The Healing Power of Mindfulness

Relating to the transformation of suffering, Thầy describes how mindfulness anchors us in the present moment, allowing us to touch the joy of everyday wonders. He explains how the energy of mindfulness can help us take care of our suffering and generate understanding and compassion, highlighting the importance of loving kindness and loving speech to foster healing and reconciliation. Reflecting on transformation, like clouds turning to rain, Thầy invites us to look beyond signs in order to touch the reality of no birth and no death. The talk ends with an invitation to enjoy walking meditation as a way to savor each step and breath, and transform collective energy into nourishment and healing.

This is the first talk in a series of twelve given during the What Happens When We Die, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Signlessness and the Eight Bodies of the Practitioner

Thầy begins this talk by asking members of the audience how they generate joy and happiness and to share those methods with each other and with him. He also asks how they handle painful feelings. He then speaks about signlessness, which is a way of seeing the world as it truly is—not in the forms we usually perceive—using the example of a cloud in the Dharma hall.

Thầy next speaks about the first of our eight bodies—the physical body—and how we need our body to be inhabited by our mind for us to be truly alive. The next body is the Dharma body, which is our spiritual practice. The Buddha had a physical body and a Dharma body.

Thầy recounts the story of Vikkali, and the importance of recognizing the Dharma body and not being attached to the physical body. We also have another body, the Sangha body. The Buddha recognized the necessity of building a Sangha. Thầy tells the story of his meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King and how they agreed that Sangha, the beloved community, is essential to bring peace to the world. Sangha is what nourishes us and supports our practice.

The Sangha is a continuation of the Buddha, and each of us has buddha-nature. We also have a body that’s outside our physical body. Thầy relates a story in the Lotus Sutra about people hearing a voice coming from a stūpa. The Lotus Sutra teaches that anyone who has a human body can become a buddha. The people ask the Buddha to open the door of the stūpa so they can see the eternal Buddha. He does this by summoning all his bodies, which reside in the cosmos. The people witness tens of thousands of the Buddha’s transformation bodies. We, too, have many bodies. Our nature is non-local, and that means we can experience our continuation body now. Through our practice, we can assure that we have a beautiful continuation body.

Our human body contains the entire cosmos. When we touch the phenomenal world deeply, we touch the true nature of the cosmos, which is absolute freedom.

This is the second talk in a series of twelve given during the What Happens When We Die, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Beyond Non-Duality: The Path to Right View

Thầy begins this talk by relating a love story from the Imperial City of Hue about a couple married for nearly seventy years. After the death of the wife, the man loses all pleasure in life, believing his beloved is no longer accessible to him. Thầy then talks about how our feelings for someone we fell in love with can change over the years—so much so that they may seem like another person. He points out that this is both the same and not the same person we fell in love with.

Thầy relates another story of a couple married for ten years who had come to feel only suffering in their relationship. One day, the woman finds a LU biscuit box of love letters written by her husband. She reads them and feels again the love that she felt for him when they first met.

We all have seeds of love in our store consciousness, but sometimes they haven’t been watered for years. Whenever we water those seeds, our love is rekindled, and we can express it in loving speech. On the fifth day of mindfulness retreats, the miracle of reconciliation always happens, and this often takes place through loving speech.

We must be human to achieve buddhahood. There is a buddha in each of us, and in every buddha is a human being. In addition to our physical body, we have our cosmic-nature body. We also have a cosmic body, which is our dharma-realm body. The realm of dharma is the world of phenomena.

On first looking at phenomena, it appears to us that things exist outside of each other. This is called the explicate order: The son is not the father. But if we look deeply, we see the implicate order: The son is the father, and the father is in the son. All things inter-are. When we transcend perceived duality, we obtain right view.

This is the third talk in a series of twelve given during the What Happens When We Die, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thầy begins with a familiar moment: someone says something unkind, and in a millisecond we travel an old pathway toward anger and the wish to punish. “‘I am angry’ and ‘I know that I am angry’ are two different things.” Thầy shows how mindfulness and insight—remembering that the other person suffers too—can open a new pathway in the brain, and he offers the kind of loving speech that can restore communication and bring reconciliation.

Thầy also offers the practice of appropriate attention—turning the mind toward what leads to understanding and compassion rather than anger and craving—and shows how we can gently help a loved one do the same.

