A handful of salt put into a bowl of water makes the water too salty to drink, but if thrown into a river, the vast river remains pure; a narrow heart is easily afflicted by suffering, while a heart as vast as the ocean is not troubled by the touches of life. The heart here is loving kindness, which can be gradually nourished and enlarged through the practice of the Four Immeasurable Minds, that is, the four boundless minds, or collectively called the Immeasurable Mind. Organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Lawyers Without Borders, and others are vivid examples of loving kindness that extends beyond the boundaries of geography or religion.

When we encounter someone who causes us suffering, there are three concrete steps of practice to help our heart grow larger:

1. Look directly at the suffering of that person and give rise to the wish to help them suffer less, instead of blaming.
2. Use loving speech to express clearly that you are suffering, that you have tried to practice but have not succeeded, and sincerely ask for their help.
3. Listen with compassion (compassionate listening), allowing them the opportunity to share their heart fully, even if their words are mistaken or reproachful.
   Practicing these three steps not only helps the other person to suffer less, but immediately makes our own heart more spacious, shortening the path to Buddhahood.

The Xom Trung Temple has been named Phap Mai (Phap for France, Mai for Plum Village), with its full name being Dieu Phap Mai Hoa Kinh. The grounds will be transformed into a Vietnamese temple with daily rice and noodle meals, a vegetable garden with all kinds of herbs (aromatic herbs, coriander, perilla, Vietnamese balm, etc.), and the future abbot will be a lovely monk or nun invited to reside there.

When couples, or parents and children, encounter suffering, they often blame “the other person for not being lovable,” but in fact, we ourselves also contribute to each other’s suffering. The Buddha teaches that in order to change the other person, we must begin by transforming our own suffering. In the five-day retreats, practitioners practice:

• sitting meditation and walking meditation to recognize their own suffering and that of their loved ones
• mindful breathing and watering the seeds of understanding and love
• practicing “loving speech” through words of praise, gratitude, and apology
• practicing reconciliation by making phone calls (even until midnight if necessary)
  The result: in just five days, long-standing conflicts can be resolved, the door of the heart can be opened again, and we can help each other move from the “hell of suffering” to the “heaven of happiness.” Children also find spiritual nourishment to replace meaningless games. In family life, practicing the Three Refuges and the Five Mindfulness Trainings helps maintain love and gratitude, and prevents the storms of separation.

Thay answers the questions posed by retreatants in the retreat at Nottingham in August of 2010.

A talk transmitted live on the Internet from Plum Village on the 1st of August, 2010, during the fourth week of the Summer Opening.

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

Over the last three weeks we’ve alternated teachings for children and adults on topics such as:

1. the eight exercises on mindful breathing, perception, deep listening and loving speech;
2. the Noble Eightfold Path and the Five Mindfulness Trainings as discovered by teenagers;
3. pebbles meditation, retribution, two diligences, Four Elements of True Love;
4. the first five mantras and the four nutriments; plus Dharma talks in French, English, Spanish, German and Vietnamese.

True spiritual practice brings a spiritual dimension into every moment through mindfulness and concentration. We each have:

1. a physical body;
2. a Dharma body (our practice, nourished by daily tasks);
3. a Buddha body (the seed of awakening in us);
4. a Sangha body (the living Dharma we generate together).

By simple acts—breathing, walking, drinking tea, brushing teeth, closing a door—done mindfully and with gathas, we generate the living Dharma, support our Dharma body, and allow insight to liberate suffering. In walking meditation each step, when accompanied by “I have arrived. I am home,” brings us fully into the here and now, where true peace, solidity, freedom, and joy arise.

In 2010, in Upper Hamlet’s Still Water Meditation Hall, Thay rose each winter-retreat morning to make tea in his hut, walk mindfully by starlight to the hall, and sit with us—breathing in the fresh, healing air, breathing out tension, and simply enjoying in-and-out breaths without effort. He called it “Still Water” because, like clear water, sitting still lets us see things as they are and reflect without distortion.

We have learned five mantras:

1. Darling, I am here for you.
2. Darling, I know you are there, and I am very happy.
3. Darling, I know you suffer. That is why I am here for you.
4. Darling, I suffer. Please help.
5. Dear friends, this moment is a happy moment.

