its nature of water, then the wave will never be disappointed. When we read: "I go back and take refuge in the Buddha in myself, and I vow that all beings may be in touch with the awakened nature and quickly realize the love which is called bodhicitta" -that love in which teacher and disciple are working together, are serving together, are associate lovers- this shows us our path, those two lines of the sutra show us the path.
The real object of our love is not outside of us, the real object of our love is ourselves. We have to know how to love ourselves, know how to return to our true nature, to see the wholesome, the good, the true and the beautiful within us. Then we will be able to see that in others. When we have seen real beauty, goodness, and truth in ourselves and others, we will no longer be deceived by the outer adornments. When we see the people in the world are deceiving each other, we feel compassion and we pray that one day they may wake up and find the object of their search within themselves. And when we have found that object of our search in ourselves, we will help others, and we will stop our wandering from one lifetime to another.
We can begin by looking deeply at inter-being. The thing which we say is beautiful may not be beautiful, but we think it is beautiful. The thing that we say is true maybe it is not true, but we have thought it is true. The thing which we say is wholesome, is kind may not be true kindness, but we think it is true kindness. Therefore, we should use the looking deeply of the Buddha and see that the true goodness contains the true beauty and the true truth. That is inter-being. When we see that, we will discover quickly that the object we thought was beautiful is not really beautiful because it does not contain goodness and truth. And once we know it is a fake, it will not appear beautiful to us anymore. Truth is always beautiful. Kindness is always beautiful. And beauty is always true, is always kind. When we love someone we have the duty to look at that person in such a way that our look is not caught in wrong perceptions, perverted perceptions, so that we can see the real beauty, the real truth, the real goodness of that person and not be deceived by the outer form. We should be able to see that the other is basically beautiful, basically good and true and does not need to disguise themselves with artificial means. So please, you don't need to deceive yourself and deceive me anymore with outer adornments. I am also like that. I have the basic goodness, truth and beauty, so I don't need to adorn myself to deceive people anymore. Let us be associate lovers in order to be in touch with the beauty, goodness, and truth within ourselves, and we will be able to help ourselves and help numberless other people. That is the path of the Buddha. Whether we are a monk or a nun or not a monk or a nun, we have to see this and we have to stop deceiving ourselves and deceiving others and allowing others to deceive us. So we must stop deceiving others and allowing others to deceive us. It is because we don't know that we have the good, the beautiful and true in us that we feel we lack something. When we feel we lack something, we feel we're just a half, we are isolated, we need to find our other half. When we have seen that the thing we are looking for is within us, the feeling of isolation will end and we will begin to feel happy, that is the great awakening. And once we are awakened like that we will understand what the Buddha meant when he said on the day he realized awakening, "How strange, all living beings have the basic nature of awakening, of happiness, of truth, but they don't know it." And because of that, from lifetime to lifetime, they continue drifting and sinking on the ocean of birth and death.











Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on December 18, 1997 in Plum Village, France.
The Discourse on Love
© Thich Nhat Hanh
Winter Retreat 1997/98 18 December, 1997
Dear Sangha, today is Thursday, the 18 December 1997, we are in the New Hamlet in the winter retreat. Today we are studying the Discourse on Love. In the teachings of the Buddha there are the four immeasurable minds. The first one is loving kindness, maitri in Sanskrit, metta in Pali. The practice of love is very important.
"Those who want to attain peace, should practice being upright, humble and capable of using loving speech. "If we are disturbed, we cannot have peace and we cannot have joy. Our mind is thirsty, we feel we lack something. We are agitated by anger, hatred thoughts of revenge. We have no peace, no joy, we never feel happy. Even those who have a lot of material possessions and money in their bank account have no peace and joy and they are very unhappy.
Peace and joy are the two basic elements for our happiness. Peace means not to be disturbed, not agitated in our mind. Those who want to attain peace have to learn the art of being straightforward. This means not to make insinuations, not go about things in a devious way. But we must use loving speech. We are straightforward, but we use loving speech. When we need something we say it frankly, but we say it with loving speech. There is a Vietnamese poet who says that if you love somebody, you have to say you love them, if you hate somebody you have to say it directly and frankly, even if someone puts a knife to your neck. So, our behaviour must be straightforward, honest, clear, simple and humble. Humble means not to be sure that you are number one. Everybody must learn every day. The Buddha, even though he is The Enlightened One, learned more every day. So we have to learn to be humble.
In order to be happy, we have to learn to live simply. When you live simply, you have much more time and you can be in touch with the many wonders of life. Living simply is the criterion for the new culture, the new civilisation. With the development of technology people nowadays have become more and more sophisticated and they don't live simply at all. Their joy is to go shopping. Even when we visit a new city, we cannot do anything else but go shopping. Shopping is a disease of our new civilisation. The criterion for being happy is to live simply, and have a life of harmony and peace in yourself and with people around you, without aggressiveness, irritation and anger. Those who easily get angry have to learn the art of mindful breathing. When you are easily irritated you have to go back to your breath right away and take good care of your conscious breathing, calming and releasing, so that your face will not be red from anger and irritation. We must learn to know what is our limit, how much is enough. It is the opposite of wanting more and more and more. You know what is sufficient, what is enough for you.
You keep your calm, you will not be carried away by your emotions and the opinions of the majority. An advertisement says: "You must buy that", and then everybody goes out to buy it. When someone says: "that man needs to be beaten", then people can be carried away by the emotions of the majority.
In French literature there is a story about a man who wanted to revenge a cheap merchant. The man, on a trip across the sea, bought a sheep from the merchant and threw that sheep into the sea. All the other sheep of the merchant followed the first sheep into the sea, and the merchant lost everything. We are all like those sheep. We are easily carried away, like the crews who see one ship going into the ocean so they all go into the ocean. Everybody gets angry, so you get angry. Everybody gets excited, so you get excited. We are usually carried away by the big group. We have to be master of the situation in order not to be carried away by the majority.
The Buddha said that we should not do anything that will be disapproved of by the wise ones. He didn't say let us not do anything that will be disapproved by the high monks or by the arahats. He said the wise ones, because he knew that outside of his sangha there were many wise persons, in other spiritual traditions.
"May everyone be happy and safe and may their heart be filled with joy." Our first wish is that everyone will be happy and safe. Safe means that you have no accident, there is no natural disaster, no catastrophe, no fire, no robbery, no war and no accident, and you are not attacked by people who want to rob or kill you. Everybody wants to be safe, so we wish that everybody will be safe, not only ourselves. When we go on the aeroplane we put on the safety belt and we wish that everyone will be safe.
In the Vietnamese text there is a very beautiful word, a compound word meaning very stable. The first word means kind and the second word means very thick. If you say somebody is not very thick, it means sometimes he is good and sometimes he’s not. But if you say somebody is thick, it means the person is good and has a lot of stability. People in Vietnam used to say that the Earth is very thick, and when praising someone who is very stable and solid they would say he is very thick like the earth. We have a high monk in Vietnam with this word in his name. When somebody has a lot of virtue and stability then they say this person has a lot of thickness. If they say someone is thin, it means that person will easily betray you. But if somebody is thick it is very good. We also say: "I take care of you thickly". Thickly in this sense means very deeply, profoundly. Ksitigarbha is a bodhisattva representing the earth. And before the sutra on Ksitigarbha, there is a gatha which speaks of the earth-like qualities of Ksitigarbha and the words thickness and stability are repeated several times.
"May all living beings live in security and peace". To be free means you are not attached by anything. There are those who work but who are too attached to the work, are not free from the work. In English they’re called workaholics. So, we work very well but we are not workaholic, we are not attached, caught by the work. May all living beings live in security and peace. This is not action yet, it's just wishful thinking. But when the wishful thinking is great, it will bring us to the real action. If you do not wish to become a monk or nun then you will never become a monk or nun. You have to wish more than 100 percent that you will become a monk or a nun. So the wishful thinking is a very important energy to lead you to an action. We wish that all can live peacefully on earth, we wish that there is peace in our hearts. We wish it to be safe for ourselves, but we also wish that those around us will be safe, and also those who are far away. Not only that human beings but that animals, plants, the earth, the air, the mountains, the rivers, the ocean will be safe, that your environment will be safe, as will the environment of other humans, living beings, vegetation and minerals.
"Those who are frail, those who are strong." When we are frail we are easily overcome. But when we are strong we also can be overcome. When you live in the forest, even though you are stronger than the rabbit there are always other animals who are stronger than you. And the strong animal could be overcome by a stronger animal. And strong animals also can be killed by small animals. In the sutra, the Buddha used to say that lions can be killed by parasites, the little living beings in his own body. That is to say that nobody can destroy us except ourselves. When we are mindful we can see that there are many little habit energies in us that can kill us more readily than people outside ourselves. So the small things like doubt, fear, jealousy, anger are more likely to kill you than is the lion outside.
"Those who are tall, short, big, small, visible, not visible." Two thousand six hundred years ago the Buddha already saw that there are invisible living beings. Now we know about bacteria, viruses, but at that time he saw already. "Visible or not visible, near or far away, already-born or yet-to-be-born, may all of them dwell in perfect tranquillity."
"Let no one do harm to anyone, let no one put the life of anyone in danger." We don't want any species to kill other species, we don't want any species to despise the life of another species and destroy the life of another species. When we read that sentence and we look deeply, we may discover a lot. You have to read the sutra with your serene mind and then you can discover many things that in the past you thought you understood but now you see that you did not. You see that the lion kills the deer, to eat. We cannot tell the lion not to kill. The lion is a carnivore and the lion must eat meat. But the lion only catches a deer when he is hungry. And when he is finished he leaves the remains for other carnivores to eat, like the wild dogs. But human beings don't need to kill, they are not hungry. But they still go hunting and kill deer and rabbits. In the past humans sometimes did not have enough plants and they had to kill some animals to eat, but only when they needed to. Nowadays, there is plenty of food in the market, but many people still go hunting. Everytime I hear the noise of the hunting, I feel a lot of pain in my heart. How can people be so cruel to each other and to other living beings? They are not hungry. Our life is so precious. But the life of other species is also precious. The lives of other species are precious not only for them but for humans too. When we kill the other species, then we put ourselves in danger too.
During the war in Vietnam we can see that the generals of the US Army are not taught to respect life. They just kill everyone. They are not taught to save as many lives as possible. When you sit on the plane and you drop a bomb you kill a number of soldiers, but you also kill a lot of civilians. The United States is a very rich country and they have a lot of bombs. But they don't know anything about what happens underneath. They never see deeply what happens down there when the bomb explodes. There are children who were just born, there are children only three years old. Not only are they killed but they are handicapped because of these bombs, and they suffer all their life. When I say this I do not say that only Americans are bad, but the other side also did not respect life. During the war a lot of civilians died. And people always pay attention to the success of the battle, they never think of how many people die, how many innocent civilians die. And they don't care much about the minds of people, their unhappiness. The US Government did everything possible to protect the lives of American soldiers, but the American Government never paid attention to the lives of the Vietnamese soldiers on either side. Those who have gone through the war in Vietnam see very clearly that only the American soldiers’ lives were protected, but Vietnamese soldiers lives’ on both sides were not protected at all, and they didn't care at all for the lives of civilian people. So the life of the nationalists, the Vietnamese soldiers on the pro-American-side, they were also not protected at all. And the lives of the civilians are nothing.
