Embrace cultural diversity by respecting traditions like Christianity, recognizing its significance in Western culture, and fostering harmony. Many feel disconnected from traditions, leading to isolation and suffering. Plum Village honors Christmas, seeing contemplation on symbols like Santa Claus as enlightening. Christianity’s decline in practice doesn’t diminish its cultural influence. Recognize interconnectedness and compassion, avoiding blame for suffering. Engage with traditions, nurturing spirituality akin to Jesus’ retreat. Cultivate supportive communities, reconnecting with heritage while embracing diverse influences. Foster unity and compassion, embodying teachings for societal transformation. Engage inclusively with various compassionate groups for broader societal change.

Winter Retreat 1994/5 emphasizes nurturing our inner potential akin to nurturing a child, reflecting on continuous birth and renewal. Parents and ancestors play a vital role in shaping us, akin to God’s continuous creation. Buddha and Jesus were recognized as transformative figures from birth. Plum Village teaches mindfulness practices like breathing, walking, hugging, and sitting to cultivate peace and joy. Transformation through mindfulness is akin to nurturing seeds of consciousness, fostering continuous growth. Faith is rooted in personal experience and mindfulness, transforming suffering into peace. Monastic life emphasizes introspection, mindfulness, and embodying teachings to alleviate suffering and guide others towards liberation.

Mindfulness frees us to enjoy what is available twenty-four hours a day—fresh air, sunshine, the stars—and even God, “happiness” and “peace,” if our mind is truly present. There are two levels of relationship:

1. the horizontal line (horizontal theology) linking us with human beings, animals, plants, minerals,
2. the vertical line (vertical theology) touching God, the ground of being.
   Like a wave on the ocean, we inter-are with other waves (sự, the phenomenal): our coming, going, size and shape depend entirely on them. By looking deeply we also touch the water (lý, the noumenal): the foundation of our being in which all phenomena arise.

Buddhism teaches us not to mix these two levels. The Madhyamaka school (śūnyatā, emptiness) and the Dharmalakṣaṇa school (Pháp tướng, phenomena) stress tánh tướng biệt quán—separate contemplation of the noumenal and the phenomenal. Phenomena follow cause and effect among waves, while the noumenal is the ground of all phenomena: God or Nirvana, beyond birth and death, coming and going, being and non-being. Though indescribable by concepts, this ultimate dimension is available to us in every breath, every cup of tea, every step, every gesture.

Impermanence and non-self make rebirth, personhood and transformation possible. Nothing arises from nothing, nothing returns to nothing—every “birth” is a continuation, every “death” a metamorphosis. Deep looking into our own suffering and that of others dissolves anger and hatred, for understanding is the very ground of love and compassion. In daily life—eating a piece of bread, practicing walking meditation, celebrating Christmas—we touch the phenomenal deeply and thus touch the noumenal, discovering the peace, solidity and freedom that are always here.

Thầy offers this Christmas Eve talk on faith and love as energies that make us truly alive. True faith, he teaches, is made of insight—our direct experience of suffering and of happiness—rather than notions and ideas, and so it can only grow. A faith built on notions, even notions of happiness, of God, or of the Buddha, can make us suffer and lead us to impose them on others.

Thầy begins with the child in each of us, always alive and waiting to be reborn, and with Beginning Anew as a way to start again and learn to love again. He speaks of Maitreya, the Buddha of Love, and says the next buddha may be a Sangha. He invites us to write down our basic conditions for happiness, and asks what happens when a whole nation adopts one idea of happiness. Through the art of making fruitcake, the practice of walking meditation, and a city we think we know, Paris, he shows how a faith made of experience stays open and can always improve. A Zen teacher who rinses his mouth after saying the word Buddha, and a student who washes his ears after hearing it, point to freedom from words.