The fifth mantra (“this moment is a happy moment”) invites us to notice conditions of happiness—having parents alive, a home, fresh air or water, a healthy heart—and to practice it whenever we feel lucky. The fourth mantra is most difficult: when we believe the one we love most has caused our suffering, pride makes us refuse help. Thay told the tragic sixteenth-century tale of Mr. Trương and his wife of Nam Xương to show how a single wrong perception can destroy love, and urged us instead to go to each other and say: “Darling, I suffer. I want you to know it. I am doing my best. Please help me.”

The first two of the Buddha’s four nutriments guide our consumption:
• Edible food (đoàn thực), which we should choose and eat “mindfully so as not to feel we’re eating our own son’s flesh,” preserving compassion, reducing harm, and nourishing body, mind, and world.
• Sensory impressions (xúc thực), which include everything we see, hear, read, or hear talked about; we must refuse poisonous inputs—violence, hate, fear—and adopt a family- or Sangha-wide policy of Right Consumption.

Every child is “a flower in the garden of humanity,” complete with a “flower face,” “flower eyes,” “five-petaled” hands and feet. Losing our “flowerness” through anger or sorrow makes us unhappy, so the practice is to preserve our peace, calm and freshness. When we love someone, the most valuable offering is our own presence—fresh, loving, smiling and compassionate—rather than any material gift.

In Plum Village we use five mantras to restore flowerness, of which the first two are:

1. Darling, I am here for you.
2. Darling, I know you are there and I am very happy.
   A mantra becomes effective only when body, speech and mind are perfectly united. Mindful breathing, walking and smiling bring us back to the here-and-now, so that our presence truly becomes the gift we offer.

In reviewing two weeks of practice, Thay introduced the three doors of liberation—emptiness (śūnyatā), signlessness (animitta) and aimlessness (apraṇihitā). Aimlessness means stopping all searching—realizing we are already in the kingdom of God, here and now. Every mindful breath and every step is both destination and arrival, a direct path to peace, freedom and joy.

Every time we hear the bell—temple bell, church bell, or clock bell—we stop thinking, stop talking, listen deeply, and breathe in and out peacefully three times. This basic Plum Village practice generates a powerful collective energy of peace that nourishes body and mind. “To make peace, you have to be peace,” beginning with going home to yourself: stop thinking, stop talking, and breathe mindfully to calm your body.

From conception you were a “tiny seed” in your mother’s womb—loved, nourished, and carried with care. That original love is the foundation of life, and when it’s covered by suffering it can be restored through the Buddha’s teaching. Today’s ceremony of gratitude to father and mother invites each of us to say: “I’m very glad that you are alive with us. Thank you for being there.”

Right Diligence, one element of the Noble Eightfold Path, works with the two layers of mind consciousness and store consciousness, where bīja (seeds) of anger, love, peace, and hate reside. Fifty-one categories of seeds give birth to fifty-one mental formations. To cultivate the wholesome and tame the unwholesome, practice diligence in four aspects:

1. Learn the art of not watering unwholesome seeds (jealousy, anger) in yourself or your partner by making a mutual commitment and reminding each other.
2. When a negative seed has manifested, help it go home by embracing it mindfully and inviting a wholesome seed—mindfulness, understanding—to replace it.
3. Give wholesome seeds a chance to manifest through “Flower Watering,” selectively recognizing and praising each other’s positive values so they can bloom immediately.
4. Once a wholesome mental formation arises, keep it present as long as possible so it can grow at the base of consciousness, fortifying peace, joy, and compassion.

Today a grain of corn is offered to each child and adult—seventy children and about seven hundred men and women—to plant mindfully in a pot, water daily, and after a week or ten days visit the young plant. In front of the two‐ or three‐leafed plant you ask, “My dear young plant of corn, do you remember the time you were a tiny seed of corn?” and listen with your heart as you help the plant recognize its origin from the ear of corn and the larger plant that came before.

We humans are like that plant of corn: at conception we were a very tiny seed in our mother’s womb, containing our father and mother, our grandparents, and all our ancestors. Through meditation we can see that our parents and ancestors are alive in us—when we walk they walk with us, when we smile they smile with us—and learn to be grateful. In Vietnam we say uống nước nhớ nguồn: when you drink water from the river, you remember its source.

In the Sutra on Mindful Breathing the Buddha proposes methods to produce joy and happiness:

1. Letting go—release what holds you back, like leaving a crowded city to taste the countryside.
2. Mindfulness—recognize conditions of happiness in the present moment, for example:
   • Breathing in, I am aware of my in‐breath.
   • Breathing out, I am aware of my out‐breath.
   • Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart.

