What we encounter at retreat is our Sangha—a concrete community of people who each try to be fresh, smiling, attentive, careful, loving, and understanding. Whether sitting, walking, or eating, every member contributes to a solid, relaxed, peaceful Sangha that manifests even after we’ve gone home. Like a cloud that becomes rain or tea yet never vanishes, the Sangha is always there. Wherever you are, help build a Sangha as a “safe island” where people can take refuge, feel happy, and practice peace, joy, and hope.

We take refuge in the three jewels, each interdependent and present in every moment:

1. Sangha – the community that lives in harmony and mindfulness
2. Dharma –
   – spoken Dharma: giving a talk
   – written Dharma: reading a book
   – living Dharma: radiating peace and joy through practice
3. Buddha – not a god but a human being who overcomes suffering through understanding, compassion, and wisdom

Children begin the Q&A by sitting close to Thay, holding the microphone, and together breathing in and out three times before asking a practice-focused question. Questions may be asked aloud or written for Sister Pine; five or six go first, then teenagers and adults.

Thay emphasizes that breathing in and out mindfully was the day he “began to learn the practice of mindful breathing” and discovered he could “bring peace into his body and my mind.” The sutra on mindful breathing’s exercises are:

1. focus on in-breath and out-breath only
2. recognize body while breathing in and out, unifying breath, body, and mind
3. release tension in the body as you breathe
4. use right thinking to transform painful feelings and emotions

Inviting the child within to walk, sit, or have tea with you, you remind him or her each day, “I know that we have grown up as an adult. We have means to protect ourselves,” so fear “will stop slowly.” Memories of the past are “only pictures, images” that continue to project films of suffering unless you “abandon the cinema hall and come into real life.”

Being Peace was proposed over Doing Peace because “if you are peace, then what you do will be for peace.” Peace in the body must come first—releasing tension, relaxing, healing pain—so that peaceful feelings and emotions can follow. Mindfulness, concentration, and insight give the faith and capacity to deal with whatever future or present difficulties arise.

I love you means to offer your freshness, true presence, joy, service, and understanding. We often think we know a tree, a cloud, another person, even ourselves, yet our knowledge is minimal. The story of a young nun who, after three years’ practice, answers “I don’t know who I am yet,” teaches us to stay open to exploring our true self rather than cling to names or labels.

A simple exercise with a grain of corn illustrates “continuation”:

1. Plant a seed in a pot, water and keep it warm.
2. As it sprouts, talk to the plant, asking “Do you remember the time you were a grain of corn?”
3. Patiently show that the plant is the seed’s continuation—you still see the seed alive within its new form.
   Likewise, before birth each of us was a tiny “grain” in our mother’s womb; our parents’ seeds continue in us. In meditation, you learn to see your father and mother alive within yourself, and to reconcile any anger by recognizing they are part of you.

In Buddhist psychology, our store consciousness holds fifty-one categories of seeds—positive (mindfulness, concentration, insight) and negative (ignorance, craving, hate, violence, doubt, etc.). Practice “selective watering”:
• Water joy, peace, and mindfulness seeds daily to nourish them.
• When a negative seed (anger, habit energy) arises, recognize “Hello, anger,” breathe in, smile to it, and refuse to fight or suppress it.
This non-dual, non-violent method transforms habit energies and brings insight. The path—from Right View (insight into inter-being), through Right Thinking, Right Speech, and Right Action, to Right Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration—is expressed concretely in the Five Mindfulness Trainings, offering a global ethic of love, compassion, and healing.

After inviting the bell to sound, breathe in and enjoy your in-breath, breathe out and enjoy your out-breath three times, then allow about ten extra seconds for everyone to complete their three in-breaths and three out-breaths. At home, set up a simple “breathing room” with a bell, cushions (one per family member plus one for a guest), and perhaps a single flower for freshness. Each morning before work or school and each night before sleep, sit together, invite the bell three times, and enjoy nine in-breaths and nine out-breaths. When tension arises in the family, go mindfully into that room, ring the bell, and breathe in and out together to calm and restore peace.

True love is first of all offering and recognizing presence:

1. Two mantras to practice—“Darling, I’m here for you” (offering your presence) and “Darling, I know you are there, and I’m very happy” (recognizing their presence).
2. Deep listening and loving speech to understand the other’s suffering before offering consolation.
3. The four unlimited elements of love:
   1. Maitrī (loving-kindness),
   2. Karuṇā (compassion),
   3. Muditā (sympathetic joy),
   4. Upekṣā (equanimity, non-discrimination).

With mindful breathing and presence, each moment—whether ringing a classroom bell every fifteen minutes, proposing a bell in Congress, or walking slowly step by step—is an opportunity to live happily in the here and now and to cultivate understanding, compassion, and joy.

We just finished the Summer Opening in Plum Village about five days ago with young people and children from fifty nationalities enjoying Sitting Meditation, Walking Meditation, Dharma Talk and deepening together in Noble Silence. Children practiced mindful walking and breathing, generating “the energy of peace, of joy” without TV or games. One young mother breastfed her baby in the hall, and both mother and child were nourished by mother’s milk and by “living Dharma” in the Noble Silence created by over a thousand people breathing together.

Listening to the bell invites every cell in the body to practice deep listening, creating Noble Silence for collective peace and joy. As a Bell Master you:

1. Wake up the bell with a half-sound
2. Offer time for “one in-breath and one out-breath”
3. Invite the first full sound with three in-breaths and three out-breaths while reciting:
   – I listen, I listen
   – This wonderful sound brings me back to my true home
4. Repeat for the second and third full sounds
5. End with bowing to the Sangha

The Buddha’s first eight exercises of mindful breathing are:

1. Identification of the in-breath as in-breath and the out-breath as out-breath
2. Following the in-breath and out-breath from beginning to end
3. “Breathing in, I am aware of my whole body.”
4. “Breathing in, I release the tension in my body.”
5. Bringing in a feeling of joy
6. Bringing in a feeling of happiness
7. Recognizing the pain, the sorrow, the distress, the despair in us
8. Releasing the tension in painful feeling

Practicing these steps generates mindfulness, concentration and insight, enabling us to touch the miracles of life, embrace our suffering and cultivate lasting peace and joy.