June 2, 2012. 82-minute dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh from Lower Hamlet in Plum Village during the 21-Day Retreat with the theme The Science of the Buddha. The talk is given in English and this is the first dharma talk (of 15).

Topics include the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing - the first four exercises, and Walking Meditation - arriving in the here and now. Our teacher and the sangha feel very relaxed, in no hurry, with 3-weeks to practice and learn.

0:00 The Practice of Listening to the Chant
21:30 Namo’valokiteshvaraya Chanting by the Monks and Nuns of Plum Village
43:30 Main Talk

00:30 Sitting Meditation
07:10 The Practice of Listening to the Chant
29:00 Namo’valokiteshvaraya Chanting by the Monks and Nuns of Plum Village
53:30 Mindful Movements
1:01:40 Main Talk

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Thay focuses on Right View using the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing (exercises 5-8), the Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path, and the Three Concentrations: emptiness, signlessness and aimlessness.

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

June 4, 2012. 185-minute dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh from Upper Hamlet in Plum Village during the 21-Day Retreat with the theme The Science of the Buddha. The talk is given in English and this is the third dharma talk (of 15). We begin with 10-minutes of chanting followed by the main dharma talk by Thay. After some mindful movements, we continue with University of Virginia Astrophysicist Professor Trinh Xuan Thuan interviewing Thay.

Topics of the Talk:
Obstacles of Buddhist Practice - Knowledge, Afflictions
Four Foundations of Mindfulness - Body, Feelings, Mind (51 mental formations), Objects of Mind (‘nature’ for the scientist)
From the objects of mind we have “double grasping” and the “perceived and perceiver” - entanglement.
Two Realities - Ultimate, Historical
A=A≠B (science), A≠A=A (Buddhism)

Interview:
Question 1: Buddhism says that one has to get rid of all previous knowledge, to have a clear mind. I think in science one has to know things that were done before, but keep a clear and open mind. Does Thay agree with this?
Question 2: You said something about inanimate matter has intelligence. I’m not sure this is the current scientific view now. Even if you claim that an electron has consciousness, then I say that we have to say there are varying degrees of consciousness. I would say that an electron is very different from a human being. An electron has mass, its electric charge, and its spin, that’s it. Once you’ve seen an electron, you’ve seen them all. Also, a flower. Chimpanzees have some human notion, so close to us in genes. I think there are different degrees of consciousness, and we cannot put everything on the same level. What is your response to that?
Question 3: What is the concept of time in Buddhism? We have the impression that time passes, from the past to the present to the future. In science we learn that past, present and future are always there, and time is not the same for everyone, depending on the movement of the observer. Although there is a psychological time that seems to be there. That is the physical conception of time. So what is the Buddhist concept of time?
Question 4: I like Buddhism not only because I was raised in it, but because it is very logical. It has the spirit of experimentation that a scientist would accept. The mind is the instrument. Objective and subjective reality, that’s something true. As a scientist I realize that an observer is very important as part of what he sees. If you say that there is no objective reality independent of the mind, do you think, for example, that if you do not look at the moon, the moon does not exist? Do you really believe that an alternate universe without consciousness would not exist, if no one could be conscious of it?

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June 6, 2012. 114-minute dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh from Upper Hamlet in Plum Village during the 21-Day Retreat with the theme The Science of the Buddha. The talk is given in English and this is the fourth dharma talk (of 15). We begin with chanting followed by the main talk about 10-minutes into the recording.

Topics of the Talk:

• Harmonizing body, breath, and mind.
• Sangha

• Subject | Object

• Applied Buddhism
• Inviting Your Father to Sit and Breathe with You
• Your Mother’s Hand: The Nectar of Love
• The Concept of Time in Buddhism
• 51 Mental Formations
• Sharing in Dharma Discussion
• 16 Exercises of Mindful Breathing
• Handling a Strong Emotion
• Mindfulness of Feelings
• An Emotion is Only an Emotion
• When Your Child Is in a Crisis
• Mindfulness of the Mind/Mental Formations
• Selective Watering of Seeds in the Mind
• Mindfulness of the Object of Mind
• Classical Physics and the Discriminating Mind. Quantum Physics and the Non-Discriminating Mind
• Subject and Object of Cognition: A Sheet of Paper
• The Cinematographic Nature of Consciousness
• A Circle Representing Perception
• The Gospel of John: The Father Is in Me, and I Am in the Father
• Svalakshana: The Ground of Consciousness
• Pramana: Pratyakshapramana and Samanyapramana

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June 7, 2012. 99-minute dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh from New Hamlet in Plum Village during the 21-Day Retreat with the theme The Science of the Buddha. The talk is given in English and this is the fifth dharma talk (of 15). This is an excellent session of questions and answers.

