Pebble Meditation offers a simple way to restore what Thây calls our “flowerness,” using four pebbles you wash, bag, and bring to each sitting. After three bells you:

1. Pick up the first pebble (flower) – Breathing in, I see myself as a flower; Breathing out, I feel fresh.
2. Pick up the second pebble (mountain) – Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain; Breathing out, I feel solid.
3. Pick up the third pebble (still water) – Breathing in, I see myself as still water; Breathing out, I reflect things as they are.
4. Pick up the fourth pebble (space) – Breathing in, I see myself as space; Breathing out, I feel free.

True love in Buddhism has four elements. Cultivate them first in yourself, then offer them to another:
• Maitri (friendship/loving-kindness): the capacity to bring happiness, grounded in deep understanding of suffering and aspiration.
• Karuna (compassion): the capacity to remove pain by looking and listening deeply, first toward yourself, then toward others.
• Mudita (joy): unrestricted joy born from letting go, mindfulness, concentration, and insight.
• Upekṣā (equanimity/inclusiveness): non-discrimination that dissolves frontiers between self and other, expanding love to all beings.

At noontime today, when the bell sounds for two minutes of mindful breathing, send energy of peace and love—to people suffering from war, hunger, discrimination, poverty, and so on.

Practice meditation of the five-year-old child—vulnerable and waiting for our compassion—in yourself, your father, and your mother. Then meditate on a grain of corn: planted, it becomes a young plant in twenty-one days, yet still is the seed in new form. This insight is the wisdom of non-discrimination and the Middle Way: no sameness, no otherness—“you are neither the same as…nor entirely different from” the five-year-old child, your parents, or the seed and plant of corn.

Interbeing with your body parts—five harmonious fingers; two hands that love and care for one another without pride or blame—teaches how to live at peace. If Muslims and Christians, Israelis and Palestinians knew this, war would cease.

In “The Son’s Flesh” sutra, refugees who kill and eat their boy suffer remorse each day—Buddha warns that unmindful eating destroys compassion. UNESCO says forty thousand children die daily of hunger. In the US:

1. 87 percent of agricultural land (45 percent of total landmass) raises animals for food
2. 2,500 gallons of water per pound of meat vs. 25 gallons per pound of wheat; meat diets use 4,000 gallons daily vs. 300 gallons for vegetarian
3. Animal waste 130 times human excrement (97,000 lbs/sec), polluting waterways
4. 260 million acres of forest cleared for animal feed—one acre every eight seconds; 55 sq ft of rainforest per ¼-lb burger
5. Animals eat over 80 percent of US corn and 95 percent of oats; cattle consume feed equal to caloric needs of 8.7 billion people

Reducing meat-eating and alcohol by fifty percent can change the world. The Five Mindfulness Trainings—1) protect life, 2) practice generosity, 3) protect against sexual abuse, 4) practice loving speech & deep listening, 5) practice mindful consumption—are concrete steps.

Manifesto 2000 (six points) was signed by over 75 million people (25 million in India) but forgotten without community practice. Global No-Car Day aims for 100,000 No-Car Days. On global warming, Buddha advises: “Breathing in, I know…my civilization is of the nature to die…Breathing out, I accept that.” Only with peace born of acceptance can we summon the collective will to heal the Earth.

The sound of the bell invites us “home” to our deepest peace, presence and freedom. A bell master may train three years or more so that each strike expresses solidity, mindfulness and awakening. Before sounding a small bell you bow, hold it in a lotus-hand of five petals, and practice mindful breathing with the four-line gatha:

1. Body, speech, and mind in perfect oneness.
2. I send my heart along with the sound of this bell.
3. May those who listen awaken from forgetfulness.
4. May they transcend the path of sorrow and anxiety.

Half-sound (in-breath + out-breath) warns people to prepare; then one full sound followed by three in-breaths and three out-breaths with the two-line gatha “Listen, listen, this wonderful sound brings me back to my true home.” Repeat for a total of three full sounds, always allowing extra breaths for adults. Children today will practice inviting the small bell to sound under young guides’ supervision.

Awakening Together hinges on two insights: we and the Earth both need healing, and that healing is available within us and around us if we cultivate right thinking and appropriate attention. Karma (thought, speech, action) shapes both our “body-mind” and our environment. By generating three energies—mindfulness (smṛti), concentration (samādhi), and insight (prajñā)—through basic practices—
• Mindful Breathing
• Mindful Walking
• Mindful Eating
—we touch healing elements every moment and transform suffering into understanding, compassion, and joy.