"May no one do harm to anyone, let no one put the life of anyone in danger." When we are angry, we have the tendency to punish in order to feel less angry. We always have that tendency, that when we are angry, when we suffer, we want the other person to suffer too, we want to punish the other person. We think that the more the other person suffers, the more we will be happy, or at least we will feel less unhappy. So the Buddha taught that when you are angry, you look deeply to see that you are suffering. When you are angry you are suffering. And when you are suffering learn not to let other persons suffer, learn to transform our tendency to punish into the tendency to forgive. We suffer already, don't let other people suffer.
"Let no-one do harm to anyone. Let no one put the life of anyone in danger. Let no one out of anger or ill-will wish anyone any harm." Here is the teaching of the Buddha about one of the fifty-one states of our mind. This is ahimsa, "no harming". Of course, we can struggle. Buddhism does not ask you not to struggle. But you struggle with the energy of love, not with the energy of anger. You have to have the wish to reach the aim that you struggle for, like for example the liberation of the country. But you can use the energy of love, of understanding. Don't use the energy of anger. Because if you use anger there is confusion. And with confusion and ignorance you can do much damage, and then we have to retreat, and it causes a lot of suffering.
Now the Buddha teaches us how to take action. "Just as a mother loves and protects her only child at the risk of her own life, we should cultivate boundless love to offer to all living beings in the entire cosmos." The mother always gives a lot of care to her baby. She carries it nine months in her womb, she gives birth to her child, and she takes good care of her child. So "just like a mother loves and protects her only child at the risk of her own life, we should cultivate boundless love". So we learn to cultivate boundless love for the person who sits next to us on our left, on our right. How can we learn to love the person on our left like our only child? How can we learn to love the person on our right like our only child, and at the risk of our own life? And we have that love also for our father, our mother, our sister, our brother, and our neighbour.
When the baby is just conceived in the womb of the mother, the baby is small like a little bean. At that time, the baby and the mother are one. The baby grows and grows and the baby is still one with the mother. When the baby is really big in the womb of the mother they are still linked by the umbilical cord, and everything the mother eats, drinks, thinks, will enter into the womb and into the mind of the baby. When the mother suffers the baby suffers, when the mother is joyful the baby is joyful, if the mother is mindful the baby is mindful. If you have no chance to have a baby then your baby is the baby Buddha in you. Don't think that only women can have a baby, men also have a baby. The baby Buddha in us needs to be protected. When the baby is big enough to be born people use a scissors to cut the umbilical cord. We don't see the umbilical cord anymore but we can still see that the mother and the child are very linked. The view that you and the baby are one is correct. But if you hold your baby and force it to be exactly like you, this is not correct either. It’s good that you are one with your baby. But the baby receives other influences as well, and especially when the baby grows up she or he could have new insights. Every mother has to learn to train herself to see that your baby, your child is at the same time you but different from you. She or he has his or her own life. You can not imprison your child and make them go in your direction and force him or her to do what you like because you want to shape her or him in your mould. That is not correct. Because they are not only the continuation of you, but they are the continuation of many generations of ancestors before you, and perhaps during your time you had no chance to water the good seeds you inherited, and so you don’t have the same chance as your child. And when he or she has a lot of new insights, you have to learn from her or from him.
We have to learn to see that we are one with our brother, our sister, our child, our son, and our daughter. Of course, when we see like that then we love everyone. Then we learn to know that those who are not linked to us by an umbilical cord are also deeply linked to us; we see this when we look deeply. And we also need to train ourselves to see that others are us. In the past we praised the king and said he was a very great king because he loves all his citizens as his own sons or daughters. This is a Vietnamese proverb, that "a good king is a king who loves every citizen like his own baby." Literally it says "like the child who is still red", that is who is just born. You take good care of your citizens as if they were your own children. So if you are the king your duty is to bring happiness to all the people in your nation. That truth is not only in Buddhism, but is a deep insight that belongs to many other religions too.
"Just as a mother loves and protects her only child at the risk of her own life, we should cultivate boundless love to offer to all living beings in the entire cosmos." This sentence only has meaning if we know how to put it in our daily activities. Everybody would like to love people in that way. But how can you love everyone like you love your own child? According to me, love is the most precious thing in life. There is one thing that has some meaning and that is love. In the Samyukta Nikaya in the Pali Canon the Buddha said the practice of love is the most beautiful thing. In the Agamas, the Chinese Canon, it says practising love is the purest thing. I think that is an incorrect translation. Because for me practising maitri is practising beauty. In order to love properly you have to understand the other person. You cannot claim to love somebody if you don't understand him or her. If somebody has no love at all that person will be a very lonely person. We look around us, we see those who suffer a lot, that is those who have no love at all. She doesn't love herself, she doesn't love others. He doesn't love himself, he cannot love anyone. Such a person is the most unhappy person on earth. But if you see in yourself a lot of love, you want to love that tree, that flower, the earth, that girl, that boy, that man, that women, then you feel that you are the happiest person on earth.
When you make another person smile, you do something to make another person feel relief, then suddenly you feel very happy. If you do not have a chance to do something to relieve someone else but you have the will to be able to relieve him or her, already that good will is making you happier. Someone who does not have the energy of love, who do not have any will to love, that person is very lost, very lonely and very unhappy. For them this loneliness is like hell, and they feel lost, miserable. So we have to learn to know that loving is a means to help us to make a link between ourselves and other people and other species around us. And we see that we and they are linked deeply by one thing, and that is life. And when we feel that we are one, linked by that deep ocean of life, then we won't have any desire to punish the other person. If you feel hurt by another person try to look deeply at what is behind her mistake, her shortcoming, his unskillfulness. When we try to understand in that way then we feel free from hurt.
Love is the most beautiful thing in this life. And love helps us to have an open mind and to understand better. Love is the most beautiful gift. Our mindfulness is like a mirror. The mirror reflects our body and our mind. In the early morning when you wake up, you look at the mirror and you see your body, and you smile so that your face looks more relaxed. The most beautiful thing of life is love, and an open mind, large view. Try to be open, to listen and to understand more deeply. Those are the most beautiful things of life: understanding, an open mind, to listen and to understand more deeply. We look at things with an open mind, with attention and with a compassionate view. So I advise you in the early morning when you wake up to look in the mirror and smile. Smile to your face, smile to life. And also learn to love yourself and love people around you with an open mind, with deep listening and deep understanding. So you look at somebody with forgiveness, with inclusiveness, but not in observation and discrimination. Look like a mother looks on her fragile little baby.
If you want to practice diligently you must keep a little booklet in your pocket and write notes. Every day that has been offered to you is a very precious day. In Plum Village I know that a number of you have had to abandon everything in order to come here, either for one year, six months, three months or one, five or seven days. That means a lot of preparation. So one day is a lot if you practice properly. So when you have one day of mindfulness you have to organise properly. When we organise a day of mindfulness we have to prepare beautifully: who will take care of walking meditation, who will take care of guided meditation, who will take care of the silent meal, of Touching the Earth etc. You organise a day of mindfulness like that, so why don't you organise yourself, organise your days. When you come here for one day, you must organise it in such a way that every minute of the day will be very precious. Don't let the days drift away in forgetfulness. In the early morning, when you do sitting meditation, why don't you use that time to look deeply in order to see that: "I decided to make this day wonderful, I decided to make this very day a great gift for my life and for the life of others around me." Why, when we do sitting meditation do we just sit and wait for the bell to ring in order to announce the ending of sitting meditation. That is a waste. So, sitting meditation time is to look deeply, to prepare how we can make our day wonderful. In the sitting meditation time during the first period you practice calming, and during the second period you should look deeply to make your day beautiful, the happiest day of your life, and the happiest day for the person next to you and those around you.
"We must bring our boundless love to offer to all living beings in the entire cosmos. We should let our boundless love permeate the whole universe." Your love can be developed infinitely in different directions. There are some things that can only expand to a certain limit, but your love can expand indefinitely, boundlessly. You should let your boundless love pervade the whole universe, above, below and across." When the other person betrays you, when the other person destroys you, when the other person is cruel to you, that will not shake you, that will not reduce your love. That is true love. If you can love the person who hates you, if you can love the person who destroys your life, that is the love of a great being. But if you only love those who are very loveable, that is not difficult. That is enjoyable, it is not a real practise of love. If you can love the person who is despicable, that is real love, that is a training.
If a certain person behaves in such a way it is because they have had less chance than you. They may have listened to a talk of Thay, but they have not had other favourable conditions you had in your background. That is the reason why you can love them even if they are not a loveable person.
"Our love will know no obstacle." In order to be able to expand our love like that, we need to practice deep looking. Because without practising deep looking, you cannot love easily. The Buddha said that only love can answer hatred. Because if you answer hatred with hatred, the hatred will increase and will destroy not only yourself and the other person but also the whole universe. So only love can answer hatred. "Our love will know no obstacle. Our heart will be absolutely free from hatred and enmity."
"Whether standing or walking, sitting or lying, as long as we are awake, we should maintain this mindfulness of love in our own heart. This is the noblest way of living." We have to cultivate mindfulness of love the whole day long. When you walk, it is for love. When you sit, it is for love. When you are lying down, it is for love. When you work, it is for love. When you do everything it is for expressing love, it is motivated by love. When you walk, you sit, you are lying down, you work, all are for expressing your love. When you ask the baby to eat and it doesn’t want to, you say: "Please, eat one spoonful for mummy, one spoonful for daddy, one spoonful for your sister." You love yourself, your sangha body, your spiritual path, your teacher, and that is why every act you do is for expressing love.
The mindfulness of love is the presence of love everywhere, every moment of your days. When you are mindful of your love, you can enter slowly into love concentration. Love concentration is everywhere, and your address, your zip code is love: maitri, karuna, mudita, and upeksa. Maitri means giving joy, karuna is removing suffering, mudita is feeling joy and upeksa is loving without discrimination, like the right hand loves the left hand. If you cultivate that concentration all day long: when you walk, when you sit, when you eat, when you work, then you are living in the deep concentration of love. It’s called maitri concentration, and you can dwell in maitri concentration all day long. "This is the noblest way of living." And thanks to this you will be "free from wrong views, greed, and sensual desire. And you live in beauty and you realise perfect understanding. That perfect understanding is that you are a Buddha. When you cultivate deep concentration of love you are free from wrong views and you will listen to even the most difficult people very carefully, and try to understand them deeply, their difficulties, their environment, their childhood, and when you do like that, you will arrive at the great understanding that is the perfect understanding of an enlightened one. "Those who practise boundless love will certainly transcend birth and death."