Questions:

• What is the difference between feelings and mental formations?
• Is euthanasia okay? Is it Right Action? Can we relieve physical pain?
• How do I practice with the teaching of inferiority and equality complexes?
• How can we support our dharma teacher when they are not so skillful?
• How do I practice with the last four exercises from the sutra on the full awareness of breathing?
• Question on consciousness and impermanence.
• What happens to the mind after the body dies?
• How can you take refuge in the sangha if you don’t trust? How can we build trust?
• Severe mental illness, such as bipolar, requires medicine to balance emotion. Can you clarify this as it relates to the practice?

The session includes contemplations before chanting, the Heart of Perfect Understanding, and an introduction to the questions and answers session. Specific questions address feelings and mental formations, the ethics of euthanasia in cases of severe pain, understanding and practicing with the teachings on inferiority and equality complexes, supporting a local dharma teacher, reconciling the impermanence of consciousness with traumatic experiences, the possibility of the mind existing without the body, building trust within the sangha, and the relationship between strong emotions, meditation, and medical treatment for severe mental disorders.

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Letting Go of Four Notions from the Diamond Sutra: Self, Person, Living Beings, and Lifespan

Thay begins with a brief introduction to the three energies of practice: Mindfulness, Concentration, and Insight, and how Zen Buddhism and the practice of looking deeply (dhyāna) were first introduced to China by Master Tang Hoi from Vietnam. He then delves into the first notion to release—Self—exploring both conventional and ultimate truths, the role of the five skandhas, the twelve āyatanas, and the eighteen dhātus, as well as the concepts of emptiness and interbeing. Thay offers a meditation practice with gathas to help trust the Buddha within, emphasizing nonself. He continues with the second and third notions—Man and Living Beings—illustrating the nature of interbeing with all that exists. Thay concludes with the fourth notion, Life Span, teaching the concept of no birth and no death, and emphasizes the importance of continuing practice, as the Buddha did after his enlightenment.

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

Thầy explores the organic, inseparable nature of suffering and happiness, illustrating that just as a lotus requires the mud to bloom, true well-being cannot exist without an understanding of ill-being. He reframes the Four Noble Truths through this lens of interbeing, explaining that touching our own suffering is the only way to generate the deep compassion and insight required for true love. Thầy details how to use the Fourth Mindfulness Training—incorporating loving speech and compassionate listening—to restore broken communication and heal generational trauma within families.

Delving into Buddhist psychology, Thầy challenges the conventional illusion of a separate self by explaining that while action, thinking, and perception exist, there is no separate actor, thinker, or perceiver behind them. He connects this ancient scriptural insight to the modern scientific principle of non-locality, demonstrating that just like an electron or a flower, our true nature is not confined within our skin but is completely empty of a separate self-nature (svabhāva).

Concluding with rich imagery from the Lotus Sutra and Avataṃsaka Sūtra, Thầy invokes the cosmic manifestations of Śākyamuni Buddha and Queen Māyā to remind us that we are not limited by time or space. Reflecting on Queen Māyā’s realization that she “contains multitudes,” Thầy shows that we, too, hold the entire universe and countless buddhas within ourselves. By touching this ultimate dimension of inner vastness, we can transcend all fear, birth, and death.

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

Thầy explore the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, emphasizing that deep insight requires a foundation of relaxation and joy. He introduces the vital practice of the separate investigation of the phenomenal (lakṣaṇa) and noumenal (nature) realms—to clarify the relationship between conventional and ultimate truths. Using this framework, Thầy corrects a common scriptural misunderstanding: he explains that all Four Noble Truths must be understood as conditioned (saṃskṛta) and impermanent within the conventional dimension. However, by looking deeply into these conventional realities—just as a wave touches her true nature as water—we directly encounter the ultimate dimension, which is entirely free from the notions of birth, death, being, and non-being.

Turning to the Second Noble Truth, Thầy explains how suffering arises and persists through the intake of unwholesome food, framing the practice of the Fifth Mindfulness Training around the Buddha’s teaching on the Four Nutriments. Drawing from the Sutra on the Son’s Flesh, he unpacks the four types of nutriment: edible foods, sensory impressions, volition, and collective consciousness. Thầy illustrates the highly toxic nature of unmindful sensory consumption by sharing his advice to an editor at the Times of India on how to report devastating news without watering seeds of despair and anger in society.