Thầy then draws a parallel with Freudian psychology: manas, the will to live, resembles the id, driven by pleasure-seeking and avoidance of suffering; mind consciousness resembles the ego; and the super-ego points toward sublimation—channeling that energy into art, humanitarian work, and the path.

Drawing on the Manifestation Only school, Thầy questions the view, still held by many scientists, of consciousness as something inside reaching out to an objective world. He explores how subject and object manifest together, just as a father and a son do, and looks at what we really see when we fall in love.

Thầy also speaks of the cosmos as the masterpiece of God, and of God as its true nature, as inseparable from it as water from the wave. With the cloud and Lavoisier’s law of conservation, he points to the nature of no-birth and no-death—in ourselves and in those we love. God, Thầy says, is available in every pebble and every tiny flower.

Through mindfulness and concentration, Thầy teaches, mind consciousness can cultivate the wisdom of nondiscrimination—drawn on the board as a lotus growing from the mud. The Kingdom of God, he says, is a place where people know how to make good use of suffering.

This the fourth talk in a series of twelve given during the What happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village. France.

This talk details mindfulness practices in Plum Village, emphasizing poetry and music to aid mindfulness. Each morning brings 24 precious hours, a gift to embrace with gratitude. Mindfulness involves cherishing everyday tasks, memorizing verses, and responding compassionately to suffering. Aimlessness, a profound Buddhist teaching, encourages fulfillment in the present moment without striving for future goals. Recognize interconnectedness in creation, akin to waves inseparable from the ocean. Mahāyāna Buddhism discusses origination from suchness, emphasizing interconnected phenomena. Buddhism literature includes sutras, Vinaya, and Abhidharma, with Mahāyāna focusing on consciousness and concepts like alaya, or store consciousness, supporting experiences. Everything manifests from seeds of potential, reflecting interconnected existence.

Transcending Birth and Death Through a Deep Understanding of Reality.

Thầy introduces the concept of the cosmic body (dharmadhātutākaya). Using the concepts of store (ālaya) and store consciousness, he explains that just as a wave has both a wave body and a water body, individuals have both a physical body and a cosmic body.

Thầy deepens key concepts: store and store consciousness, seeds (bījas), and the totality of seeds (sarvabījaka); the relationship between object and subject of cognition; interactions among senses, their objects, and resulting consciousness forming the eighteen realms of existence; and the impermanence and inter-being of all formations.

All formations lack a separate self, being composed of non-self elements, like a flower depending on sunshine and rain. This principle applies to all formations, including the body and consciousness. Mind consciousness creates separation through categorization, prevents us from experiencing the true nature of reality (svalakṣaṇa). Inter-being meditation dissolves this illusion, transforming suffering into compassion. Through deep meditation, one attains non-discriminative wisdom (nirvikalpajñāna), seeing all things as interconnected, eliminating suffering. Thầy concludes with the eight characteristics of seeds.

This the sixth talk in a series of twelve given during the What happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village. France.

Thay explains that nothing truly dies or is born but instead changes form, a concept rooted in both Buddhist teachings and modern science. Through this understanding, we can see our ancestors as always present within us and we can communicate with them through our actions and thoughts. Thay encourages reconciliation with parents by understanding their suffering, thus transforming anger into compassion and restore relationships.

Thay delves deeply into Buddhist psychology, discussing the roles of manas and store consciousness in shaping perceptions and actions. Thay concludes by highlighting the wisdom of non-discrimination as a means of transforming suffering and fostering boundless love.

This the seventh talk in a series of thirteen given during the What happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thay offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village. France.

Thầy develops the teachings on the nature of birth and death. What happens when we die? What happens when we live? Thầy offers the metaphor of the cloud to explain that the nature of the cloud is the nature of no-birth and no-death, elaborating that in Buddhism we can speak of two levels of truth: the conventional and ultimate truths. On the conventional, relative, level we have birth and death, we have creation and destruction. But if we go deeper, we can see that a cloud never dies, because to die means that from something we become nothing, and that is not possible, also according to science. Thầy then introduces the teachings of the Manifestation Only school, which began in the third and fourth century AD, and their relevance for the twenty-first century.