The next chant is: We Are Truly Present. "We are truly present, our heart established in mindfulness." When you spend half an hour chanting you dwell peacefully, mindfully in every word. These words are only words of the wise ones, so your mind and your heart are totally with the wisdom of the words. You have already practised sitting meditation, walking meditation in the meditation hall, and you have recited the sutra. Kinh hanh is slow walking meditation in the meditation hall. Kinh means weaving, stringing together and every step is like one thread. In the past when we bound the sutra, we used a needle and thread to go through each sheet to keep them together. So kinh means the thread which weaves all our steps into oneness. Kinh hanh means using the threads of our conscious breath to go through every one of your steps and bring our steps into oneness. Kinh means taking a thread and putting every sheet together, or all the beads together. When you have a necklace of pearls you need a thread to go through every pearl in order to make a necklace. The thread is kinh. Kinh hanh means you use your mindful breath to go through each of your steps. It’s difficult to translate. Kinh hanh means you walk mindfully and slowly in the meditation hall. When you walk one hundred steps, you have one hundred mindful steps. If you walk mindfully then your thread will go through every sheet, but if you walk with your mind on different things in different directions, your thread will be broken and the sheets will go in different directions. So if one of your steps is stepping into the world of suffering, anger, jealousy, that pearl will not go onto your thread to make the beautiful necklace.
"We are truly present, our hearts established in mindfulness for sitting meditation, kinh hanh, and reciting the sutra. May the three jewels and the holy nagas support this meditation centre." When you say Namo But Thich Ca Mau Ni or Namo Bo Tat Quan The Am it means you evoke the name of Avalokitesvara or Gautama Buddha, and you see that you walk with the feet of Gautama Buddha or Avalokitesvara.
This is the practise of recollection of the Buddha, evoking the name of the Buddha, or evoking the name of the Dharma or the Sangha. During the time we practice silent kinh hanh, or we practice kinh hanh while evoking the name of the Buddha, we weave our steps with the evocation of the image of the Buddha in us, or the image of being peaceful at every step. We know what the sutra says, but we still recite it again because it is not a matter of obtaining more knowledge but a matter of practising, training ourselves to live the words of these phrases. We already know these gathas, we know every word. But when you recite again, you look dee and you may discover many things that the first recitation does not enable you to see. You have to recite with your deep look. But if your mind goes in ten thousand directions, even if your words are recited beautifully it won't help.
Maybe you have recited that sutra for the last ten years but you haven’t understood the meaning. But suddenly one night when you recite the words a great world opens in front of you and you discover many beauties. Every time you recite a sutra like that, it’s like a sword that can cut through your ignorance. A sword can cut your ignorance every day. Maybe today you think that this is one recitation like many other recitations. But you never know, your concentration may be deep and suddenly some word of the chanting goes deep into you and you get a deep insight. So you can be enlightened during recitation of the sutra, too.
"May the three jewels", the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha in you. Buddha is also the historical Buddha. Dharma is the methods that help you to transform your habit energy, and Sangha is those around you. The Vietnamese version also mentions the Holy Spirit that helps you, because we believe that when you practise many holy spirits come together with your spirit to make things much better. Good energy attracts good energy. "May the three jewels and the Holy Spirit support this meditation centre with its four sanghas, protect them and support them". I think that the English text has to be translated by Holy Spirit more than naga. Naga doesn’t have any meaning for people. And naga sometimes means snake. For Indians the holy snake is very beautiful, but for Western friends snake is a very bad sign. So we must translate it as the Holy Spirit. The four sanghas are the sangha of monks, the sangha of nuns, the sangha of laymen and the sangha of laywomen.
We may think that there were three different jewels. But in fact the three jewels are one. We cannot divide them. There is the Buddha. But how can we have the Buddha if we don't have the Dharma, the methods to practise in order to make your Buddha become bigger and bigger every day. And how can you make your Buddha become bigger every day without the sangha? So Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are one.
The Buddha said that there are six domains. The domain of spirit, the domain of attula, that is those who are very angry, the domain of beasts, the domain of hungry ghosts, the domain of those who live in hell, and the domain of humans. So when you recite the sutra you think that you recite for yourself, but maybe there are holy spirits who are coming and listening to you, and also attula and hungry ghosts too. So you have to recite properly, with dignity, with beauty. If you don't recite, don't do it. But if you do recite, do it with beauty, correctly, like you are a human who is reciting for all the six domains. And there are other living beings who come listening to this chanting, please support and protect them. When you read to this point, you must see the presence of six realms that are around us, even though they are not visible to our eyes, they listen to us, observe us and learn with us. If we do something wrong we can hide it from some of our brothers and sisters in the Dharma, but we cannot hide from all the six realms around us who are trying to practice with us too.
"Protect us from the eight misfortunes." The eight misfortunes are situations in which the dharma is not available. The first one is hell. In hell nobody gives you a dharma talk. When you are a hungry ghost, you cannot easily receive the dharma. The third one is the realm of animals. The fourth is the deva realm, where living beings enjoy a lot of sensual pleasures. The fifth is a place very far away, remote, where the Dharma has difficulty to reach. The sixth is to be in a situation of misfortune where you cannot learn the Dharma. For example when you are deaf, when you cannot speak, when you are heavily handicapped, when you are blind, you cannot see the sutras, you cannot see the Dharma in that situation. The seventh is a place where people are very eloquent. There are monks who live peacefully, behave simply, have beautiful behaviour, and he are "spiritual teachers" but although they speak eloquently it’s very intellectual or like an eloquent lawyer. He can say something that is wrong and make it sound right. Among you there are those who have the seeds of eloquence. Be very careful.
Also there is misfortune like oppression, fire, flooding, and disaster these are unfavourable conditions for a practitioner. It's strange that the fifth accident is humans. Some humans are very naughty and try to prevent you from practising the beautiful path. And there are those who are not human who also cause difficulties for you. Harmful bacteria, parasites, poisonous insects, small living beings who can kill you, who can cause difficulty to your practise. The eighth one is the government opposing you. And disease too. And the three paths are the three obscure paths: hell, hungry ghost and animal. You have to see that in each of us we have these three paths, and we also have the six realms in us. Don't think that these six kinds of living being are outside of you, that the three paths are outside of you. They are in you. Only with mindfulness can you observe and you will transform.
The four objects of gratitude, four things that we feel grateful for are: parents and ancestors, teachers, friends and living beings. In the Vietnamese text it says, "impregnate with divine grace, heavenly grace." The three worlds are the world of desire, the world of form and the world of no-form.
"May there be no place in the world at war. May the winds be favourable, the rains seasonable and the people’s hearts at peace. May the practise of the sangha be steady and diligent, ascending the ten bhumis without hardship." The ten bhumis are the ten stages for becoming a bodhisattva. "May the Sanghakaya live in peace and joy." The Mahasangha practices diligently. Mahasangha can mean five or six persons, and it means something like noble, great practice. A person who practices to be a bodhisattva has to go through ten bhumis, ten stages.
The first one is the stage of joy, mudita. The sign that you are on the way to become a bodhisattva is that you have a lot of joy. Looking at your face, at your behaviour, people know that you have a lot of joy. That is one sign that you are a bodhisattva.
The second stage is purity. It means to be far away from all that is impure. All the impurities in your mind and your body are already transformed. When you look at your negative energies and you are able to transform them then you are entering into the second stage of a bodhisattva. You are distanced from the negative energy in you. If you can get away from the negative energies, it is thanks to the practise of the five mindfulness trainings, the fine manners and the precepts.
Then you arrive at the third stage that is emanating light. When you keep the mindfulness trainings properly and your mind is far away from all the negative energies, then you emanate a lot of light, freshness, solidity and freedom. People see that you have a lot of joy. When you see someone who practises mindfulness really beautifully it is as though that person is emanating light.
At the fourth stage your insight, your wisdom starts to be enlightened. Your deep vision, your deep insight starts to be illuminated and it makes all your ignorance, confusion, negative desires, cravings disappear. The Venerable Master Tang Hoi used to say: "Zen means burning all your afflictions."
Now we arrive to the fifth stage, winning against all difficulties. In your path there are always difficulties, but you can transcend all these difficulties, the difficulties which are inside and those which are outside. If you have difficulties, you don't care. Some difficulties are caused by your parents, your friends, and the negative situation of your body, your health. You transcend all, you overcome all. Every time a difficulty arises, you overcome it.
The sixth stage is dwelling deeply in the present moment, one hundred percent in the present moment. You see the pure land in you and around you, and at the same time you see all the difficulties of life. But you are not shaken by them. You know that is life. You look deeply and gently, you try to overcome and transform it to the best of your ability.
The seventh stage is you go very far in the direction of saving people. After being in practice for a few weeks, we might think, "I know everything, breathing in, breathing out, walking in mindfulness, that I know, that's enough. So I don't need to go far." But we want to go far, we don't feel satisfied with just a bit of learning and practice."
The eighth bhumi is immobility. This means very deep stability. You are very stable, you are not shaken by anything. Even an earthquake will not shake you. Any big afflictions cannot affect you. Any craving, attraction cannot shake you. You arrive at a stage where nothing can shake you: anger, money, temptation of sex or fame, nothing can shake you, nothing can tempt you.
When you arrive at the ninth stage you are totally master of your mind. You act, you speak, you do everything in an effortless, beautiful way. When you open your mouth, it's only beautiful speech, when you act, its only beautiful action. When you do everything, it is always naturally in a beautiful way.
And then you arrive at the tenth stage, the Dharma cloud stage. You are free like a cloud. Wherever you are joyful, you stop. When there are some difficulties, you transform. When something tempts you, you will not be tempted. It's very easy, you become like a cloud, not a normal cloud carried away by the wind, but a Dharma cloud.
"May the Sanghakaya lives in peace, joy and harmony." The word sanghakaya is mostly used only in Plum village. The sutras speak a lot about Buddhakaya and Dharmakaya, but rarely about Sanghakaya. I believe that Sanghakaya is the best way to learn how to transcend our egocentricity, our tendency to be so sure of ourselves, and to practise the non-self training. Because if you live with the sangha you see the wisdom that your sister in the Dharma is yourself, your brother in the Dharma is yourself. You see the lovely sister is yourself, you see the difficult brother is yourself and you practise to live in the sangha.
You practise so that your Buddhakaya, your Dharmakaya will be great every day. Kaya means body, Buddhakaya is the body of the Buddha. Dharmakaya means body of the Dharma. The teaching will be great every day. Sanghakaya, the body of the sangha will be great every day. "May the Sanghakaya live in peace, joy and harmony, the refuges and the precepts bringing happiness and wisdom." We need to live so that our Sanghakaya will be fresh and new and joyful every day, so that everyone around us can take refuge properly in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha in themselves and practice the precepts properly to bring happiness and wisdom to themselves and those around.