Thầy then traces the Five Faculties, from faith and diligence to mindfulness, concentration, and insight, and teaches that mindfulness is the Buddha, a reality we can touch every day. Turning to Christmas, he speaks of the Holy Spirit as an energy to be cultivated, like mindfulness: Jesus in the wilderness for forty days, baptism and confirmation as ways to touch a seed already within us, and the bell that brings us back to our true home. Every day is Christmas Day, and without a Sangha we go “off and on” and arrive nowhere.

Reading the Lord’s Prayer in English, French, and Vietnamese, Thầy goes through it line by line: the Father as the other dimension, like waves that are already water; a name that cannot be named; a Kingdom we don’t have to die to enter; heaven here on earth. He closes with our daily bread: a piece of bread, or our muesli, is the body of the whole cosmos, and eaten mindfully it nourishes true faith and true love, so that the child in us can be born in every moment of our daily life.

This talk was offered on Christmas Eve during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 1996. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

As a monk, the bell’s sound carries significance learned through poems, uniting body, speech, and mind to awaken compassion and calm. Deep listening dissolves afflictions, fostering peace. Reflecting on travels, the bell’s resonance deeply touched me, akin to serene water sounds from childhood. Vietnamese struggle with identity, but reconnecting roots nurtures fulfillment. Happiness arises from embracing nature’s beauty and mindful consumption, reducing suffering. Christmas echoes Vietnamese traditions, emphasizing familial roots. Buddha and Jesus symbolize mindfulness and compassion, guiding transformative practices. Embrace mindfulness to acknowledge and transform negativity, fostering peace. Buddha and Jesus coexist harmoniously, embodying wisdom and love. Despite religious differences, unity and mutual respect nurture understanding and acceptance.

This talk details the importance of connecting with spiritual guides like Buddha and Jesus to find relief from suffering and cultivate peace, calm, and joy. It emphasizes transcending appearances and concepts to truly grasp their essence, as taught in the Diamond Sutra and through Zen teachings. Spiritual growth involves symbolic death and rebirth, embracing change, and nurturing seeds of liberation, solidity, and harmony within ourselves. Mindfulness practices like breathing, walking, and mindful bowing help cultivate inner peace and compassion, transforming harmful habits and fostering reconciliation. Being part of a Sangha, or spiritual community, provides stability and support in practicing mindfulness and connecting with the divine. Recognizing the divine within and practicing mindfulness in daily life are key to breaking free from damaging patterns and nurturing positive habits.

This talk details the importance of spirituality in the 21st century for survival amidst suffering, violence, and fear, highlighting mindfulness practice as a universal, non-religious approach beneficial to various societal fields. Harvard University studies spirituality’s impact on healing, and mindfulness centers globally offer inclusive practices. Walking meditation connects practitioners to the divine, reminding them of the kingdom of heaven’s constant presence. Sangha unity prevents despair, embodying compassion and wisdom akin to teachings of Buddha and Jesus. Nations should embrace Sangha principles for peaceful conflict resolution, transforming the UN into a true Sangha. Embrace spirituality in daily life to foster global unity and hope, transcending personal and national interests.

Thầy discusses embracing our true selves and nurturing the qualities of love and hope within us, symbolized as a baby inside of us. He emphasizes creating a nurturing environment for spiritual growth, reflecting teachings from both Buddhism and Christianity. Thầy warns that without proper care, this inner child can enter a “refugee status” right after birth due to the fast pace of modern life. We need to prepare ourselves and our environment, through mindfulness and compassion, so that the baby can be born into our life to serve as our light, our love. The Kingdom of God and the Pure Land of the Buddha are present realities accessible in the here and now through mindfulness and concentration.

Thầy reads the Parable of the Sower from the Gospel of Luke and illustrates how distractions and desires hinder spiritual growth. Because we are so busy, we do not allow the seed of the Kingdom or the seed of enlightenment to sprout within us. He notes that bodhicitta—the mind of love—is the good soil required to anchor these seeds. Mindfulness and concentration uncover our true nature, fostering compassion by looking directly into the nature of suffering. Thầy explains that a Pure Land free of suffering is impossible, as it is by understanding suffering that our compassion can arise. Loving speech and deep listening are essential for transforming ignorance and fostering peace, and Thầy shares his historical visit with the chairman of the Indian Parliament to show how practicing mindfulness in politics can promote harmony.

