The sangha is gathered at the New Hamlet in Plum Village during the Winter Retreat on January 23, 2003, for a Question and Answer session.

1. What are the four kinds of māras, and how do we work with them?
2. How do near-death experiences and dying people perceiving deceased relatives fit into the teachings on levels of consciousness and practice?
3. How can a mother help her ten-year-old son get over what happened after discovering his father’s suicide?
4. How can one stay calm with one’s feelings when experiencing every thought, emotion, and memory simultaneously?
5. How can one speak about a third party who is not present in a constructive, loving way without creating negativity or alliances in a community?
6. How can one be mindful and allow creativity to happen when creative ideas emerge while lost in an uncontrolled, wandering mind?
7. What is happening when a deceased spouse manifests through a medium, and where do deep trance mediums get their knowledge?

Thay shares about the roots of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing, in the sutras and the suffering during the Vietnam war. Thay elaborates on the Mindfulness Trainings in the light of the Noble Eightfold Path. Thay highlights Right View as the foundation of all precepts, and attachment to views as the ground of a lot of suffering. The Dharma should be received as a skillful means and we should not to get caught in it as a view. Thay comments on a talk by president Obama and encourages us to support him by practicing peace and reconciliation in our every day lives.
Thay teaches how we can practice to heal past suffering of the inner child with Right Mindfulness, establishing ourselves in the here and now. Everything we are looking for is here, in the present moment. If we don´t have a problem now, we don´t have a problem at all.

This is the sixth talk of a series of thirteen giving during The Path of the Buddha, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2009. Thay offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thầy talks about the wisdom of nondiscrimination, as well as the three complexes which bring about a lot of suffering: the superiority complex, the inferiority complex, and the equality complex. He teaches that understanding interbeing—where everything is interconnected and contains everything else—leads to liberation through the realization of nonself. With this awareness, all complexes are dissolved.

Thầy shares how, because he did not belong to any country, he found a true home that nobody can take away, where there may be preference but no discrimination. His right hand, which has written all his poems but one, never feels superior to his left hand, and when the hammer misses the nail, it takes care of the left hand as if it were taking care of itself. Olive trees in Italy that look like three or four trees turn out to share the same roots. Looking deeply into a flower, Thầy shows that it is made only of non-flower elements, just as America is made only of non-American elements, and Buddhism of non-Buddhist elements: “As a true Buddhist, you embrace all non-Buddhist elements.”

Thầy also touches on the Four Noble Truths and asks what is so noble about suffering. He clarifies how the Noble Path leading to the cessation of suffering is Right View—the wisdom of nondiscrimination, the wisdom of interbeing—which brings Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action, and so on. There is no lotus without the mud, so for Thầy the Kingdom of God is not a place without suffering, but a place where there is understanding and compassion. Like an organic gardener who uses the garbage to nourish the flowers, we are protected by understanding and compassion, and we don’t have to suffer.

This is the first talk in a series of two given during the Colors of Compassion retreat in the year 2004. Thầy offered this retreat at the Deer Park Monastery, California, in the United States.

Thầy discusses the importance of cultivating mindfulness and practicing in harmony as a Sangha. Thầy emphasizes collective mindfulness, compassion, and understanding, practices that guide us toward liberation and joy. The Buddha’s teachings on mindfulness, awareness, and liberation from suffering are highlighted, stressing the importance of non-attachment to views and doctrines. The Buddha’s eyes symbolize clarity and perception of ultimate reality, transcending notions and concepts. The teachings caution against rigid beliefs and attachments, advocating openness, humility, and liberating the mind. The essence of Buddhist practice is freeing oneself from fixed perspectives, leading to true happiness and Nirvana.

This is the sixth talk in a series of fifteen given during The Eyes of The Buddha, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2000. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village. France.

The Ethics of Actions and Their Consequences

Thầy discusses the Four Noble Truths and how Buddhist teachings differ from several other philosophies in regard to defining right actions, right thoughts, and right speech. Some of the other philosophies Thầy uses as comparisons include the divine command theory, consequentialism, a term coined by Elizabeth Anscombe, and utilitarianism as written by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Thầy weighs Anscombe’s view that there are things we cannot do, no matter what, against the flexibility of utilitarianism, and tells the story of conjoined twins born in Manchester whose parents and doctors faced a hard choice.

Thầy also discusses the importance of promoting correction over punishment, especially when working with inmates in the United States. He recalls how Buddhist temples in the past took in prisoners to help them transform, and a retreat in Wisconsin where police officers and prison staff learned to walk slowly and breathe.

Thầy points to what utilitarianism has not seen: how suffering and happiness inter-are, and the goodness of suffering. “Without the mud, there cannot be lotus.” One of his attendants, a former stockbroker, found more peace and joy waking at 4:30 as a monk than staying in luxurious hotels. The path of the Buddha, Thầy teaches, is the middle path, caught neither by the idea of consequence nor by rigid goodness: what is right is determined by our mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

Thầy ends by sharing the practice of oil pulling, rinsing the mouth with oil, as a way of detoxification in order to increase well-being.

This is the ninth talk in a series of thirteen given during The Path of the Buddha, the Twenty-One-Day Retreat in the year 2009. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thầy begins by describing the practice of Applied Buddhism, which is based on knowing how to handle our breath, body, and mind. When we watch someone walking mindfully, it reminds us to be mindful, and in this way, we bring peace and joy to the world. When we sit, we can practice with the Buddha, with our parents, and bring the Buddhadharma to our ancestors. With the mind of nondiscrimination, we can touch and even change the past and the future.

Thầy then teaches us how to harmonize our body, breath, and mind — bringing the three scattered elements of ourselves home together, the way a cook harmonizes the ingredients of a soup. We’re not to fight or force our breath into being deeper or calmer; we simply allow it to be as it is, and the energy of mindfulness naturally brings improvement.

If we feel fear, anger, restlessness, or any of the fifty-one mental formations, we don’t fight it or suppress it. We simply embrace it with mindfulness, and it transforms.

There are sixteen breathing exercises that help us handle our breath, our body, our feelings. Each of us is an artist, and as such, we can work with and change our mental formations using mindfulness. Thầy speaks movingly about how many young people, not knowing how to handle a strong emotion, are driven to suicide, and offers concrete guidance for parents and teachers on how to help children practice belly breathing before a crisis arrives, so they have a refuge to turn to. We can transform strong, painful emotions, especially with the support of our Sangha. We take refuge in the Sangha to assist us in being mindful so we’re able to do this. By learning how to take care of our mind, we become able to handle our mental formations. Joy and compassion are also mental formations, and we strive to cultivate these by selectively watering them in ourselves and others, even signing a “happiness treaty” with a loved one to make this practice a shared commitment.

When we free ourselves of our discriminating mind, we see that everything is part of everything else. There’s no separation. Thầy unpacks this through the three parts of consciousness—the perceiver, the perceived, and the ground from which both arise — showing how subject and object, like the two sides of a sheet of paper, cannot be pulled apart. The Buddha is made of non-Buddha elements. There is no self and other; all things inter-are.

This is the fourth talk in a series of thirteen given during The Science of the Buddha, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2012. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.