In Buddhism we say that we try to practice two things, punya and prajna. Punya means you practice to obtain merit. And prajna means you practice to gain understanding. When you clean the house for the community, you garden a lot, you wash the dishes, you do a lot of hard work for the sangha, you do merit work, punya. But if you do that work and are not carried away by your thinking, dwelling peacefully in the present moment one hundred percent, you obtain at the same time great understanding. So when we work or we help the hungry children, we obtain some merit, but if we do that work in order for great understanding to come and embrace everyone then that merit will be very great.
You practice everything with punya and prajna at the same time. When you clean the house, you do it not for cleaning the house but to practice to cultivate your concentration, to live deeply in the present moment, to be deeply present in every act. We call that practising merit and understanding together. And the more we do it, the greater our merit. So while you are helping the sangha by cleaning the house, doing the gardening, cutting the wood, shopping, cooking, this is only merit work, and merit work is very little. But if you do it with mindfulness, you live deeply the present moment, you are not carried away by anger, hatred, and dispersion, then you practice prajna at the same time. Enlightenment work and merit work must go together and nothing can shake you.
"The wisdom of awakened mind shines like the full moon." We practise so that we will be the mind and body of the Buddha. "The mind of the Buddha is always clear like the full moon. The body of a Buddha is pure like crystal. The Buddha living in the world always tries to save others. Wherever there is the mind of the Buddha there is compassion and love. Namo Sakyamuni Buddha." Our respect to Gautama Buddha. Muni is monk, Sakya is the family name of Gautama Buddha. Sakyamuni is the monk Sakya. If you visit my hermitage, you'll see a bowl made of clay. It was offered to me in India by a monk who also has the family name Sakya. (The bowl is in the Upper Hamlet now.) Ten years ago I visited Lumbini, the place where the Buddha was born and I met with this monk who has the same family name, Sakya, as Gautama Buddha. He appeared and he said: "I heard that you were coming. I’ve been waiting for you for several days already, to give you this bowl." And he gave me this bowl of clay and a sanghati. I don't know why. I arrived silently, there was no advertisement of my coming to Lumbini at all. We came like an unknown group of people making a pilgrimage. But when we arrived, that monk said: "I’ve been waiting for you and I offer you this bowl and this sanghati robe."
When you want to show respect to a Buddha statue or a shrine, according to the tradition in India, when you put your sanghati on you have the right shoulder bare, free and then you walk around the Buddha and you have to go in a clockwise direction with that shoulder facing inward. If you go in the wrong direction they know that you don't know Buddhist tradition. You walk mindfully around the Buddha. According to Vietnamese tradition, you join the palms when you walk in kinh hanh, (slow walking meditation), but in the West you may join your palms if you wish, but it's okay not to. But when you evoke the name of the Buddha or Avalokitesvara, you have to join the palms. We try to do it that way to show our respect. To show your respect is to practice merit, but when you walk mindfully without letting your mind go in ten directions you also practise enlightenment. And merit and enlightenment work must go together.


















Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on July 21, 1998 in Plum Village, France.
The Nature of Self
© Thich Nhat Hanh
Good morning, my dear friends, my dear Sangha. Today is the 21st of July, 1998, and we are in the Upper Hamlet. I would like to tell you the story of Blanche. Her Vietnamese name is To, which means "white," and today we call her Blanche. Blanche was a little blind girl who lived with her father and her mother in a little house, at the foot of a mountain where there was a large forest. Her father was a very loving father, and he had made her a flute from bamboo. Blanche played the flute very well. She was a very talented young girl, and she had discovered how to play the flute by herself. Before she was blind, she did not play every day, but after she became blind she would go to the forest and play every afternoon.
Blanche was blind because of a chemical that was sprayed on the mountains and the forests in Vietnam, during the war. Guerrillas hid themselves in the jungle and on the mountains, and the pilots could not see them; therefore they flew airplanes over the mountains and the jungle to spray the forest with Agent Orange. After a week all the leaves would fall, and the trees become bare, then the movement of troops could be seen from an airplane, in order to bomb and kill the enemies. And one day when Blanche was playing her flute in the forest, an airplane came and sprayed the chemical, and it fell on her, and that is how she became blind.
One day she heard that her father died as a soldier in a battle. She could not believe it. How could a person die? She didn’t know what death was, except that one day she had seen a little bird dead, close to her house, and no matter what she had done the little bird could not be revived. She was not going to see her father again, because her father was like the dead bird. So she lived only with her mother. When she heard that her father had died, she was very sad; and that was why she played the flute every day, in order to relieve her sorrow. She was crying, and telling every one, every tree, every cloud, every insect in the forest of her pain and her suffering, and that is how she got relief. Playing flute was her every day practice to gain more peace, more calm and so on. No one could help her, except the flute. Her mother had to cut wood, and transport it to the nearby market to sell, so that she could buy the things she needed. Blanche used to accompany her to the market, pulling the wooden cart, so that her mother wouldn’t have to push too hard. After she became blind, she was still able to help her, and she went with her mother to the market to sell wood. Her mother always bought something in the market for her to eat before they went home, a cake wrapped in banana leaves, or something like that.
One day when Blanche was playing the flute in the forest, she heard someone approaching. She stopped playing, and asked, "Who’s there?" There was no answer, and she asked again, "Who’s there? What is your name?" There was still no answer, but she knew that there was some one very close to her. Finally, she heard someone walking close to her, and then someone began to speak in a very funny way—it seemed that that someone did not know how to speak. "My…my…my name is…Peter." It was a little boy about eleven or twelve. His Vietnamese name is Thach Lang; translated into English, that is "Stone Boy," and that is why I use the name Peter, because Peter or Pierre also means "stone boy."
"Where did you come from? How old are you?" She kept asking him that question. When she had heard a few words from Peter she knew already that this was a young person, a boy. Although she could not see, her way of listening was wonderful and she could already visualize the young man. He was very silent. He tried to say something, but it seemed as though he did not know how to speak the human language. Finally he could say that his name was Peter, and that he came from the top of a mountain very far away. That is all the information she got. She said, "Come over here," with a lot of authority. So Peter came, and Blanche used her ten fingers in order to explore his face. She smiled. "I was right, you are twelve years old, and your face is in the shape of a mango." In fact, his face was in the shape of a mango. They became friends very quickly. Amazingly, during one hour of sitting and chatting together, he learned a lot of words, and they began to speak to each other. He began to tell her what was around them, the kinds of trees, and the colors of the trees, the colors of the leaves, the colors of the trunks. At that time the trees were beginning to grow new leaves.
Blanche invited Peter to her home, and they were given dinner by her mother. This was the first time that Blanche had had a guest in her house, and this boy was a wonderful boy. He did not say much, and it was very difficult to get information about where he had come from, who his father and mother were. Blanche’s mother was very careful, because she did not want to touch the seed of suffering in anyone—maybe the father of the boy had already died in battle, maybe his mother was sick—so she was very careful not to ask too many questions. Blanche also learned the way of her mother, and she stopped asking questions. But they continued to talk, and after dinner they went out and played near the brook, and she asked him to tell her what he saw around him. Because of that exercise he continued to learn how to say things.
Peter stayed many days in that home, and became a real brother to Blanche. They were very happy as friends, and he learned to call the mother of Blanche "Mommy." So the two children helped Blanche’s mother to put the logs on the cart, and they helped her to pull and to push the cart to the market. During the trip Peter continued to describe to Blanche everything that he saw around. At one time she said, "Peter, you are my eyes. With you around I am no longer blind. It is wonderful to have you with me. Don’t leave me, because as long as you are close to me, I don’t have the impression that I’m a blind girl any more. " She was very happy.
But something awful happened during that day. There was fighting breaking out in the market, there was bombing, there was shooting, there was burning of the houses, and the two children lost their mother. She was going to a shop to buy some kerosene for the lamp, but because of the fighting she got lost. And they did not know whether she died or whether she was kidnapped by someone. After waiting and waiting until the sun was about to set, they decided to go home and take refuge in their home. They cried a lot, especially Blanche, and on day Peter proposed that they set out on a journey to find the mother who had been lost. Both of them believed very strongly that if they could find the mother, then everything would be fine again. Remember, that is what they believed: if we are able to find our mother again, then everything will be alright again—there will be no war, there will no fighting, there will be no chemical poisons, and everything will be fine again. That was their strong belief. Blanche believed that when her mother gave her birth, that she also gave birth to the mountains and rivers around her, and the birds, the fish, the streams, and everything. She believed her mother to be someone who could create her and create the cosmos around her, and that if something was wrong, it was because they had lost their mother. If they were able to find their mother again, then everything will be fine again. So the purpose of the two children was to find Mother. I think all us believe the same thing, we are still trying to find our mother.
(Bell)
I know something about Peter. That day, sitting on the top of the mountain, he heard the sound of the flute. Someone was playing the flute down there, at the foot of the mountain, and the sound of the flute was wonderful. The music spoke a lot to him, and suddenly he was born. Alone, he tried to find his way down from the top of the mountain to see who was playing the flute, and finally he discovered Blanche, sitting at the foot of a tree and playing. That afternoon they met each other and became friends, became something like brother and sister to each other. Blanche had the talent of playing the flute, and Peter had the talent of singing. We don’t know how he learned to sing like that, so that every time he sang he was able to make the sky and the earth quiet. He could even make the fighting quiet. He just sat down very quietly with solidity and freedom, and raised his voice to sing. A storm could be dissipated by his singing. While he was singing, many birds would come from many directions and circle around, over his head. That happened always, every time Peter started singing.
During the battle when the children lost their mother, it was awful—they heard the cry of children and adults dying or being wounded, they heard the sounds of the houses burning, they heard the shouting, the fighting--and suddenly Peter sat up. It is very dangerous to sit up or stand up during a bombing, because the bombs could kill you. The safest way is to lie down flat every time there is shooting or bombing going on. All the children in Vietnam knew that: every time there was fighting and shooting you had to get flat. Blanche was very used to that, and she pulled Peter down and got him to lie very still. But at one point Peter would not obey her any more, because it was very oppressive—the war, the fighting, the crying, the shouting—that is why he sat up and began to sing. And as his voice rose like that, suddenly there was a transformation in the air, and the storm of the battle seemed to die, and a lot of birds came and circled around their heads, and finally the fighting died down and the soldiers left. The people in the village began to come out and help the people who were wounded in the fighting and bombing. Now, Blanche was able to sit up, and both children began to inquire about their mother, only to find that she was not there. They spent many hours looking and asking neighbors, but no one saw her, and so they went home. A number of days later they decided to go on a long, long trip to look for their mother. Don’t think this is someone else’s story, because this is my story, and it is your story also. All of us are trying to find our real mother, our common mother.
Blanche and Peter went through many dangers. This story is very long, and this morning I am only telling you some of it. Both children got arrested, because the police suspected them of being "liaison children," children who could bring information to the guerrillas. So they were both arrested, and Blanche was put into a school for blind children. After some months in prison, Peter was sent to a school of young army officers, a school for boys whose fathers had already died in battle. Peter was brought to that school, and he had to follow the military discipline, like all the other boys. You know, Blanche and Peter were both artists, and so they suffered very much from that kind of discipline, and they were separated.