The Gospel teaches that we should love our enemies, and Thầy teaches that our real enemy is not man, but fanaticism, violence, discrimination, and ignorance. True happiness lies in spiritual pursuits over material consumption, as exemplified by the historical monk Bhaddiya who embraced true freedom and compassion with only three robes and an empty bowl. Celebrating Christmas involves nurturing the seed of love within us, realizing our spiritual potential in the present moment.

This talk was offered on Christmas Eve during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 2002. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thầy speaks of a country that can never be occupied by anyone, and from which no one can remove us: the country of the present moment. Offering this talk at Christmas, he describes the Kingdom of God and the Pure Land of the Buddha as that same country, available here and now rather than after we die. We often leave it, sometimes for years, yet seeing the way someone walks or smiles can bring us home in a flash.

This is not a country without suffering. Thầy teaches that happiness is made of understanding and compassion, and that these need suffering in order to grow, as the lotus needs the mud. He shares why he would not want to send his children to a place where there is no suffering, and what we might tell our own children instead.

Thầy then turns to the gāthā that names the Buddha as mindfulness, the Dharma as our breathing, and the Sangha as our five skandhas. Walking mindfully becomes the living Dharma and a bell of mindfulness for those around us, and he points to the ancestors who smile with us in every cell of our body. Loneliness, he suggests, comes from feeling that we are a separate self, and the practice of “I have arrived, I am home” reconnects us wherever we are. A letter written by a monk in the Upper Hamlet to his younger brother shows that the distance is not the question.

Thầy offers the image of the organic gardener, who never throws the garbage away, and looks at how easily we stop cherishing the conditions of happiness we already have, even in a marriage to the person we love. Like riding a bicycle, the practice of transformation has to keep moving.

Thầy closes by speaking to church leaders and to parents: “The Kingdom is available to us. The question remains whether we are available to the Kingdom.” Young people, he says, want the Kingdom of God now, and they are right.

This talk was offered on Christmas Eve during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 2003. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

This talk details gathering at Dharma Cloud Temple in 2004, embracing togetherness and mindfulness without plans. It explores the concepts of time, mindfulness, and the presence of Buddha and Jesus within ourselves. Through mindful breathing, sitting, walking, and daily activities, we embody qualities like solidity, freedom, compassion, and aliveness. Mindfulness connects us to the divine energies akin to the Holy Spirit, fostering clarity and compassion. Taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha brings harmony to our being, influencing our future through mindful actions. The Buddha’s 16 mindful breathing practices harmonize the five skandhas, nurturing peace and happiness. Suffering is crucial for cultivating understanding and compassion, transforming our reality into a sacred space. By facing suffering, we nurture empathy and insight, embodying divine energies. The essence of Buddha and Jesus resides within us, guiding us to transform suffering and cultivate compassion, bringing renewal to ourselves and the world.

This talk details the Buddha’s teachings on transcending suffering and the cycle of birth and death through meditation and self-awareness, revealing that our bodies are gateways to ultimate peace and immortality. It emphasizes exploring within ourselves to uncover the interconnectedness of existence, recognizing emptiness as a positive force revealing joy, compassion, and enlightenment. The ultimate truth is accessible through mindfulness in everyday actions, allowing liberation without detachment from daily life. The essence of existence intertwines historical and ultimate dimensions, reflecting interconnectedness and the profound realization that we are already part of the greater whole.