Enjoy peace by practicing mindful breathing: breathing in brings your mind back to your body; breathing out makes you fully present in the here and now. Between body and mind, breath is the bridge—three elements of meditation are body, mind, and breath—and mindful breathing calms and harmonizes your in-breath and out-breath, easing tension and pain.

In the Sutra on Mindful Breathing the Buddha proposes sixteen exercises, including:

1. Recognizing the body’s existence and coming home to it
2. Releasing tension and reducing pain
3. Scanning each part of the body from brain to toes
4. Embracing organs with tender mindfulness for healing

Mindful breathing also helps manage emotions: breathing in, “I am aware of my anger,” breathing out, “I hold my anger tenderly.” You generate the energy of mindfulness to embrace pain like a mother holding her baby, leading to relief. Cultivating peace requires deep listening and loving speech: understanding suffering—your own and others’—is essential, for without the mud of suffering there can be no lotus of compassion.

Memorizing about fifty short poems, or gathas, in classical Chinese was basic training: wash your hands, light a candle, bow to the Buddha—all with mindful breathing and chanting. Before bowing the longer poem reminds us that “the one who bows and the one who is bowed to, the nature of both is empty,” meaning empty of separate existence. Through signlessness (animitta) Thay shows how a cloud becomes rain, a grain of corn becomes a plant, the son continues the father, and the Buddha is a human being whose seeds of mindfulness, concentration, and insight lie within us.

Every person has seeds of suffering—fear, anger, despair, hate—and seeds of healing—compassion, understanding, forgiveness, joy—to be nourished. We are gardens with flowers and garbage: a good practitioner turns garbage into compost to grow flowers. True love in Buddhism is made of four elements:

1. loving-kindness, the capacity to offer happiness
2. compassion, the capacity to remove pain and sorrow
3. joy
4. equanimity, non-discrimination

Mindful breathing and walking bring us home to the here and now—“peace is every step, the kingdom is every step.” Right thinking, speech, and action spring from right view—seeing non-discrimination and impermanence—and each thought or act of compassion has a healing effect on self and world.

It is possible to cultivate true love because each of us has four seeds of true love in the depth of our consciousness:

1. maitrī (loving-kindness): the energy that can bring happiness.
2. karuṇā (compassion): the capacity to transform and remove the suffering in another.
3. muditā (joy): the element that makes life beautiful, nourishing, healing, transforming.
4. upekṣā (equanimity): the energy of non-discrimination that sees another’s suffering as our own and removes all separation.

The Buddha offers sixteen exercises of mindful breathing to take care of body, feelings, emotions, perceptions, sorrow, and fear. In the third exercise:
“Breathing in, I am aware of my whole body.
Breathing out, I smile to my whole body.”

In the next exercise:
“Breathing in, I release the tension in my body.”

The next four exercises deal with feelings, for example bringing joy:
“Breathing in, I notice the feeling, I bring in the feeling of joy to myself.
Breathing out, I feel the joy within myself.”

And embracing pain:
“Breathing in, I’m aware of the pain within myself.
Breathing out, I smile and embrace that pain in myself.”

Through these practices we generate the energies of mindfulness, concentration, and insight to recognize, embrace, and transform all suffering.

When the Buddha was eighty, during his last retreat near Vaishali, he became very sick, healed himself through concentration, and gave short Dharma talks preparing his disciples for his passing by urging them to take refuge in the island within (attadīpa saraṇa)—the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha inside. Using the “eye of an elephant queen” as a metaphor, he showed that mindfulness lets us see life’s wonders deeply—moon, stars, trees, mountains—and live each moment fully, so that when the body disintegrates, there is no regret.

Karma is action (karma-hetu) and its fruit (karma-phala), or retribution, which has two aspects:

1. The manifesting of our five skandhas—form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness
2. The environment (y-báo) we create, both individual and collective.
   With mindfulness we monitor our thinking, speaking, and doing so that our actions yield beauty rather than suffering. Universal mental formations—touch (sparśa) and attention (manaskāra)—operate always; through yonisomanaskāra (appropriate attention) we water the seeds (bīja) of peace, joy, concentration, and insight, using bells, telephones, clocks, or computer reminders to return to the breath and the island within.