One day Peter talked to his friends in the school, and he described the suffering that the children in the country were experiencing. They came together and decided to ask their teachers and the administration of the school, instead of teaching fighting, to teach the children the way to love each other, the way to bring peace and harmony into the school and into society. They dared to come to the teachers and the members of the school administration and to ask them not to teach them how to kill, how to fire guns any more, but teach them something that is more helpful. Because of that action they were arrested, they were not allowed to be students in the school any more, and Peter was locked into the prison with other prisoners, although he was only twelve or thirteen years old.
In prison, Peter met a very strange monk. That monk was in prison too, because he was trying to do something for peace. His name is funny--his name is "the Coconut Monk." I personally have met the Coconut Monk. When he was a young man he went to France and studied engineering, but when he went back to Vietnam, he did not like being an engineer anymore. He wanted to become a monk, and he practiced a lot of sitting meditation. He liked to sit where the atmosphere was calm and fresh, so he climbed up in a coconut tree and built a platform up there, and he sat in meditation up there. That is why people called him the Coconut Monk. I think the son of the American writer John Steinbeck also went to Vietnam, and he had the chance to spend a few months living with the Coconut Monk.
I knew the Coconut Monk. He was doing something that people considered crazy, but he was a real, good monk. He tried to stop the war in his own way. He went to collect pieces of bombs and bullets, and he melted them to make a mindfulness bell. Every night he would invite the bell to sound, and he would chant the name of the Buddha and Avalokitesvara. He told the pieces of metal that he collected, "You have been playing the game of war. Now I would like to help you practice. I am going to transform you into a bell of mindfulness, so that you become enlightened and become a bodhisattva trying to enlighten the people in this country who are sleepy, with brothers fighting and killing each other in a very stupid way." He asked friends to come every night, and he invited the bell to sound, as everyone was breathing in and out and transforming themselves into peaceful people, and not fighters anymore.
One day he went to the Presidential Palace, and he wanted to have an interview with the President of South Vietnam. With him he had a wooden house, with a cat and mouse living inside together. I don’t know how he educated the cat and the mouse, but they co-existed. He gave the mouse things to eat, and the cat things to eat, and neither ate each other. (Laughter.) He wanted to make a declaration: "You see, even the mouse and the cat can co-exist, so why cannot we co-exist with each other as human beings? If I can make the cat and the mouse live together, how is that we human beings cannot live together in peace? Why do we have to fight each other like that? But they still considered him to be a mentally ill person, and they did not allow him to come in and meet the President. He appeared to be a disturbed person, but in fact he had a lot of wisdom. His name, again, was the Coconut Monk. Nguyen Thanh Minh was his "identity name," but people knew him as the Coconut Monk. So Peter saw him and quickly became friends with him in prison.
You know that Peter was a kind of Coconut Monk, too. He did not like the war, he wanted to end the war and bring peace to his people. His purpose was to find his mother, so that everything would be all right again. Because he was collaborating with prisoners in asking for the end of the war, he continued to get into trouble. At that time, not only was the Coconut Monk in prison; there were also other monks in prison. Peter was transferred to another prison where he met three hundred monks, who were in prison because they refused to be drafted into the army. When Peter came he suggested that they start a fast, to say that you cannot lock people up because they do not like the fighting. Many, many people joined the monks in a fast, and everywhere that Peter went he created a movement like that, so that he was described by the administration of the prison as a troublemaker. Finally, they could bear it any more, and they wanted to push Peter to the frontier, to North Vietnam, because he was in the south. There was a little bridge connecting one side of the river to the other, in the Demilitarized Zone, and the name of the river was the Ben Hai. They could not handle Peter, a twelve-year-old boy, so they wanted to expel him to North Vietnam.
In North Vietnam, many people welcomed him, and asked him about the situation in the south. He told people very honestly about the situation in the south, but they wanted to make him into an instrument of propaganda, telling only evil things about the south, and saying good things about the north. But he refused. Everywhere he went he always told the truth: that no one wanted the war, that everyone wanted peace. So the government of North Vietnam did not like him either, and he was exiled to a mountainous area where he had to cut trees and carry bamboo sticks, and he was always watched by a soldier.
One day he was working hard on a mountain, cutting bamboo trees, when he suddenly missed Blanche too much. He saw that the soldier, his guard, was there, and he sat down and began to sing. As he started to sing, all the birds in the area came and circled around him. The soldier was very surprised to see that, and Peter just walked away. He got out of the mountains, and tried to find a way down to the south, to meet Blanche.
Blanche had been living for more than six months in the school for the blind children. That night, Blanche could not sleep. She did not know why she could not sleep. The moon was very bright outside. She could not see the moonlight, yet she knew that the moon was there, and that outside everything was very alive. In the dark she found her flute, and she went out to sit in nature, and she began to play the flute. The sound of the flute guided Peter, so that he could find her, and they met each other again. When Peter recognized Blanche playing the flute, he came close to her, he took her in his arms, and he proposed that they get away from the school for the blind and go back to the mountain where they could find their thatched house again.
It was midnight, but with Peter beside Blanche, there was no danger. The children found their way out of the city, and they began to walk to the highlands, where they went in the direction of the mountain they had originally come from. When they arrived many days later at the thatched house, they did not see Mother. She was still lost, and had not been able to find her way home to the children. So Peter decided to invite Blanche to go to the top of the mountain where he originated. Blanche had never asked him who his mother and father were, and Peter himself did not know how he was born, or who his parents were. Because Blanche was blind, climbing the mountain took a long time. With Peter’s help, Blanche took step after step, in order to climb the mountain, and finally they arrived at the top about 8:00 p.m., when it had already begun to get dark. Of course, Blanche did not see anything. Peter remembered that on top of the mountain there was a very beautiful rock, and in the rock there was a hollow that was as big as a grapefruit. Every night the dew would come and collect in that hollow, and Peter remembered that every time he drank the dew from that hollow he had gotten a lot of energy and happiness. He believed that if he could give that water to Blanche to drink, and if he could use some of it to wash her eyes, that she would recover her eyesight again. He had that conviction. That is why he had invited Blanche to come with him to the very top of the mountain.
When they arrived, it was about eight o’clock in the evening, and they were both very tired. Peter helped Blanche to lie down to sleep. They had a conversation before they slept, and he said that at midnight, when the dew began to fill up the hollow in the rock, he would wake her up so she could drink the water, and so he could use the water to wash her eyes, so that her sight could be restored. Blanche followed his advice, and lay down. Peter used his overcoat as a blanket, and put it on Blanche so that she could sleep. At midnight he woke her up, and helped her to climb up a few meters more, so she could reach the highest point of the mountain, the beautiful rock.
Imagine…it was a full moon night, the full moon night of the fourth month of the lunar calendar. You know, that was the night that the Buddha was born: the full moon night of the fourth night of the lunar calendar. It was exactly that night. So when they arrived at the top of the mountain, Peter used his hands to make a cup for the water, so Blanche could drink. Blanche felt that the atmosphere was very still, very sacred. Suddenly she felt that it was safer for her to kneel down in order to receive the wonderful water, so she knelt down and put her hands in the form of a lotus. By that time, Peter had taken water in his palms, and he gave it to her to drink. She knelt there in a very respectful way, and drank, little by little, that dew, that wonderful water, given to her by Peter. And as she continued to drink, she felt a new source of energy born in her. She felt very refreshed, very joyful. Finally, Peter used that water to wash her eyes three times, very carefully. After that he helped her to go back to the flat rock, and asked her to lie down and continue her sleep. He said, "Go to sleep my sister. I will also go to sleep with you. I will not be far from you. I will stay here and lie down and sleep also, very soon."
Blanche had a very deep and restoring sleep that night. In the morning, when she woke up, she was very surprised to have a very strange feeling. Suddenly she brought her hands to her eyes, because the light was so strong. She did not know that she had recovered her eyesight. She was so surprised when she woke up and had to bring both her hands up to hide her eyes from the light. Very slowly she began to peer through her fingers…and she saw the blue sky for the first time, after so long. And she knew that she had recovered her sight because of the wondrous dew that Peter had used to wash her eyes. She slowly sat up and looked around. It was wonderful. It was the top of the mountain. All around her were the clouds and the dew and the mist covering everything, and she had the impression that she was on an island, completely separated from the world of suffering, war and destruction. It was like heaven. She was like a completely new person, and she was so glad. She was completely healed, she was a new being, and she was so happy. And then she began to think of Peter, and she began to call his name: "Peter! Peter!" and her voice echoed back to her. She heard no response from Peter, and she began to panic. Peter was no longer there.
Suddenly Blanche looked up and saw the stone. The stone was in the shape of a young boy, and it was exactly the shape of Peter. And she suddenly remembered what Peter told her at the foot of the mountain. Peter had said, "My sister, you asked me how I have learned to sing. I don’t know. But I was on the top of the mountain for many, many years…I don’t know how many years I was on the top of the mountain. I had the opportunity to listen to the wind, the rain, and the birds for I don’t know how many millions of years, and suddenly I knew how to sing."
Peter may be a human being, but he may be something else – something more than a human being. Now Blanche saw Peter as a rock, and she believed that initially he was a rock, sitting on top of the mountain for may millions of years, until suddenly one day he heard the sound of the flute coming from the foot of the mountain. Peter had transformed himself into a little boy, and found his way out to see who was playing the flute. At that time, Peter had vowed to become Blanche’s eyes. She remembered one day when she had said to Peter: "Peter, do you know that you are my eyes? With you around, I am no longer a blind person." All these kinds of memories came back to her, and suddenly she began to understand that Peter was her eyes. Peter would never disappear, he would always be there, because now she would always be able to see things again. Peter had not left her. Before that she could not bear it; she had cried, and she had pounded her chest, because there was a lot of attachment in her. She had wanted to be blind again so that Peter would appear to her again. But now, she was enlightened. She saw that now Peter was in her, in the form of eyes, and wherever she went, Peter would be with her. With that kind of understanding and enlightenment, the sorrow in her began to disappear, and she picked up her flute and began to play. And you know something? The flute now expressed her insight, and the clouds and the mist and the blue sky and the rock and the mountains and the trees all stopped, and listened deeply to the sound of her flute.
(Bell)
If you have eyes capable of seeing things around you, you know that Peter is always alive in you. The Buddha is someone who has wisdom, who has eyes capable of seeing things as they are. Many of us are blind because we are not capable of seeing things. We live in ignorance, we live in the dark, and we don’t know where to go. We don’t know how to rediscover our mothers. That is why we need the Buddha so much. The Buddha appears to us like a brother, and he serves as our eyes. Let us not try to find the Buddha in another person, let us try to find the Buddha within ourselves. We have the capacity of looking deeply in order to see the true nature of things, and if we have eyes capable of seeing things as they are, the Buddha is always with us.