Finally, Thầy highlights the urgent need to protect ourselves and future generations from psychological toxins through mindful consumption. He shares the classic story of the mother of Mencius (Meng Zi) to demonstrate the power of choosing a wholesome collective environment. To bring these healing practices into the mainstream, Thầy calls upon educators and writers to help “train the trainers” and adapt the Five Mindfulness Trainings into secular manuals for schools worldwide.

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

Thay investigates the phenomenal and noumenal worlds—the conventional truth and the ultimate truth, using several visual metaphors, and commenting on the connection with science and its laws. He highlights how a practitioner should practice skilfully in order to transform notion into insight, elaborating on emptiness and no self, quoting verses from the Heart Sutra.

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

Thay discusses the importance of mindfulness in daily life and that every breath, every step can bring us joy and happiness. Mindfulness, concentration, insight, are three kinds of energies that we cultivate in our practice, that can bring joy and peace in every moment and help us transform suffering.

Thay tells the story of the Buddha visiting the monk Vakkali, who is dying. The story illustrates the concept of the Dharma body. Thay then teaches about the Four Recollections and the Four Bodies- the Buddha body, the Dharma body, the Sangha body and the Mindfulness Training body. We practice to cultivate and nuture these Four Bodies within us. He relates how the Four Bodies are interconnected and that a true Sangha– a living Sangha, has the living Dharma and the living Buddha within it.

“Every one of us is a cell of the Sangha body. And we know that the Sangha body carries within herself the Buddha body. So if the Sangha is a true Sangha, the Buddha is in the Sangha. And while you are a cell of the Sangha body, you are at the same time a cell of the Buddha body. It’s wonderful to be a cell in the body of the Buddha. And actually you are one. Every one of us is one cell in the Buddha body. Why do you have to go and look for the Buddha elsewhere? You are already one cell in the Buddha body. Rejoice.”

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

Thay begins by exploring the six mantras of love, which are practiced in Plum Village and can also be applied to a lay environment. Further, Thay explains different aspects, functions and names of consciousness according to Buddhist psychology. He elucidates how, as meditation practitioners, we can re-educate manas (the seventh consciousness) to free this aspect of consciousness from its wrong perceptions. Thay concludes by touching on the subject of retribution (vipaka), reminding us that we are the results of our actions and that, with mindfulness, it is possible to transform our unwholesome thoughts, words and deeds into wholesome ones, bringing happiness to ourselves and others.

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

June 17, 2012. 93-minute dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh from Upper Hamlet in Plum Village during the 21-Day Retreat with the theme The Science of the Buddha. The talk is given in English and this is the twelfth dharma talk (of 15). This talk is a session of Questions and Answers.

Questions include topics such as dealing with feelings of unsafety due to stolen cooking materials, training people in mindfulness to address global issues like global warming and food shortages, understanding new language in the revised Mindfulness Trainings related to the LBGT community, practicing the concept of “no” (koan) as described in Zen Keys, practicing letting go, transmission and karma of illness through the family, the role of Parallax Press and Thich Nhat Hanh’s books in sharing the dharma, working with internal anger possibly manifested as external illness, and the relationship between dance and writing.

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Thay delves into the Zen view of mind and thinking with a focus on how to integrate mindfulness into our daily routines. The Five Universal and Five Particular Mental Formations are outlined as important tools to strengthen mindfulness. Using these mental formations, as well as the Eight Types of Consciousness, can help us to create new neural pathways for wholesome thoughts and actions. The talk concludes with an exploration of how our karma–thinking, speaking, and acting–creates our body, mind, and environment.

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

Everyone has Buddha nature, we have the seeds of understanding and compassion in us. As practitioners, we can change the habit of reacting with anger or irritation in unpleasant situations, using mindful breathing to pause and respond more skillfully, with understanding and compassion. Thay speaks of generating energies of peace and happiness in daily life and in a sangha.

Thay describes the Four Attainments, the fruits of our practice, and draws connections between them: to be content and to dwell peacefully where we are, to be aware that we have the conditions of happiness (“I have arrived, I am home”), to touch the nature of interbeing, and to recognize no birth, no death.

Thay shares the forty-fourth verse of the Gathas on the Absolute Truth, emphasizing that every living thing is a continuous stream, like a river flowing. When we practice, we look deeper than superficial phenomena. Thay invites practitioners, including scientists, to transcend fixed notions.

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

Touching Reality Beyond Signs

Thay emphasizes the importance of practicing mindfulness, concentration, and insight to cultivate a deeper understanding of the ultimate truth. Highlighting the importance of Sangha building, these teachings also remind us of he interconnectedness of suffering and happiness and of the wisdom of non-thinking and non-measuring. The talk ends by stressing the importance of the Five and Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings as embodiment of the wisdom of non-discrimination, and with a call to continue forming Sanghas.

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