Three concentrations (the three doors of liberation) for avoiding wrong perceptions and despair:
• Emptiness (śūnyatā): things are empty of a separate self, full of non-self elements (no birth, no death)
• Signlessness (animitta): freedom from attachment to form or appearance, touching true nature beyond birth and death
• Aimlessness (apranihita): peace and enlightenment are here and now, not destinations—living as the “busynessless person” (vô sự nhân), fully awake in each breath and step

The human body in the lotus position is “one of the most beautiful positions,” offering solidity and ease. In Plum Village we practice a weekly Lazy Day—a “day in” without schedule—to reclaim our capacity to be truly lazy and rest, since our workaholic habits make idleness unbearable. Love is not best expressed through money but through our presence, freshness, peace and freedom, which we can cultivate by pebble meditation with four pebbles:

1. freshness (a flower): “Breathing in, I see myself as a flower… Breathing out, I feel fresh,” restoring our “flowerness” to offer to those we love
2. solidity (a mountain): “Breathing in, I see myself as a mountain,” to cultivate stability, handle emotions and become a refuge
3. still water: “Breathing in, I see myself as still water… Breathing out, I reflect things as they are,” for peace, clear perception and wisdom
4. freedom (spaciousness): “Breathing in… spaciousness,” so we can give space and freedom to ourselves and others

Our body and mind “inter-are”—like water and wave—and Buddhist teaching names eight consciousnesses: six sense consciousnesses (eye, nose, tongue, ear, body, mind), the seventh (manas) which seeks pleasure and runs from suffering, and the eighth (store consciousness, Ālaya-vijñāna) that functions even without mind and holds seeds (bīja) of mindfulness, concentration and insight. Mindfulness practice integrates mind consciousness into every action—breathing, walking, washing, cooking, driving—to transform manas’s craving and ignorance into insight, compassion and liberation.

Sometimes the Buddha appears as a statue, but that is not the real Buddha. Bowing to the bronze or stone Buddha “outside” can touch the Buddha “inside,” just as saluting a cloth flag can touch one’s sense of nation. Whether one bows or not, the true practice is to touch the Buddha within by being peaceful, mindful, compassionate, calm—and thereby manifesting Buddhahood in every action.

Sitting and walking meditation teach us to be Buddhas in action. Sitting is an art in which

1. body,
2. breath, and
3. mind
   come together to produce refreshment, healing, and joy. Walking mindfully means enjoying each step as if it “kisses the earth,” bringing calm and happiness with every footfall. When one thousand people sit or walk together like this, they generate a nourishing collective energy.

Meditation comprises two inseparable factors:
• samatha: stopping, resting, calming, and
• vipassanā: looking deeply with mindfulness and concentration.
Through stopping the habitual running and looking deeply into our actions and thoughts, healing and insight arise here and now.

Our monastic Sangha arrived two days early from Stonehill College, where our retreat hosted over 1 100 people committed to finding “a way of life that brings more peace, more stability” in a world still at war and threatened by hurricanes. The heart of this meditation retreat is generating the energy of mindfulness through conscious breathing—our anchor that brings body and mind into one, cultivates clarity and stability, and can be practiced anytime (standing in line, waiting for the bus, at the bank).

Conscious breathing serves as a foundation—like a cargo truck that can carry additional “cargo” (anger, joy, etc.)—and underpins all our practices:

1. Three-breath bell: three sounds remind us to stop, relax body and mind, and return to the present.
2. Sitting meditation: three mornings and two ceremonies; a three-point foundation (two kneecaps + tailbone), straight but not rigid spine, Soft Belly, Chrysanthemum Posture, pelvis rolled forward.
3. Walking meditation: ordinary steps but with full awareness—two steps per in-breath and out-breath (or adjust to your pattern), lifting feet deliberately to “walk like a Buddha.”
4. Eating meditation: chew 30–50 times, notice appearance, texture, taste, tongue movements; touch interbeing of food (sun, rain, air, soil), smile at and share meal with community.
5. Bells, chime clocks, telephone rings and “electronic liberation” (e.g., turning in cell phones) act as daily “bells of mindfulness.”
6. Noble Silence from evening through after lunch teaches us to observe speech, mind, and bodily actions, and use a notebook to record habitual mind reactions.

Choose one practice as a cornerstone to carry into daily life, or for experienced practitioners, explore a new corner—pour the practice into every “nook and cranny” of life to cultivate peace, stability, and freedom from running.

In this 95-minute talk, offered on August 14, 2007 during the Stonehill College retreat in the U.S. Tour, we learn how to sit, how to practice with the love mantras, and how to practice insight in order to transform our suffering. The retreat theme is Mindfulness, Fearlessness, and Togetherness, and this is the second dharma talk of the retreat. It begins with the monastics chanting The Four Recollections.

Thay leads a short guided meditation: to be alive is the greatest of all miracles; please sit like a Buddha. He teaches the lotus (or half-lotus) position—sitting solid and stable like a mountain—because the solidity of the body influences the solidity of the mind. He shares a story of visiting a prison in Maryland where inmates learned to sit like a Buddha on a lotus flower, keep the back upright, release tension, and practice a mindful meal; this visit later became the book “Be Free Where You Are.”