Plum Village was born in 1982 and this year marks the 28th Summer Opening. In 2012 it will celebrate its 30th anniversary – “bien établi à l’âge de trente ans” – and you’re invited to propose songs, poems, theater pieces, big cakes for 3 000 people, books or other creative offerings. From 170 practitioners at the first opening, Plum Village has grown worldwide: daughter Sanghas in Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, and many ordained teenage monastics (aged 12–14), five or six of whom are now Dharma teachers.

The practice of the bell uses a mini-bell with its “inviter” rather than a stick. Children (and adults) learn to bow to the bell as a Bodhisattva, hold it mindfully, breathe in–out twice and recite 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 to me awake from forgetfulness.”
4. “And transcend the path of anxiety and sorrow.”
   Next comes a half-sound to give six to eight seconds’ pause, then a full sound followed by three in- and out-breaths. A second full sound ushers in the two-line gatha “I listen, I listen, this wonderful sound brings me back to my true home,” with three breaths, and a third sound with three more breaths before replacing the bell and bowing in gratitude.

Beyond physical form, every practitioner cultivates:
• a Dharma body through mindfulness, concentration, and insight;
• a Buddha body—the buddhahood already alive in us;
• and a Sangha body—the collective energy of peace, joy, and compassion that supports and transports our practice.
Mindful breathing and walking bring you “home” to the kingdom of God or Pure Land here and now, as swiftly as any tele-transportation.

Still Water Meditation Hall
When the water is calm, it reflects things as they truly are. Still Water Meditation is based on:

1. Breathing in, I see myself as still water.
2. Breathing out, I reflect things just as they are, without distortion.

Bhava: Becoming and Impermanence
– Bhava (B H A V A) is better translated as “becoming” rather than “being”: everything changes in every kṣaṇa (fraction of a second).
– “Identity” is a continuation: seeds, plants, ancestors, and talents flow from generation to generation.

Karma: Action in Three Aspects

1. Right Thought
   • Free from discrimination and dualism (father/son, lotus/sun/mud)
2. Loving Speech
   • Supports, inspires confidence, reconciliation
3. Right Physical Action
   • Consumption, nourishment, and livelihoods that reduce suffering and preserve the planet

The Four Practices of the Seeds

1. Do not water negative seeds (anger, jealousy, despair)
2. Bring back to the original position any negative seed that has manifested, as soon as possible
3. Water the good seeds in yourself and in the other to bring about a positive mental state
4. Keep each good seed in consciousness as long as possible so that it may grow

The Noble Eightfold Path

1. Right View
2. Right Thought
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Diligence
7. Mindfulness
8. Concentration

This path leads to the cessation of suffering, to happiness and to freedom in the country of the present moment.

The word interbeing does not yet exist in the dictionary, but the idea is that “nothing can be by itself”:

1. left and right inter-are, above and below;
2. lotus flower and mud, cloud, sun;
3. tea and cloud, tea and Dharma;
4. father and son, suffering and happiness;
5. right and left hands, chopsticks in the oven.
   Looking deeply, we always perceive what allows the other to be, and the insight of interbeing removes separation, fear, and discrimination.

Four elements make up true love:

1. maitrī (friendship, the capacity to offer happiness, based on understanding one’s own suffering)
2. karuṇā (compassion, the intention to transform suffering, requiring understanding the suffering of oneself and the other)
3. muditā (pure joy, producing moments of joy through mindfulness, concentration, and deep looking)
4. upekṣā (non-discrimination, inclusiveness, equanimity, “love without boundaries” that allows us to love all beings).

The Five Mantras

1. Darling, I am here for you.
2. Darling, I know you are there, and I am very happy.
3. Darling, I know you suffer, that is why I am here for you.
4. (for another day, intended for adults)
5. This moment is a moment of happiness.

Three Doors of Liberation

1. The Door of Aimlessness: do not sacrifice the path for the goal; each step, each breath is already the realization.
2. The Door of Signlessness: do not be deceived by appearances, see the continuity (cloud / rain, paper / smoke) and transcend birth and death.
3. The Door of Emptiness (śūnyatā): the lotus flower is full of the cosmos but empty of a separate existence; nothing can exist by itself, everything inter-is.

Practicing Pebble Meditation:
Find four washed pebbles and place them in a small bag. Form a circle of four or five people, and choose a bell master. At the beginning, three sounds of the bell; we breathe and smile. For each pebble: take it in the right hand, identify it, place it in the left hand, and practice three conscious breaths with the associated phrase before placing it to the right.

