Thầy teaches that Right View transcends all pairs of opposites—birth and death, being and nonbeing, coming and going, sameness and otherness—and that touching this insight frees us from fear. He begins with the beginner’s mind, the mind of love that gives us the energy to practice and to serve, and with the two kinds of truth, conventional and ultimate. Just as quantum mechanics asks us to release what we learned from Newton, true understanding asks us to become participants rather than observers. No one can give us the taste of a kiwi; we have to eat it ourselves.

Meditating on a cloud, Thầy shows that it has not been born and cannot die: it can become rain, snow, or tea, but never nothing. So instead of “Happy Birthday to You,” we can sing “Happy Continuation Day to You,” and if we have lost someone dear to us, we can learn to recognize her in her new form. Lighting a match, he asks the flame where she has come from and where she has gone, and whether a second flame is the same as the first.

Thầy then turns to the four notions the Diamond Sutra urges us to remove: self, human beings, living beings, and lifespan. A flower is made only of non-flower elements, and humans only of non-human elements: we carry mineral, vegetal, and animal ancestors within us. To protect humans, we have to protect the environment, which is why Thầy sees the sūtra as perhaps the oldest text on deep ecology. Recalling the verse he learned as a novice monk at sixteen, he explains why bowing to the Buddha is a meditation rather than worship, and suggests the same must be true when we bow to Jesus or to God.

From Right View come Right Thinking, Right Speech, and Right Action. Thầy shares, “To think is already to act.” Drawing on Sartre and Lavoisier, he teaches that we are our actions, and our actions are our continuation. He touches briefly on the rest of the Noble Eightfold Path and the Three Doors of Liberation—emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness—and tells the story of Śāriputra guiding the dying Anāthapiṇḍika to see that he is more than his body.

Thầy closes by asking the Sangha to keep the mind of love alive. The talk ends with the song “No Coming, No Going.”

This is the final talk in a series of three given during Cultivating the Mind of Love retreat in the year 2011. Thầy offered this talk at Magnolia Grove Meditation Practice Center, Batesville, Mississippi.

The sangha is gathered together at Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi during the 2011 US Teaching Tour with the theme Cultivating the Mind of Love. It is the fourth day of the retreat. This 108-minute question and answer session is from October 1, 2011.

A good question can help many people. It can be a question about our suffering and our happiness.

We begin with a few questions from the children:

1. What are some of the traditional foods in a Buddhist monastery? (4:33)
2. What helps to clear your mind? (13:55)
3. Is it true that if you don’t believe in God that you go to the underworld? (17:32)
4. What kind of Buddha’s are there? (21:40)

Followed by questions from teenagers, young adults, and adults:

1. How can I relate to another person, and love another person, but not experience the three complexes - inferiority, superiority, and equality? (27:14)
2. What would you advise someone who has been diagnosed with attention disorder, or any mental illness, that hinders a person from being in the now. And have had to rely on medications for their whole life. How can they live in the now? (32:40)
3. What would you do if you had a friend who isn’t being loving to each other, and you are caught in the middle? (37:28)
4. How can I not suffer when I see my 26-year old son’s life unraveling due to his drug addictions? I am overcome by grief and despair. (56:45)
5. When facing a decision, where your only see two possible answers - the one you think is right and the one you feel is right - how can you know which one? (1:03:45)
6. What does it mean to be free? (1:23:50)
7. How can a Vietnam veteran, who still suffers from PTSD, communicate to the many generations of Vietnamese people at this retreat that he cared for the Vietnamese? (1:34:23)

We have one more talk in this series from Mississippi. Stay tuned.

Note: this description was automatically sourced from existing YouTube descriptions and other sources. Please ‘Suggest Edit’ if it’s incorrect.

The Sangha is gathered together at Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi during the 2011 US Teaching Tour with the theme Cultivating the Mind of Love. This 88-minute dharma talk is from September 30, 2011.

We begin with a 23-minute teaching for the children present at the retreat. Of course, everyone can benefit and enjoy this teaching regardless of age. Thay shares a story of bringing a bag of popcorn, but not to pop, to the children at an Italian retreat. The seed of corn that becomes the plant of corn. And how we can nourish our father and mother.

After the children leave, we continue with the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing. Yesterday we learned the first eight exercises of mindful breathing - the realm of body and the realm of feeling. Today we continue with the realm of our mind: mental formation.

1. Aware of mental formation

What is “formation” - comes from samskara. Anything that is formed, is a formation. There are physical formations and mental formations. What are the mental formations? The good ones and the negative ones. Can we name our mental formations? Call it by its true name.

Store and Mind consciousness. What are the characteristics of these? A teaching on seeds (bija) and how we can use our practice. What are the ways that we suppress our negative mental formations? The most common is to consume. But what can we do instead?