I gave that story to a friend to read, and after reading it he said, "Peter is Jesus Christ." I said, "That is true." Jesus Christ is not an entity that you have to look for outside yourself; Jesus Christ is within you. He is the eyes that we need not to be blind any more. Our practice is always to get out of our blindness, to have the kind of eyes that can see things as they are. We know that Peter has not left us at any moment, because he is always in our hearts. If we know how to live mindfully, Peter is always there every moment in our daily lives.
Today the children may like to draw a picture with Blanche, the little girl, and with Peter. And after you have painted or drawn the two children, make another drawing, and this time draw just one person, and in that person you can see both Blanche and Peter at the same time. So, happy practice today. When you hear the bell, you stand up and you bow to the Sangha, and you go out for continued practice.
Dear friends, there is always a better way to practice listening to the bell. When you listen to the bell you may like to allow all your ancestors to listen at the same time. Because all our ancestors are still alive within us, and they are there in every cell of our body. You invite your ancestors to listen to the bell with you, the bell is a voice calling you back to the here and the now, for you to become fully alive again. The sound, first of all, seems to be something outside of you, but if you listen that way, the sound is coming from deep within…the voice of the Buddha inside, calling you back to the safe island of self, and the voice of your ancestors calling you back to life. That is why the sound of the bell is neither outside nor inside, because the reality transcends notions of outside or inside. You can listen deeply, better than when you first began the practice. Allow every cell in your body to open up, so that the sound of the bell can penetrate deep into each cell of your body, or in a different way you can say that you open every cell up so that the sound can come out of it. Your ancestors, whether blood ancestors or spiritual ancestors, are there, present in every cell of your body, and the sound of the bell might come from there or from outside--it does not matter. But to listen to the calling, and to go back to life, to be awake, to be alive, to be in the present moment, is our practice.
Maybe many of our ancestors did not have the chance to practice listening to the bell, and to become fully alive and present in the here and the now, and now you are doing it for them. And suddenly, just by taking one in-breath, you make all your ancestors fully alive at the same time. This is what we can do. Among us there are those who can do it. They sit there with you, they listen to the same sound of the bell, but they can go very deep, they can go very high. So it depends on your insight, your visualization, your concentration, whether the effect of the sound of the bell is deep or not deep enough. Every time you walk, you do the same. You are not a separate entity, and you know that you can walk in such a way that all your ancestors can make the same steps with you, at the same time. When you take a step, your mother also takes a step, your father, your grandmother, your grandfather, and all your ancestors, are taking a step, and the Buddha walks with you, taking that very step with you. Peter is always there. Peter is walking with you at every moment, and walking like that is to liberate yourself from the prison of sorrow that you have locked yourself into. Walking like that can be very liberating. If you walk like that you don’t walk just as a separate individual. You walk in such a way that all your ancestors, blood and spiritual, walk with you. You know that you carry within you all generations of ancestors, and more than that, you carry within you all future generations. Even if you are still very young, your children are already there within yourself, and their children are already there within you. So make a step for all of them, liberate them, liberate our ancestors, and liberate the future generations, by just making one step. And if you can make such a step, you can make two, and you can make three. The practice can go very, very deep.
I would like to share with you a poem that I have been using for eight years now, but it is not available in English or in French. Among you there are poets and composers…I hope you can make it into a piece of music to help with your practice.
Thay recites a poem, consisting of two four-line stanzas.)
Eating in the ultimate dimension,
This is for you to practice during lunchtime. Today you have a formal lunch.
Eating in the ultimate dimension—because there are two dimensions to reality. The first dimension is called the historical dimension . In this dimension of reality you can see the beginning and the ending, the inside and the outside, birth and death, more or less, the coming and the going. It is the dimension of the waves, because looking at each wave you have the impression that there is a beginning to every wave, an ending to every wave, the being and the non-being of the wave. First we think that there was the non-being of the wave, and suddenly there is the being of the wave. And after that there is again the non-being of the wave. So in that historical dimension it seems that all these things exist: being, non-being, beginning, ending, high or low, more or less beautiful, and so on. These kinds of ideas create a lot of suffering and despair and jealousy and anger. So when you are in the historical dimension, please be very careful not to be caught by it.
Then there is another dimension called the ultimate dimension. This ultimate dimension is not separate from the historical dimension. In the case of the wave, it is water, because water cannot be separated from waves; but when you touch water, you don’t see a beginning, an ending, high or low, being or non-being--these notions that we use to speak of waves. The fact is that the wave is a wave, but while living the life of a wave, the wave can very well live the life of water at the same time. So when you live in your historical dimension, you should train yourself touch and to live the ultimate dimension at the same time. That is our practice: be the wave…okay, but you have to be the water. If you are to become stable, free, if you want to have the elements of non-fear and non-discrimination within you, then touching the ultimate dimension is a necessary practice.
A wave can be subject to fear, to jealousy, to discrimination, if she lives very superficially in the historical dimension. She sees that there is a beginning to her life, an end to her life, she sees that she is not the other waves, that she is more or less beautiful than the other waves, that she is struggling with the other waves, and that she suffers quite a lot. But if she bends down and touches the nature of water within her, she sees that she is in the other waves, the other waves are in her, and there is really no beginning and no end, and because of that she gets out of fear, and discrimination and jealousy. So touching the historical dimension deeply, you touch the ultimate dimension. And when you are able to touch the ultimate dimension, all discrimination and fear vanish, and you get the real peace that you deserve.
When you listen to the bell, you can try to listen to the bell in the ultimate dimension, in order to realize that the bell is always there—it’s not because the sister uses a stick and makes contact that the sound is born. The sound is always there. The nature of the sound is no-birth and no-death, always existing. You also share the same nature. Your true nature is the nature of no birth, no death, no beginning, and no end. Unless you touch your true nature of no-birth, no death, you cannot obtain that kind of insight, the insight of no-birth and no-death that will bring to you the element of non-fear, non-discrimination. If you continue to be the victim of discrimination and fear, then suffering is going to continue for a long time. The greatest relief is to be obtained only when you are capable of touching the ultimate dimension. In touching the ultimate dimension, you don’t have to reach out. A wave doesn’t have to reach out in order to touch water, because she is water. Peter is within you, Peter is not a separate identity. While living every moment of your daily life, learn how to touch Peter in you. The nature of Peter is the nature of no-birth and no-death, no coming and no going, and you share the same nature with Peter.
Eating in the ultimate dimension, I nourish all my ancestors. I keep my ancestors alive, because every spoonful that you take is to nourish you, of course, but it is also to keep all your ancestors alive at the same time. By feeding yourself you are feeding all your ancestors, and also your children and their children. Taking one spoonful of food, you know that you are feeding all your ancestors and your children and grandchildren. It is just like walking. All my ancestors walk with me.
When you are in your sitting position, and enjoying breathing in and breathing out, try breathing for your mother, your father, your grandpa, your grandma, or anyone. This is very pleasant to practice. Pick someone, call his or her name: "Mother, please breathe with me." And that is not a visualization, that is the truth. When you breathe, your mother in you breathes also. When you were a tiny living being in the womb of your mother, every time your mother breathed in, you breathed in; every time your mother ate, you ate. The same thing happens now, every time you breathe in, your mother breathes in, your ancestors breathe in, and your child who is already there, or who is to manifest later, they are all breathing in with you. That is the way to breathe in order to touch the nature of no self. People talk a lot about no self, but they don’t know exactly what it is. Here we are not talking about no self, we are living the reality of non-self. When you breathe, you breathe for all your ancestors and your children.
Every thing you do, you do not for yourself alone, you do for us all. And walking like that, breathing like that, listening like that, you are touching the nature of no self. And when you touch the nature of no self, you touch the ultimate dimension. There is no "I," there is no "you," because I am in you, and you are in me. We inter-are. That is not only true with Peter and Blanche, but it is true of everyone else.

Eating in the ultimate dimension, you maintain alive all the generations of ancestors.
You allow, you help coming generations to find a way to go up.
"To go up," means to transcend suffering, to transcend discrimination, to liberate ourselves, our situation and society. We are still caught up with many negative things: discrimination, violence, hatred and so on. So eat in such a way that you can open the way for future generations to transcend all these negative things.
When I sit with you and I eat my meal, I practice that. I chew with these words: I touch deeply the food, I touch deeply the Sangha embracing me, the Sangha in which I take refuge; I allow my ancestors to eat, my children and grandchildren to eat at the same time with me, and I touch the ultimate dimension during the time of eating. Those are the first four lines. The next four lines: eating in the ultimate dimension, you chew in the same way that you breathe, with real rhythm.
You chew and you are aware of what you are chewing. You are aware of the food in your mouth. You chew, and you touch the very nature of the food in your mouth. Eating mindfully is to be aware of what you are eating. If you are mindful, then you can discover the true nature of the food, which is also the nature of interbeing.
Yesterday I talked about the milk we drink every morning. Drinking the milk, you know that it is not only sweet, but that it is also somehow bitter, because of the way we raise the cows, we treat the calves, and so on. We can be aware, when we chew the food, or when we look deeply into the food: we can see the ingredients, the elements that have come together to produce that food. A piece of carrot, a piece of string bean, a piece of tofu, a grain of rice, all these things contain the whole universe, and if you look deeply, you can see the lives of other living beings in it. You can see the compost, you can even see the dry bones of other living beings in the refreshing piece of tofu. A piece of tofu is not only vegetarian. The dry bones of tiny living beings have become compost, and the grain of rice, the piece of tofu, the piece of string bean, contain all of that: the sunshine, the wind, the clouds. Vegetarian and non-vegetarian, all that is inside each piece of food. So if you know that, you will know how to eat in order to keep your compassion alive.
If we know how to produce our food in such a way that we can reduce violence and destruction, and decrease the suffering of living beings, we are keeping alive the compassion inside. The one who grows food, and the one who eats the food, both can help to maintain the compassion within our hearts. We know very well that without that element of compassion within us, we cannot be happy persons. Without compassion we cannot relate to any living beings, including humans. Eating, walking, doing your daily activities—we should learn how to do these things mindfully, in a way that can help compassion to stay alive in us. This is very important, that is our practice, for eating is also to preserve our compassion, because you don’t want to eat the flesh of your own son.