Draw Me Peace, “Monsieur, dessine-moi la paix”

How do we become buddha’s and so make a beautiful, peaceful world, like that of the Little Prince? This is the question—both profound and whimsical, and highly appropriate for Christmas Eve—with which Thầy opens this talk. Throughout, Thầy references Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s timeless classic La Petit Prince (1943). In contrast to the Little Prince, we are destroying a lot of our planet, erasing many species without knowing “whether we can draw them again and bring them back into existence.” Thầy’s insight is that what we need most is peace, and that we must be the ones to bring peace to ourselves and to the world through our “capacity to become a budda full of peace, understanding, and compassion.”

The early sections of the talk focus on ways that we can generate peace and happiness, including through Sangha building and through developing our capacity to cultivate presence, mindfulness, and insight. Thầy reminds us that “insight, enlightenment, awakening is not something far away” but rather brings ”moments of happiness into our daily lives”: “every step can bring you joy, happiness, and every step can be a celebration of life.” This is what Christmas can mean, can be.

Likewise, practicing how to take care of our suffering—our anger, fear, loneliness, etc.—through mindfulness can “bring peace into your body,” “calm down our body, calm down our feelings, so that peace becomes possible.” Thầy’s vision recognizes that our inner lives, relationships, and community interactions inter-are with generating peace and non-discrimination at national and global levels. Thầy challenges us: “everyone can be a peacemaker. ‘Dessine-moi la paix. Dessine-moi le bonheur’”—draw me peace, draw me happiness, because “with our mind we can create peace and happiness.”

The latter half of this talk focuses on the Five Mantras of Happiness, in short: 1) Gifting true presence: “Darling, I am here for you.” 2) Recognizing the other’s presence: “Darling, I know you are there, and I am so happy.” 3) Offering care and compassion: “Darling, I know you suffer. That is why I am here for you.” 4) Asking for help: “Darling, I suffer. Please help.” 5) Accepting present-moment happiness: “This moment is a moment of happiness.”

Thầy contextualizes the fifth mantra in relationship to the revision of the Five Mindfulness Trainings that he and the Plum Village Sangha undertook in winter 2008, a momentous rewriting of foundational trainings as “representing the Buddhist vision of a global ethic, global spirituality, reflecting the Buddha’s teaching, how to bring peace, how to bring love to us and to the world.” Thầy does not fully explain specifically how the revised Mindfulness Trainings shaped the fifth of the mantras. Rather, Thầy observes that “Living happily right in the present moment is [the Buddha’s] basic teaching: dṛṣṭadharmasukhavihāra” which can be translated as “living happily in the present moment.” Thầy closes with the joy and happiness of this season, including the name of Christ, “Namo Kṛṣṭāya”: “Joyeux Noël à tous et à toutes.”

This talk was offered on Christmas Eve during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 2009. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

This talk details the importance of mindfulness and concentration in connecting deeply with life’s wonders and finding peace in the present moment. It discusses Christianity’s vertical and horizontal dimensions relating to spiritual growth and relationships, emphasizing their intersection in life’s ultimate reality. Zen practice sees ordinary actions as sacred, recognizing interconnectedness in acts like pouring tea. Embracing suffering tenderly reveals our true home, akin to lotus flowers needing mud to bloom. Through mindfulness practices, obstacles like fear and anger can be overcome, allowing understanding, acceptance, love, and compassion to flourish. The interconnected nature of existence eliminates discrimination, anger, and fear, leading to enlightenment and freedom from birth and death. The path involves three trainings: mindfulness, concentration, and insight, guiding through layers of practice to realize the kingdom of God or Nirvana.

This talk details the importance of self-care, mindfulness, and interconnectedness. It begins with advice to “Go home and take care of yourself,” emphasizing that nurturing oneself is vital for caring for others and the world. The Sangha community supports learning self-care by tending to bodies, emotions, and pains together. Both Buddha and Jesus taught finding peace within oneself and appreciating Earth as home. Mindfulness, particularly mindful walking, connects us to the cycle of life and the beauty of nature. Plum Village teachings highlight reciprocal love between beings and nature. Mindful breathing restores harmony, allowing refuge within oneself, termed Atadipa. Buddha’s teachings on mindfulness, concentration, and insight guide finding peace internally. Mindfulness manifests the Dharma, bringing recognition, relief, protection, and healing. Buddha’s reminder to be mindful calls for returning to oneself to nurture happiness and peace, caring for others and the planet. Christmas is a time to reflect on these teachings, walking with awareness and savoring each moment on Earth.