1. Gladden the mental formation

This is equivalent to the practice of Right Diligence. There are four steps in this practice: First, not to give opportunity for the negative seeds to come up in the first place / in ourselves or in each other. What are the conditions we are creating around us? We should know how to consume. Second, if by chance a negative seed arises then try your best to help it go down as quickly as possible. This is the art of embracing the negative mental formation. We can invite a good seed to come up. Change the CD. Third, give the good seeds plenty of chances to come up. This is the art of flower watering. In ourselves and in the other person. Thay shares the story of the couple who came to Plum Village from the city of Bordeaux. The fourth aspect of the practice, if the good seed has manifested then keep it present as long as you can. If we can do this, then even more good seeds continue to grow.

1. Concentrating the mind / mental formation
2. Liberating the mind / mental formation

When we are concentrated, we discover the nature of what is there. We can see the non-flower elements of the flower. Happiness is made of non-happiness elements. Mindfulness can bring concentration. Liberation is the fruit of concentration. There are many forms and teachings in cultivating concentration. What are some examples?

There are three kinds of concentration found in every school of Buddhism: emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness. These are the Three Doors of Liberation. Insight arrives.

Impermanence is another concentration. When we look into the family album, are we the same or different from the baby in the picture.

The last four exercises of mindful breathing are about the objects of mind. Reality is not something outside of our mind — it is the object of our mind. These last four help with the practice to release and transform our suffering.

1. Contemplating Impermanence
2. Contemplating non-craving
3. Contemplating the ultimate (nirvana)
4. Contemplating letting go

The talk concludes with an overview and teaching of these last four exercises, particularly our objects of craving. Money, power, sex. The conditions of our happiness are already present and available.

Note: this description was automatically sourced from existing YouTube descriptions and other sources. Please ‘Suggest Edit’ if it’s incorrect.

Thầy asks what is the most precious thing we can offer the people we love. Through the story of an eleven-year-old boy whose wealthy father offers to buy him anything for his birthday, he points to our true presence, and to the first mantra practiced in Plum Village: “Darling, I am here for you.”

The first part of the talk is offered to the children at the retreat, though everyone can enjoy it. Thầy teaches pebble meditation, with four pebbles representing a flower, a mountain, still water, and space, and invites the children to find their own pebbles and lead a session themselves.

Thầy then turns to the sixteen exercises of mindful breathing proposed by the Buddha. The first four concern the body: recognizing and following the in-breath and out-breath, coming home to the body, and releasing tension. Along the way, he recalls a recent day of practice with people at Google who spend long hours at their computers, and the wisdom of a wounded animal that lies down in a quiet place to heal. He describes the Buddha’s practice of scanning the body with the ray of mindfulness, smiling to each part with compassion.

The next four exercises concern our feelings. Before learning to handle pain, Thầy explains, we learn to generate joy and happiness. He tells of Anāthapiṇḍika, who brought hundreds of fellow businessmen to hear the Buddha teach on living happily in the present moment, and shows how mindfulness and concentration are sources of happiness. Letting go is another: the story of a farmer who has lost his cows invites us to call our own cows by their true names, including our ideas of happiness, and to have the courage to let them go.

Once we are nourished by joy, Thầy says, we are strong enough to go home and take care of our pain, supported by the collective energy of the Sangha. The talk closes with recognizing a painful feeling and embracing it tenderly, as a mother holds her crying baby.

This is the second talk in a series of three given during Cultivating the Mind of Love retreat in the year 2011. Thầy offered this talk at Magnolia Grove Meditation Practice Center, Batesville, Mississippi.

Thầy teaches that mindfulness is always mindfulness of something—of breathing, of walking, of drinking our tea—and that with just three seconds of mindful breathing, we bring our mind home to our body and make ourselves available to life. The Kingdom of God, the Pure Land of the Buddha, is only available in the here and the now.

Inviting us to look at a flower, Thầy asks whether we have the time to get in touch with it, caught as we are in regret about the past and worry about the future. He shares André Gide’s words that God is available twenty-four hours a day, and the Gospel story of a farmer who found a treasure in a piece of land and released everything else. Each of us is a cell in the Sangha body, and walking, sitting, and breathing together, we generate the collective energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

Thầy offers the practice “I have arrived. I am home.” for walking, and points out that this is not a declaration but a realization. If we suffer while we breathe or walk, that is not correct practice; every step and every breath can be a joy. When the Sangha is a true Sangha, the living Dharma is there, and so is the living Buddha.

Thầy then invites two Dharma teachers, Sister Tùng Nghiêm (Sister Pine) and Brother Pháp Dung (Brother Inclusiveness), to offer some recommendations for enjoying the retreat. Sister Tùng Nghiêm shares that the most important thing is to enjoy, and speaks about Noble Silence, eating in silence, waiting in the food line, and working meditation as chances to come back to our body and our breathing. Brother Pháp Dung remembers his first retreat and discovering salad without the dressing, and invites us to enjoy ourselves without the dressing and the labels we put on ourselves. He explains cultivation as being like a farmer who makes the earth rich, and shares that in this tradition the practice and the nonpractice are woven together, so it’s hard to tell where meditation begins. He closes by encouraging not a hard effort but a gentleness, a compassion to ourselves.

This is the first talk in a series of three given during the Cultivating the Mind of Love retreat in the year 2011. Thầy offered this talk at Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi, USA.