Thầy talks about the essence of the Sangha and it’s importance in bringing about social change. He shares the story of his meeting Martin Luther King Jr. and of how his idea to build the beloved community is the same as Sangha building with a non-Buddhist name. Thầy asks: “What is the Sangha and why do we need one?”

Thầy teaches that even President Obama needs a Sangha to support him in a very compassionate and loving way. We have produced our politicians. Our politicians need a strong Sangha, even though it is not a Buddhist one. And we have a role in that Sangha too. Obama is not an individual, he is a part of the Sangha. Without the Sangha, we cannot go far. The twenty-one-day retreat is a time to strengthen our Sangha and open the way for the world. The Sangha includes the Buddha and the Dharma. It contains the path of understanding and love.

Thầy sees the twenty-first century as like a hill that we are climbing together as a Sangha. Can we climb beautifully? Each step should be love, healing, forgiveness. With a Sangha, this becomes easy.

Thầy invites us to ask ourselves what it is that are we looking for. Is it our joy, our success, our transformation, our happiness, our emancipation or our freedom? Whatever we are looking for, we have to look for it in the present moment. How do we go home to the present moment to discover the power to nourish and to heal?

Thầy reminds us that the Five Mindfulness Trainings, the ten precepts of a novice, the two hundred fifty precepts for monastics, the fourteen precepts for members of the Order of Interbeing all represent the Buddhist teaching as far as ethics and morality is concerned, the Path of the Buddha that is being explored during the retreat and Thầy invites all Sangha members to contribute their insight to the revision of both the Five Mindfulness Trainings and the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings.

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

Thầy details the importance of being present, focusing on mindfulness and concentration through practices like inviting the bell, listening to the bell, mindful breathing, and walking meditation. The bell serves as a reminder to pause, breathe, and return to the present moment, inviting ancestors and cultivating mindfulness, concentration, and peace. Mindfulness, concentration, and insight are foundational energies for being alive in the present moment. Through mindful breathing, walking meditation, and recognizing habitual energies, practitioners embrace the present moment deeply, experiencing life’s wonders and cultivating compassion and love. The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path guide practitioners in addressing suffering and developing virtues like forgiveness, compassion, tolerance, brotherhood, and sisterhood.

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

Thầy discusses the Four Noble Truths and shares the transformation and relief of suffering. The Four Noble Truths are: suffering is a reality, understanding its causes, realizing the possibility of transforming suffering, and following the path to end suffering. Happiness and suffering are interconnected, and understanding suffering is crucial for happiness; there can be no lotus without the mud. Thầy introduces the Sutra on Mindful Breathing as a tool for the transformation of suffering and comments on the teaching’s pragmatic and methodological approach, and how it connects to the teachings of the Four Noble Truths.

This is the third talk of a series of thirteen given during The Path of the Buddha, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2009. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thay explores the interconnectedness of life through the Buddha’s teaching on dukkha (ill-being) and sukha (happiness). Birth, death, old age, and sickness are natural cycles which can be embraced as part of life, rather than suffering. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional, depending on one’s perspective. The Buddha’s Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path are a guide to ethical conduct, which is the path leading to the cessation of ill-being. A true system of ethics is free from dogma, free from all notions. Thay discusses the Heart Sutra to recognize that interconnectedness prevents harm and nurtures compassion, aligning actions with right view, right understanding, bringing us to the shore of enlightenment.

This is the fourth talk in a series of thirteen given 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.

Thay highlights right view as the foundation for the practice of the Noble Eight Fold Path. Thay shares how right view can help us overcome grief, heal past trauma and lay a foundation for a beautiful continuation for ourselves and the world. When we have right view the practice of the Five Mindfulness Trainings is a joy for us.

This is the fifth talk in a series of thirteen, given 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.

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.

Thay elaborates the Buddha’s teachings on how to practice the elements of true love: Loving Kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness. With mindfulness, concentration and insight we can realize the teachings. Thay highlights that to be able to truly love another, we first have to know how to love ourselves, handle our own suffering and bring joy to ourselves. Then our love will naturally shine on everyone and every species. We don’t need another person in order to practice true love. Sexual attraction is a natural phenomenon, but we should not confuse it with love.

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

Thay elaborates on True/Right Diligence within the framework of the Four Noble Truths. He distinguishes diligence—emphasizing regularity—from mere effort or intensity, explaining how Right Diligence leads to well-being while Wrong Diligence creates suffering.

Thay connects True Diligence to the Second Mindfulness Training on True Generosity and references the Sutra of the White-clad Disciple, exploring themes of happiness, desire, and practicing generosity. Thay also reviews other elements of the Noble Eightfold Path (Right View, Thinking, Speech, Action, and Livelihood) in relation to well-being and suffering.

This is the eighth talk in a series of thirteen given 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.

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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 teaches that happiness, the Kingdom of God, and the Pure Land of the Buddha are found in the present moment, and that this is also where healing begins for those who were hurt as children. He starts from the Gospel story of the farmer who gives up all his land to keep the small field with the treasure, and from the Buddha’s words to a group of businessmen: it is possible to live happily right in the present moment. A retreatant’s suggestion becomes a calligraphy: “You have enough.”

For those who have suffered abuse, Thầy offers practices for healing. The first is to come back to the present moment, with the support of a Sangha, and see that the situation now is safe. The second is the insight of the Heart Sutra that defilement and immaculation are notions of the mind; like the mud and the lotus, they inter-are, and the mud can be transformed. The third is a Great Vow to protect children and young people. A fourth practice, for everyone, is mindful consumption, along with mindful production.

Thầy then turns to how easily the Buddha’s teaching can be misunderstood, recalling the Buddha’s image of the right and the wrong way to catch a snake. With the image of a lotus pond, he explains that the First Noble Truth does not mean there is only mud: the Third Noble Truth confirms that well-being is there too. The path begins with Right View, and enlightenment, he says, is a product of the human being; every one of us has its seed.

Answering a question about the equality complex, Thầy draws on the physicist David Bohm’s implicate order and on his own two hands. The right hand, which has written nearly all his poems, feels no superiority, and when the hammer strikes a finger, it simply takes care of the left hand. He invites students of Buddhism and scientists to work together.

The talk closes with the first twelve exercises of the Sutra on Mindful Breathing, which Thầy says go perfectly with the Noble Eightfold Path. He ends on concentration, which can free us from a mental formation like despair or anger, and names the Three Doors of Liberation.

This is the tenth 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 New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

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Thay explains the meaning of Engaged and Applied Buddhism and the range of courses offered in the newly opened European Institute of Applied Buddhism (EIAB), with the benefits of staying in this residential community that embodies the practice. Thay encourages us to support the Institute and to put Applied Buddhism in the forefront of our practice, reducing suffering in ourselves and in the world.

In the second part of the talk, Thay elucidates the Buddhist teaching of right view of the nature of consciousness, its cinematographic nature and its relationship to impermanence and non-self. Thay explores the concepts of rebirth and reincarnation and teaches us not to fall into the traps of eternalism or annihilationism. Individual and collective Karma (our thoughts, speech and actions) is the dynamic force that underlies everything. Thay shares how our actions can transform the world, and that they are our continuation. Thay also teaches that subject and object inter-are as they arise from consciousness at the same time—the nature of reality is interbeing. This means that we are within all things and all things are within us, and so to preserve other species is to preserve ourselves.

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