Thầy begins with a metaphor of a boat that can take us from the shore of suffering to the shore of joy. Through practice, we can learn how to transform ourselves into a boat that can make that journey. He then tells the story of Brother Adrian and the practice of listening to the bell—be it a Buddhist meditation bell or the bell of a Christian church—as a reminder of mindfulness.

Many of us are still searching for our true home, and Christmas often makes us more aware of this. Jesus was searching for his true home, and he spoke for all of us in that regard. If we can find a brother, sister, or community that has wisdom, compassion, and solidity, they can become our true home.

In the Buddhist tradition, taking refuge means we have found our true home. We take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha—the Three Jewels. If we know how to take refuge in our in-breath, peace and freedom can be ours in just one breath. By deeply getting in touch with our in-breath, we get in touch with ourselves, and this puts us on the path to our true home.

Every day is an opportunity to live in peace, stability, brotherhood, and sisterhood. Each moment we spend in mindfulness contributes to a past we can treasure. Our ability to find our true home requires that we have stable roots, so that’s why being part of a Sangha is so important. The Buddha built a beautiful Sangha that provides a true home to this day. Jesus Christ did the same, as did Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Thầy built his Sangha even while spending forty years in exile, and members of that Sangha now live all over the world. We must all participate in Sangha building.

This talk was given on Christmas Eve during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 2008. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

December 24, 2010. Thich Nhat Hanh gave a 58-minute dharma talk in Stillwater Meditation hall in Upper Hamlet in Plum Village during the 2010-2011 Winter Rains Retreat. This was the Christmas Eve talk. Thay speaks about the theme of finding a true home, drawing parallels between the journeys of Jesus and the Buddha, both of whom searched for their true homes as young men. Thay emphasizes the importance of building a sangha, a beloved community, to find one’s true home and reduce suffering. He reflects on his meeting with Martin Luther King 44 years ago, where they discussed building a loving community.

Thay explains that the sangha is like a beehive, where each member works for the well-being of the whole. He shares that his time in the West has been devoted to sangha building, and that without a sangha, one cannot do anything. He also discusses the teachings of the Buddha during his last Rains Retreat, which focused on finding our true home within ourselves—the island of oneself, where peace, freedom, solidity, and joy reside.

Thay further elaborates on the practice of mindfulness, which brings one to the present moment and helps touch the wonders of life. He draws connections between the teachings of the Buddha and Jesus Christ, suggesting that both figures can be seen as our brothers, and that nirvana or the Kingdom of God can be experienced in the here and now through mindful breathing and living.

Additionally, Thay talks about Jesus as a refugee, his own experience as a refugee from Vietnam, and our collective experience as refugees seeking a true home. Monks and nuns from Plum Village also invoke the name of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, on Christmas Eve Day, 2010, in the Dharma Cloud Temple of Plum Village, France.

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Relinquish Dual Grasping and Find Holiness Beyond Dualism

Thầy bows to the sacred anniversary of Christian faith while at the same time lighting a path to experience God and Jesus in a Buddhist way that transcends limiting dualisms such as birth and death and being and nonbeing. Thầy invites attendees to a candle-lit, walking meditation procession after the talk. He charges us all with generating the collective energy of peace and compassion in the world.

Thầy points to the practice “I have arrived, I am home,” and the question of what is our “true home” recurs throughout the talk. Thầy’s answer that home is available in every present moment, every step, “and that true home is available now and here, not just after you die.” The context of Christmas invites large, difficult questions, from which Thầy does not shy.