Yesterday Sister Annabel gave a wonderful talk on the Four Nutriments, in English, and those of you in the Lower Hamlet may like to listen to it. Sister Chan Duc elaborated the teaching I had offered the day before on the Four Nutriments. I only spoke about the first two nutriments, and she continued with the third and the fourth. I was talking one day about the therapist as someone who can cook for us, offering us the kind of food that can keep our bodies and our souls sane and healthy. The therapist should also be an architect, in order to create an environment where we feel safe, where we can live our lives with freedom, with stability, where we can be protected, where we will not be destroyed by sickness, depression, and so on. A therapist should practice like an architect, like a cook, like a teacher, like a monk, like a Buddha, creating space where you feel safe, where you get only the sane kind of food, that won’t destroy your body or your consciousness. In our daily lives we consume so many toxins and poisons, we consume a lot of violence and craving and suspicion and despair, and destroy ourselves. So the therapist, like a Buddha, should be able to create a Pure Land, so that people can come and be protected and be healed, be transformed. The therapist should be at the same time a Sangha builder, a Sangha convener, a summoner of practitioners, so that among us there are those who have a solid and joyful practice to support us, to remind us, and to teach us how to live deeply every moment of our daily lives, to breathe, to walk, to listen to the bell, to enjoy our lunch together. Therefore the therapists, like the physicians, have to come together to operate as a Sangha, because alone they cannot fulfil their task of being an architect, a cook, a Sangha builders, of being a Pure Land. Therefore, all of us have to follow the same principle of creating the Pure Land and building a Sangha.
Eating in the ultimate dimension, I chew as I breathe, with rhythm. You might use this gatha, this poem, in order to chew your food, and keep your awareness alive, and touch the ultimate dimension while eating your lunch
Aware of the suffering, we nourish each other. The main thing is to maintain compassion alive, and to help beings going to the other shore.
When we eat, we have to be aware of the suffering also. That does not mean that we have to suffer, because eating can be very joyful, but the background should be always there. To have an opportunity to sit down quietly like that, to have enough time to spend with the Sangha, and to eat this amount of food together in an atmosphere of safety, of friendship and of awareness, is something not many people can afford. That can give rise to a lot of happiness, but you know that happiness is always seen against the background of suffering, in order for happiness to continue. The moment when you exile suffering, happiness will no longer be happiness. It’s as with black and white: white will appear very clearly against a dark background. Happiness is also like that. So, we are with the Sangha, enjoying a meal in mindfulness, the joy of being with the Sangha, the joy of feeling protected and supported by the collective energy of the Sangha; and yet we know that suffering is there in life, in every grain of rice, in every piece of tofu, in every spoonful of milk. That is why we take the vow that, although we have to suffer when we feed each other, we accept that in order for a chance for every living being to go to the other shore, the shore of enlightenment, the shore of safety.
Living beings eat each other, that is a fact. Tigers eat the deer, big fish eat the small fish, and we also consume other living beings. Even if we are vegetarians we can only reduce the eating of living beings to some degree. That is why there is the words ‘Aware of the suffering’ inside, because there is a little bit of suffering in that taste of happiness, enough to keep our awareness alive. Even if I have to become your food, I will practice in order not to let hatred become my nature. I offer myself to you so that you can survive. That is the reality of the world: living beings are eating each other. As practitioners, we cannot entirely escape that situation, but our practice is to keep compassion alive, and to relieve as much suffering as we can through our way of daily living
Aware of the suffering we try to feed each other, even with ourselves. The main thing is to keep compassion alive, and to help beings to the other shore, the shore of safety, stability and freedom.
I think human beings can be described as having a safer life than other living beings. Although we have no right to hunt each other or kill each other--the law forbids it--if we continue to create war, to exploit each other, to make use of others to get rich, to consume more, and we continue to do these things at the expense of other living beings, it is as though we are eating the flesh of our father or mother, our brothers. We are actually one with all of these beings, whether they live in an over-developed country or an under-developed country. We know that if we learn how to refrain from making war, from creating more social injustice and repression, we can bring much more safety to human beings, and at the same time we can better protect the lives of other living beings. Now, war and alcohol and drugs and consumption and violence are making us much less safe in our lives as human beings. In fact, human beings can put themselves in a much safer situation than other living beings, but because of our cravings and discrimination, we have made our situation much less safe than it could be. That is why our practice is to be aware, to be mindful, to live each moment of our lives deeply, so that we can keep compassion alive in our hearts, so that our lives and the lives of those around us become safer. When we enjoy more safety, we will be able to provide more safety to other living beings. We can protect the environment, protect the ecosystem ,so that other living beings can also enjoy safety.

With the awareness of suffering in my heart, we nourish each other. We know that the main thing is to keep compassion alive and to help living beings cross to the other shore, the shore of greater safety, the shore of more freedom." It is so easy to practice in Vietnamese, because it is the kind of poem that has only five words in each line.
I use the poem in order to maintain my mindfulness of life. You might like to use that poem in English, or German. You might rewrite it so that it will fit the rhythm of your practice.

I am blooming as a flower, I am fresh as the dew. I chew according to this gatha also. I also use the gatha: This is the Pure Land, the Pure Land is here. This also is a song that is available in Vietnamese, but our friends who do not speak Vietnamese have not had a chance to learn and to practice it. Thay Doji has tried to translate it into French; but because he used the Vietnamese music, it does not sound very natural to the French ear, so I hope that someone will help with new music. Each line has only four words:
Day la tinh do
Tinh do la day
Mim cuoi chanh niem
An tru hom nay.
But la la chin
Phap la may bay
Tang than khap chon
Que huong noi nay.
Tho vao hoa no
Tho ra truc lay
Tam khong rang buoc
Tieu dao thang ngay.
I chew my food with this poem. And the meaning is this:
This is the pure land;
The pure land is right here.
This mindful smile helps me
To establish myself in the present moment.
Look, I see the Buddha as a red leaf,
And the dharma as a cloud.
My Sangha is everywhere,
And my true homeland is just right here.
Breathing in, I see the chrysanthemum blooming;
Breathing out, I see the bamboo bending.
My mind is totally free,
And I enjoy it day after day.
During that time of breathing, you keep the Pure Land alive, in the here and the now. Yesterday I said that it’s up to you to choose either hell or the Pure Land, because both hell and the Pure Land are there in every cell of your body. If you allow hell to manifest, it will manifest. All of us have experienced how hot hell is, but if you want to choose the Pure Land, you can do that. Just make use of your breathing, your walking, in order to make the Pure Land manifest. With these methods of walking, of breathing, of eating, you keep the Pure Land alive. You don’t have to die in order to enter the Kingdom of God; in fact, you have to be very alive to do so. With full awareness, when you become fully alive, you only need to make one step, and there you are—in the Kingdom of God.

So I repeat this gatha:
This is the Pure Land
The Pure Land is here.
This mindful smile helps me
To establish myself in the present moment.
Look! I see the Buddha as a red leaf;
Look! I see the Dharma as a cloud.
My Sangha is everywhere…

Everything I see, I identify as elements of my Sangha--the blue sky, the clouds, the leaves, the trees, the birds, the pebbles, the path where I practice walking meditation-- everything belongs to my Sangha. I don’t have to go back to my hometown in order to find my Sangha. My Sangha is everywhere. Everything around me supports my being awake. Every sound, every sight supports and maintains me in the Pure Land. My lack of mindfulness alone can bring me out of the Pure Land, but everything else around me is supporting me in order to nourish me in the Pure Land.

My Sangha is every where,
And my true home is right here in the here and the now.
Breathing in, I see the chrysanthemum blooming,
Breathing out I see the bamboo bending
My mind is fully free,
And I enjoy it day after day, month after month.
Please make use of that gatha, rewrite it in German, in Italian, in English, in French. We offer it to our friends as a gatha of practice for our walking meditation, our sitting meditation, and our mindful lunch.
There was a nuclear scientist who lived in England, named David Bohm. He used the terms "the explicate order" and "the implicate order." His insight is similar to the insight of the historical dimension and the ultimate dimension. He said that in the explicate order, you see things outside of each other. A table is outside of a flower, and you are outside of me. But the other dimension of reality can be called implicate order, that is, if you look deeply, you see that the flower is in the table and that the table is in the flower. One electron can be everywhere at the same time, and one electron is made of every electron, and so on. It is very much the insight of interbeing, and in the implicate order, everything contains everything else. Just as I said yesterday, looking deeply into a flower you can see a cloud, you can see the sunshine, you can see the earth, you can see the compost, you can see everything in the cosmos within it. So, we know that looking deeply helps us to see the ultimate dimension, the implicate order, and we get rid of notions like inside and outside, this or that; we get rid of pairs of opposites.
In Buddhist language, we have the term nirvana. It is another term to describe the ultimate dimension of reality. Nirvana means first of all extinction. You may ask, extinction of what? It is first of all the extinction of ideas, such as birth and death, inside and outside, being and non-being. These ideas are responsible for our fear, our illusion, our suffering, our discrimination. Inside my right hand there is the wisdom of nondiscrimination. My right hand never discriminates against my left hand. The insight of interbeing is there in my right hand, in both hands. That is why they can be together all the time, they can be in harmony with each other all the time. Nirvana is first of all the extinction of ideas, of pairs of opposites. It also means the extinction of the kind of suffering that can be created by these ideas. Because of these ideas, we have created a lot of fear and suffering, so when we are able to remove the ideas, then we can remove the suffering caused by these ideas. Death for instance--death is an idea. And birth is also an idea.
When you look deeply into a sheet of paper, and also into yourself, you will be able to touch your nature of no-birth and no-death. To be born, according to our idea, is to become something from nothing. From no one, you suddenly become someone. That is our idea of birth. But if we practice looking deeply, we see that that is a wrong idea, because nothing can become something from nothing. A sheet of paper, before it came into existence, had been something else. You can see a sheet of paper in a tree, you can see a sheet of paper in a cloud, because touching this sheet of paper with your mindfulness, you can see a cloud inside. You don’t have to be a poet in order to see that: you know that if there were no cloud there would no rain, and no tree could grow. If the tree could not grow, you could not have the sheet of paper, because this sheet of paper is made from a kind of paste made of trees. So it is sure that the cloud is in the sheet of paper, and if you try to remove the cloud, the sheet of paper will collapse. There would be no paper at all if there were no cloud. That is interbeing—the cloud is inside the paper.
You can see that the sheet of paper was not born from nothing, it was born from something. It was born from the cloud, and from the sunshine, because the sunshine also helped the tree to grow. It was born from the logger, who cut down the tree, and it was also born from many other elements. So, before the sheet of paper was born, it had already been something. The day of its birth is only a day of continuation. You can see the previous lives of the sheet of paper. That is why it is better to celebrate our birthdays by singing "Happy Continuation Day." Really the moment of your birth is only a moment of continuation. Before you were born of your mother, you had been there in her for many months. That was not exactly the day of your birth. You may be tempted to think that the real day of your birth was the day of your conception, but if you ask the same questions, you will find out that even before that day you had already been there somewhere. Maybe half in your father, or before your father was born, you had been there in your grandfather, in your grandmother. It is a very interesting trip to go and search for your identity, your origin. In the Zen circles, they sometimes give as a subject of meditation a question such as, "Tell me what your face looked like before your grandmother was born?" That is an invitation for you to go and find out your true nature. If you do well, you will touch the nature of no-birth and no-death. You will know that you have never been born. You have gone through a series of transformations, of renewals, but the idea of being born is just an idea. If you have never been born, how can you die? The idea of dying is that from something you suddenly become nothing, from someone, you suddenly become no one.