We describe the Buddha as an artist. Sitting on the lotus flower, the Buddha is not a God but a human who became free, happy, enlightened; “Buddha” is a title, and anyone can become a Buddha. Thay recalls Nelson Mandela saying the thing he most wanted was “to sit down, to rest,” emphasizing that training is needed to sit well and allow freshness, solidity, and peace to manifest in us.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your Buddhahood—your beautiful presence. In Buddhism we practice mantras to help transform a situation: “Darling, I am here for you,” and “Darling, I know you are there and it makes me happy.” To be loved is to be recognized. Happiness does not come from a million dollars but from mindfulness. With mindfulness, concentration, and insight we are not caught in difficult situations. We come to retreat to learn how to do everything with mindfulness, creating love, understanding, and insight—the gift of the Buddha.

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In this 2-hour dharma talk given on August 13, 2007 at Stonehill College during the U.S. Tour retreat “Mindfulness, Fearlessness, and Togetherness,” Thich Nhat Hanh teaches how important our breathing is for transformation.

He begins with a reflection on Lazy Day at Son Ha Temple in Plum Village: being lazy means taking your time in every moment—brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, drinking tea. Each moment can be a moment of joy, peace, and freedom. Thay jokes that he loves french toast yet cannot find it in France, and reminds us that in Buddhist practice we eat because we enjoy eating, not in a hurry. During the retreat breakfast is taken in noble silence; we practice being mindful of every morsel and of the people around us. Drinking tea mindfully, we can see the cloud in the tea. When we are running after something—such as a diploma—we miss the present moment; mindful eating helps us stay with our breakfast or tea.

Walking meditation follows the same principle. Its purpose is to arrive in every moment: “I have arrived. I am home.” Our habit of running causes us to miss what is happening in the here and the now, but when we have truly arrived, happiness becomes real. Mindful breathing supports this; we need training to stop running and learn to breathe.

Lazy Day is a chance to cherish every moment: nowhere to go, nothing to do. The tendency to run is strong, but the practice of Buddhist meditation is to be aware of it and to stop. Stopping is essential; resting allows body and mind to heal themselves.

When alone with five or ten minutes, we can practice slow walking meditation. Breathe in and make one step, bringing attention to the sole of the foot and the contact with the ground, silently saying, “I have arrived.” Invest 100 % of body and mind in that step. By forming the new habit of arriving and stopping, we counter the old habit of running. With this practice of mindful breathing, mindful eating, and slow walking meditation, we begin to heal.

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When the river no longer chased impermanent clouds, she went home to herself and heard her own suffering. In deep contemplation she realised “she is made only of clouds,” discovering that “the clouds are in her,” and so attained non-obtention: nothing to obtain, for what she wanted to become she already was. Free of attachment, she greeted every cloud with joy, embodying arrival in the here and now.

Sister Annabel has served this area for more than ten years, helping build the Sangha in New England. Thầy asked her to return to Europe to co-found the European Institute of Applied Buddhism in Germany, offering courses such as:

1. preparation for young people about to marry
2. support for those who have just lost a beloved one
   …plus dozens of other courses taught in English, German, French, and more.

Nāgārjuna’s verse offers three terms for touching reality:

1. emptiness (śūnyatā)—everything is “empty” only of a separate self
2. conventional designation (prajñapti)—names like “flower,” “president,” or “house” exist only by the non-flower, non-president, non-house elements that come together
3. the Middle Path (Madhyamaka)—transcending all opposites (no birth/no death, no being/no non-being, no coming/no going, no sameness/no otherness) so that “thanks to emptiness, everything is possible.”

Suppose you take one kernel of corn and you see in it “the sunshine, the cloud, the blue sky, the rain, even the snow, the soil, the minerals in the soil, the fertilizer, the farmer, the time, the space, our consciousness”—everything is in the kernel. If you plant that kernel in the damp soil, in ten days it will sprout two or three new leaves. Just as the young plant of corn is the continuation of the kernel, we are the continuation of our father and our mother. Yet we often cannot see our parents in ourselves, and we may get angry at them as if they were “totally different persons.” Meditation reconnects us: breathing in peacefully, our father and mother in us feel light and peaceful, and we practice not for ourselves alone but for our ancestors as well.

Buddhist meditation has two elements:

1. samatha—calming, concentrating (let the Buddha breathe, let the Buddha walk; I enjoy the breathing, I enjoy the walking)
2. vipaśyanā—deep looking into the truth of no-self.