He proceeds by showing how traditional dichotomies can limit our understanding. He starts with the finding of modern physics that matter and energy are ultimately indistinguishable one from the other to show that it is not supportable to dismiss “matter”—the body, planet Earth—as simply inert and dead: “We realize that we have a body, a precious body given us by the Bodhisattva Earth. . . . And it is easy enough to see that when you die you go back to Mother Earth,” as part of which none of life’s energy or matter can be created or destroyed. Far from being merely a resource or an environment, “the Earth is us,” and “we are her children, and she is in every one of us.”

Thầy then examines two “kinds of theology,” the vertical dimension (God above human above all else) and the horizontal dimension (historical,temporal). He asks “Is God a force behind—outside—of the cosmos?” He answers with one of his favored metaphors: the individual wave is caught up in the horizontal dimension, and water is the vertical dimension of which all waves are part, yet “the wave may be able to find that she is made of water.” Thầy concludes, “when you get in touch with the vertical dimension—your true nature—you get at the same time in touch with the horizontal dimension,” and, conversely, “if we know how to touch the historical dimension deeply, we will touch the ultimate dimension, and we will touch our true nature of no birth and no death; no being and nonbeing, exactly like the wave.”

And this conclusion prepares the way for the ultimate Christmas question: is Jesus the “son of man” or the “son of God”? Thầy’s answer is both-and the son of God and the son of man, the ultimate and the historical. But, then, in every moment absolutely everybody and everything is potentially both. We all belong to the historical dimension of birth and death, being and non-being, but we also all belong to the ultimate dimension. And so does God: “Yes, God can be a person, God can be a cloud, God can be a rose.” And, as Thầy illustrates with another favored metaphor, the cloud is never born and never dies but always exists in its various forms, because nothing exists eternally and nothingness cannot exist either. “So,” Thầy teaches, “let us try to transcend our notions of body and mind, matter and spirit, consciousness and the material world—that is a big obstacle for us,” the obstacle of “dual grasping.”

Thầy offers in closing that “if vertically we can touch our ultimate dimension, then we will make peace with everything in the horizontal dimension,” and “there will be no war, no conflict, and peace will be possible.” That would be a very blessed Christmas indeed.

This talk was offered on Christmas Eve during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 2011. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Finding Our True Home in Ourselves and in the Sangha

Thầy invites us to reflect deeply on what it means to be truly at home. Drawing from the lives of the Buddha and Jesus, he reminds us that both spiritual teachers began without a worldly home but discovered their true home through practice and awakening.

Thầy teaches that our body is our first home, and that by coming back to our breathing and our body, we return to life itself. Through mindful breathing, “Breathing in, I see myself as a flower,” we learn to dwell peacefully in the present moment, caring for our body as a living wonder.

From this foundation of embodiment and mindfulness, Thầy guides us toward the deeper aspiration of building Sangha, creating communities rooted in brotherhood, sisterhood, joy, and understanding. Just as the Buddha and Jesus could not realize their work alone, we too need a Sangha to sustain our practice and nurture our dreams.

This talk was offered on Christmas Eve during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 2013. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Lighting candle for victims of war in Sarajevo

In the Western tradition, Christmas is a very important holiday, equivalent to the Vietnamese Tết, where people try their best to go home to be with their family. This is an occasion to really look at our father, mother, brother, and sister. The practice center is also a real family where people look at each other as brothers and sisters.

By learning how to breathe, smile, and recognize, we discover that everyone in the community is a gem, a jewel. Breathing deeply allows us to see that everyone living in the community is a real treasure, making us feel very rich. We are surrounded by people who know how to suffer and how to enjoy the present moment, learning the art of loving oneself and others.

While there are centers where people learn the art of killing, being together to practice love is a real golden opportunity. The true meaning of Christmas is to learn to look at each other as a jewel. If something befalls one of us, we will suffer. Therefore, we wish everyone good health, smiles, and joy, for that kind of peace is our own health, joy, and peace.