When we burn this sheet of paper, you may think that it will die and become nothing, but that is not true. After it is burned, the sheet of paper becomes clouds again, becomes smoke, becomes ash, and becomes the heat that penetrates your body and the cosmos. It would be very interesting if you could follow the journey of the sheet of paper. You could go to the cloud and observe what the cloud is doing, and what the sheet of paper is doing. You could go after the heat produced by the burning of the sheet of paper, and see how far it can go, and what it will produce in the future. You could follow the amount of ash, to see what kind of flower it will become in a few months. It would be a very interesting discovery. The true nature of the sheet of paper is no-birth and no-death, and you also share the same kind of nature. Your true nature is no-birth and no-death, and that nature we call nirvana. The Buddha said that you can touch nirvana, even with your body. You can touch your true nature of no-birth and no-death, even with your body. It is like the wave—the wave can touch her nature, namely water, but she is water. What is the subject of touching and what is the object of touching, when the wave touches water? She is already water, why does she have to touch it? Nirvana is our true nature, Peter is our true nature, and we don’t have to look for him or for her. Our true nature is no-birth and no-death. With the practice of deep listening, of deep touching, of deep looking, we will be able to touch our true nature, and we will be able to free ourselves from notions, from ideas, from fear, from discrimination, and that is the way we can get the greatest relief with the practice.
Yesterday there was a question on life and death: from where have we come, and after dying, what are we going to be? The most important topic of meditation is life and death. They always say so; the matter of life and death is the greatest subject of meditation. The business of life and death is a big business, which means it is the object of your meditation. When meditating on the object of life and death, you will be able to touch the ultimate dimension, the nature of no-life and no-death, and you will touch nirvana, even with your body.
So there is a continuation. You might come to a practice center to learn the practice in order to get some relief, to undergo some transformation and healing. You might suffer less because of the practice of sitting and walking and breathing, total relaxation, touching the earth...yes! But the greatest relief can only be obtained if you are able to touch nirvana, to touch the ultimate dimension, and that is not something outside of our capacity. When we look at the wave, we know that the wave can lead her life as a wave, but if she knows how to live her life as water, the quality of her life will be much greater. She will not suffer a lot, like the other waves who don’t know that they are, at the same time, water.

The Time-Being Part 1
A teisho by Augusto Alcalde
The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world, seeing each thing in this entire world as a moment of time. Things do not hinder one another, just as moments do not hinder one another. The way-seeking mind arises in this moment. A way-seeking moment arises in this mind. It is the same with practice and with attaining the way. Thus the self setting itself out in array sees itself. This is the understanding that the self is time.
Here we take up again Dogen Zenji's teaching and the marvellous use of language he has through the entire Shobogenzo. Indeed, each phrase, sometimes a word, but each phrase in the whole book is a koan itself, within the true meaning of the word “koan”: the intimate relationship between the essential and the phenomenon. Here we have an essay called “The Time Being”, Uji . Sometimes it is possible to translate this also as ‘The identity of self and time’, or ‘The identity of being and time’—in other words, the ‘oneness’.
He says: The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world . This is a very interesting point. “The way the self arrays itself”: we say we have the process of the five skandhas getting together and so here we are. And at a certain moment the five skandhas disappear, each to its own place, and we are gone. So that is one way in which the self arrays itself: the five skandhas that we chant about in our Heart Sutra get together in a particular way and we come forth. Of course, when we see that with the eye of Kanjizai (or Avalokiteshvara), we are able to see the pure and clear empty quality of those five skandhas and, as our sutra says, transcend all suffering, all uneasiness.
But also in Dogen Zenji's teaching I think we can distinguish two ways of the self arraying itself. One is when he says: “That the self advances to the ten thousand things and confirms them is called delusion”. That is a process from the self towards the ten thousand beings, or each one of them: what we call ‘delusion’. That means that is just a name: we call it ‘delusion’, but essentially it is just a function of going out, naming, relating with things and beings according to their function. So that is one way the self advances into the world, and in a certain way, creates it by being aware of it. The other way is when Dogen points out: “That the ten thousand beings advance and confirm the self is called awakening, or realisation”. Even though one of them is called delusion and the other is called awakening, both of them have a place in our practice, as they have in our life. Sometimes it is a moment for the self to go toward zazen, go toward our koan, and confirm it, establish it, make it alive. And sometimes we need the other aspect of the self: being completely open, completely available to the actuality of the present moment, so that the ten thousand beings can advance and confirm, authenticate the self.
Here we can see clearly that they are not two things: not the ten thousand beings [on] one side and the self being authenticated on the other side; but the fact that that very authentication is the expression of fullness, of empty oneness between the so-called self and the so-called ten thousand beings. When all beings advance toward the self and actualise it, the three bodies of the Buddha are vividly clear.
So in that way, “the way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world”, in Dogen's words. And the form of the entire world, in its intimate identity with the self, appears either as the dharmakaya, pure and clear reality, or in another moment maybe as the sambhogakaya, when our practice and our moment of life is full and complete. ‘Fullness’ can also be translated as ‘joy’. This is the body of the Buddha that is concerned most intimately with life itself. It's here that, joyfully, we can dance the completeness of each moment as ourselves.
And the third so-called body of the Buddha is the one that is related specifically with personalisation of the experiences of the dharmakaya and sambhogakaya. We call it nirmanakaya, the body of uniqueness or variety, as we say in our meal sutras. Uniqueness. In that way, how the aspect of dharmakaya and sambhogakaya will be embodied, personalised, will be altogether unique. And this is how sangha practice happens, each one becoming more and more unique. And also each Mu is unique, each zazen is unique: no two of them will be the same.
Dogen Zenji continues, saying: Seeing each thing in this entire world as a moment of time . See each thing as a moment of time: each thing or each being, just a moment. I think this is related with the practice of Avalokiteshvara, or Kanjizai, as we say in the Sino-Japanese pronunciation: the one who hears the world. And there we have to be aware of Mumon's words in one of the poems of the Mumonkan, when he says:
If you listen with your ear, it's hard to understandIf you hear with your eye, you are intimate at last
Seeing with the eyes is good, but not enough. You have to hear with your eyes and see with your ears.
So the one that hears the sounds of the world is not merely concerned with hearing, but with total function of our whole body-and-mind, involving all of our senses and, of course, involving completely our own body. This is the quality of true zazen, seeing each thing as a moment of time, just a moment, with no continuity at all. Just a moment, with no trace remaining. Of course, when Dogen says “seeing it”, he means ‘being completely intimate with’. At that point he says time is not really time; time itself is being, and all being is time.
The text continues: Things do not hinder one another, just as moments do not hinder one another. “Things do not hinder one another”: so ignorance doesn't hinder wisdom to come forth, samsara doesn't hinder the world of nirvana, nor do I hinder others from being. At that point, seeing that clearly, we can drop that duality, that illusion that things are hindering one another: me, others; inner and outer. Dogen Zenji elsewhere says: “When you say ‘outside’, skin, flesh, bone and marrow are all outside. When you say‘inside’, skin, flesh, bone and marrow are all inside.” In other words, there is no such sharp line dividing our so-called inner world from the external. When we say ‘outside’, everything and we ourselves are outside; when we say ‘inside’, everything and ourselves is inside. Just one reality, in other words; not two faces, just one reality, as ourselves, as our zazen, as our own body.
There is a poem by Dogen Zenji that says:
A snowy heron in the snowfield Where winter grass is unseenHides itself in its own figure.
The word we have here translated as ‘hinder’ in Sino-Japanese can mean also ‘hide’. So things don't hide each other, in the same way that this “snowy heron in the snowfield where winter grass is unseen hides itself in its own figure”. That's another way of saying ‘makes itself vividly clear in its own hiddenness’. So through sesshin, through our zazen, we hide ourselves into zazen, disappearing completely. We hide ourselves into Mu so that only Mu is there. We hide ourselves in a flashing shikantaza moment, so that we are no more there. Thus the winter grasses of duality are unseen.
Dogen continues, saying: The way-seeking mind arises in this moment. A way-seeking moment arises in this mind . ‘Way-seeking mind’ is difficult to translate from the ideographs. ‘Way’ here means also ‘Tao’; and ‘mind' means also ‘awareness’. We translate it in Sanskrit as ‘bodhicitta’, and in Japanese as ‘doshin’, ‘do’ being the Tao. And a possible way of saying it is: the mind that turns to the Tao, the mind that is turned completely, tuned with reality itself. “The way-seeking mind”: that mind that goes directly to the way, becoming one with the way, that is one with this very place, this very body, this Lotus Land, as Hakuin Zenji says.
A way-seeking moment arises in this mind, says the following phrase. It is the same with practice and with attaining the way . “A way-seeking moment”: just that moment intimately coming from the source; this moment, with all its sounds, images, concepts, delusions, feelings coming directly from the source as the source itself. Each moment is all beings, is the entire world, says Dogen Zenji here. This arises in the mind.
But what mind is that? We have to pay attention to Nansen's words, when he says: “Ordinary mind is the Tao”; just ordinary mind is the Tao. And the ideograph that means ‘ordinary’ also means ‘timeless’: the mind with no time is the Tao, and it is already ordinary, very common. This is a moment of the complete body-and-mind, the entire universe, open to the miracle of the now, with no future, no past and no present, as the Diamond Sutra says. The mind of the future is not possible to get hold of; we also cannot get hold of the mind of the past; and we cannot get hold of the mind of the present. There the sutra also points to practice when it says: “Abide nowhere and bring forth that mind”. ‘Abide nowhere’ is practice; ‘bring forth that mind' is practice becoming realisation itself.
It is the same with practice and with attaining the way. Thus the self setting itself out in array sees itself. This is the understanding that the self is time. “Setting itself out” says Dogen Zenji here: not in isolation, not at the top of a [high] pole of zazen, but showing its entire body and the whole universe itself. In that way, the self sees the self, in the way that Dogen says elsewhere: “When you see forms or hear sounds, fully engaging body-and-mind, you understand intimately”. The key here is “fully engaging body-and-mind”. It's there we understand intimately.
This is the practice of sitting the body, sitting the breath, sitting the mind. ‘Sit the body’: we say, sit our posture; and also the posture of our true body, which is the form of the universe in this very moment that is also intimate attention to our whole body presence. ‘Sit the breath’: not just merely air coming in and out, but sit the breathing; not just the moment, but intimate relationship, knocking off concepts, or inner and outer. ‘Sit the mind’ is the third aspect of true zazen: moment by moment, moment by moment, open, sparky atten­tion, making our zazen available to the mountains, rivers, sky, ocean, to come forth and touch the most intimate, authenticating our own self as this very body, this very place, as the Buddha Way itself.
There is a poem that says:
Ask the seagulls offshore the time of the tide“We are leaving”, they will answerSo ask the waves.
Please, ask the waves. Become truly intimate with the waves, in such a way that only Mu, only shikantaza, are vividly clear.