“Buddha is the breathing. Buddha is the walking. I am the breathing. I am the walking.” There is only the breathing, only the walking; there is no breather or walker separate from the act. Self, father, son, house, flower—each is a conventional designation (prajñapti) arising from elements coming together. Touching the insight of non-discrimination (no-sameness, no-otherness) frees us from fear, anger, jealousy, and the illusion of a separate self, and brings peace and joy into every act of walking, drinking tea, brushing teeth, or making breakfast.

Five fingers and their French names:
• thumb
• index
• middle (majeur)
• ring finger
• pinky (auriculaire)

Breathing in–out with full awareness of body and mind, we learn to release tension, smile to life, and extend compassion to the wounded child within us and to our parents as five-year-olds. Through the parable of the river chasing a cloud, we see that what we seek outside—“the ocean”—already dwells within us, and that birth and death are merely notions; the cloud never dies but continues as rain, ice, vapor. Likewise, the little flame in the matchbox shows that when conditions arise it manifests, and when they dissipate it vanishes without coming from or going to anywhere.

Looking deeply reveals four aspects of reality:

1. no birth / no death
2. no being / no non-being
3. no coming / no going
4. no sameness / no otherness

Our actions (karma) consist of thinking, speaking, and acting, each capable of healing or harming. Monastics guide the dying through recollection (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) and insight into these four truths so fear dissolves and true freedom and compassion arise. In daily life, mindful walking (“I have arrived, I am home”) brings us solidly into the here-and-now—the address of life and the kingdom of God.

Breathing in, I feel alive; breathing out, I smile to life in me and around me. Mind and body rely on each other—without mind, the body is a corpse—and the practice of Buddhist meditation trains us to bring mind consciousness (mano-vijñāna) back from autopilot store consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna) into every moment—breathing, walking, eating, drinking—so that body and mind are truly present, and life manifests fully. Our actions—thoughts, speech, and deeds—are karma: compassion, forgiveness, loving-kindness bring healing to ourselves and the world; fear, anger, and despair bring harm.

Mind and body “inter-are,” and nothing is born from nothing or dies into nothing—their true nature is no birth, no death. Our continuation manifests in two aspects of retribution:

1. the five skandhas—form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness
2. the environment, which is also shaped by our actions

We must transcend dualities—body and mind, in-here and out-there—by looking deeply into impermanence and taking care of both our inner seeds (bīja) and the social and natural environment that waters them. Appropriate attention (yoniso manaskāra) arises when our environment supports mindfulness and joy rather than fear and craving.

US agriculture’s impact on land, water, pollution, deforestation, and resources:

1. Land: 87 % of US agricultural land raises animals for food—45 % of national landmass
2. Water: over half of US water goes to animal agriculture; 2,500 gal to produce one pound of meat vs. 25 gal for a pound of wheat
3. Pollution: livestock excrete 130 times the waste of the entire US human population (97,000 lbs/sec), much contaminating waterways
4. Deforestation: 260 million acres cleared to grow feed crops; one acre lost every eight seconds; 55 sq ft of rainforest per quarter-pound burger
5. Resources: animals consume over 80 % of US corn and 95 % of oats; the world’s cattle eat food equating to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people

Thich Nhat Hanh welcomes the Sangha to a morning Q&A session divided into three groups—children first, then teenagers, and finally adults—and explains that a good question arises from the heart, touches our happiness, suffering, or practice, need not be long, and may be submitted in writing; participants are invited to sit around Thay, signal readiness with the sound of a bell, then breathe together before asking.

Children’s questions:

1. What should I do when other children tease me?
2. When you were young, what did you like about the Buddhist monks that made you decide you wanted to become one?

Teenagers’ question:

3. “The joy I feel when walking, breathing, or chanting with mindful concentration is not the joy I feel when eating rich food or indulging in comforts—what are the types of joy and what are their natures?”

Adults’ questions:

4. How do you give all those long Dharma talks and speeches without getting scared?
5. What inspired you to write books?
6. How do you deal with and overcome fear?
7. How can I reconcile working for environmental and social justice in New York City—with its speed and need to move people and protect community gardens—while holding mindful practice?
8. How do I honor the suffering of the boat people and feel peace and happiness as well?
9. Once a being passes away, does its knowledge go to waste?
10. For people who are adopted and don’t know their parents or who have traumatic relationships with them, how can they connect with their parents in meditation?
11. How can I help others access their true self as a life coach when the ultimate teaching is that there is no self?
12. What advice do you have for parents who want to raise their children to be more mindful and compassionate?