1. First pebble: “flower”
   • Breathing in, I see myself as a fresh flower.
   • Breathing out, I feel fresh and smile.

2. Second pebble: “mountain”
   • Breathing in, I see myself as a solid mountain.
   • Breathing out, I feel stable and unshakable.

3. Third pebble: “still water”
   • Breathing in, I see myself as calm water.
   • Breathing out, I reflect things just as they are, without distortion.

4. Fourth pebble: “space”
   • Breathing in, I see myself as space.
   • Breathing out, I feel free from anger, craving, and jealousy.

Thinking, speaking, and acting like an orange tree:
Just as the orange tree produces leaves, flowers, and fruit, human beings generate thoughts, speech, and actions that continue us; nothing is lost (Lavoisier). These actions ripen into karma in two ways:
• Chánh báo – personal retribution (the subject)
• Y báo – environmental retribution (the environment)
Plum Village in France illustrates this collective karma: a right idea, words, and concrete actions have created an environment favorable to peace, tolerance, and the practice of the Five Mindfulness Trainings.

Meditation is life lived in depth, with joy, peace, and love:
– To breathe, to walk, to sit, to have breakfast calmly and with a smile, this is already meditation.
– Deep looking reveals, in a piece of bread, the wheat field, the sun, the rain, the clouds; in the lotus flower, the mud, the sun, the clouds; in a tiny corn seed, the knowledge, talent, and experience of generations.

Perception is always a co-arising of subject and object, from one flame to another, from one image to another. Wherever there is perception, there is illusion:
– To believe that the sky is blue, that the sea has its own color, that the sun here and now is the same as before, is to be mistaken.
– The merchant, convinced that his burned son was dead, refused to open the door when the child returned: his wrong perception deprived him of the truth.

To transform suffering and division begins with the practice of deep looking and loving speech, with three key sentences:

1. “I suffer and I want you to know it.”
2. “I am doing my best, I am practicing.”
3. “Please help me.”
   To listen deeply without judging, to help recognize and correct wrong perceptions, prevents hatred, violence, and terrorism.

Teleportation to the Kingdom of God or the Buddha’s Pure Land is realized here and now, in the present moment, thanks to the practice of mindfulness and concentration:
– A conscious in-breath brings us back from the past to the present.
– Walking meditation brings us back from the future to the present.
– The sound of the bell invites us to leave behind past suffering or future anxiety and to enter the “present moment,” the only place where the Kingdom exists.

Here and now is the address of the Kingdom of God; every lotus flower, every child, every cloud in the tea, every drop of suffering belongs to the Kingdom, provided we dwell in the present moment. Walking in the Kingdom means walking in mindfulness, breathing in concentration, tasting true life without any complex of superiority or inferiority.

1. Three energies to cultivate:
   1. Mindfulness (niệm)
   2. Concentration (samadhi)
   3. Insight (prajñā)
2. Two additional supports (Five Powers):
   4. Faith born from direct experience
   5. Diligence in daily practice

Today children learned how to invite and use a mini bell as bell masters in a forty-five-minute Dharma talk. At home they may set up a tiny meditation hall with a few cushions, a bell, and maybe a pot of flower. Each morning and evening they invite the bell three times, each sound followed by three in-breaths and three out-breaths:

1. Breathing in, I enjoy breathing in. Breathing out, I smile.
2. Breathing in, I am aware of my body. Breathing out, I release the tension in my body.
   That’s nine in-breaths and nine out-breaths per session.

Thay’s four Dharma talks for the children were on teletransportation; a grain of corn (matter contains knowledge, talent, consciousness; exercise: plant a seed of corn and ask it in silent corn language to remember); and a very funny story about a man who believed he is a grain of corn. Teenagers heard a fifth talk and were invited to stay.

A visiting English high-school science professor, Mike Bell (True Sword of Understanding), used a three-step inquiry mirroring the First, Second and Fourth Noble Truths—What makes you suffer? Why? What do you propose to stop it?—and discovered thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds proposed preventive measures essentially identical to the Five Mindfulness Trainings without ever seeing them. Thay then explained mindfulness sees two things—wonders of life and what you don’t like—and generates two desires: to foster the good and to stop suffering. He noted thirty to thirty-three young people commit suicide every day in France, tens of thousands in Japan, underscoring the urgent need for mindful breathing, walking, and the practice of the Five Mindfulness Trainings.