This is the eighth talk in a series of twelve given during the What Happens When We Die, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thầy poses the following question for reflection: should we exclude military people from the practice of mindfulness? The talk broadens this question to apply also to corporate, law enforcement, correctional, and health care contexts. Thầy’s overarching teaching here is that mindfulness may be taught beneficially to all people of all professions as long as it is taught as Right Mindfulness. This he defines as one of the eight pillars of the Noble Eightfold Path and, therefore, inextricably interconnected with Right View, free from all discrimination, hate, violence, exploitation, and fear. It can be understood, Thầy explains, in contrast to “wrong mindfulness,” taught as separate from Right View and given the purpose of an instrument, in order to do a better job of military killing or corporate profit-making. Thầy affirms that Right Mindfulness is not a means to an end but is–and by definition must be–the end itself. He concludes that we should not exclude anyone from the practice of mindfulness, as long as it is taught rightly, which is the responsibility of the Sangha and its trained and supported Dharma teachers.

This is the tenth talk in a series of thirteen given during the What Happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thầy opens by addressing the question of the retreat — “What happens when we die?” — framing the answer not as a matter of belief or faith, but of looking deeply and finding evidence through practice.

Thầy speaks of the Three Doors of Liberation as the key to awakening: emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness—using the image of a corn kernel to illustrate no-sameness and no-otherness. He then discusses the two kinds of truth, the conventional and the ultimate, drawing a Zorro-like “z” on the board to show how meditation on the nature of interbeing can lead us from one to the other. The bridge between them is what Thầy calls the Wisdom of Adaptation (anulomatā)—a wisdom born from observing how everything arises from conditions, which connects us with emptiness and the ultimate truth. The practice of meditation on the nature of interbeing can help us understand that there is no birth, no death; there is only transformation. “Everything is empty of a separate existence. To be is to inter-be.”

He continues by presenting several elements of the Noble Eightfold Path, emphasising Right View, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration—noting that “mindfulness is already enlightenment.” He then turns to Right Thinking as karma: our thoughts bear our signature and are our continuation. Like a pot of water being boiled, the steam produced is our action—nothing is lost, nothing disappears.

He ends with our continuation body: “You don’t say that after the disintegration of this body I will no longer be there. You are always there, because you are your own action.” And so the shortest answer to the question “What happens when you die?” is simply: you don’t die.

This is the tenth talk in a series of twelve given during the What Happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thầy teaches that nirvāṇa is not a destination: “There is no way to nirvāṇa; nirvāṇa is the way.” Every step on the path can bring happiness, and with mindfulness and concentration, even the walk from the parking lot to the office becomes a chance to touch nirvāṇa, the Kingdom of God, and the wonders of life.

Thầy begins by reading a letter from Elizabeth, who came to Plum Village carrying great pain and found, after five days of practice with her New Hamlet family, that she could breathe, listen compassionately, and smile. Thầy then shows how mindfulness reflects all the other elements of the path, and why no one should be excluded from the practice.

At the heart of the talk is Right Diligence. Drawing on the teaching of Manifestation Only, Thầy describes store consciousness as the garden and mind consciousness as the gardener: diligence is not struggling or fighting, but choosing which seeds to plant and water. He speaks of vāsanā, learning that becomes habit energy, and of bhāvanā, practice as cultivation, recalling the tobacco once grown around Plum Village and the Buddha’s words on the mind as the one thing that, well cultivated, brings much happiness. Thầy offers the four aspects of Right Diligence, comparing mind consciousness to a living room and store consciousness to a basement, and asks why we would keep listening to a CD we don’t like. He explains why hitting a pillow rehearses anger rather than releasing it.

With the image of Boston and New York, Thầy shows that nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are present at every point on the path, depending on the direction we face. He shares a verse from a chapter on nirvāṇa found in the Chinese Dharmapada—the deer enjoy the countryside, the birds enjoy the sky, and the wise enjoy nirvāṇa—and sets the Buddha’s words on what is not born, not made, and not conditioned beside the same teaching in the Pali Udāna.

Thầy closes with the teaching on subject and object, using the two sides of a piece of paper and his own teacher’s image of a snail with two antennas, and names double grasping as a habit energy we can recognize with the torch of mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

This is the twelfth talk in a series of thirteen given during the What Happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thầy structures this talk to move purposefully back and forth between the one and the all: from the physical body to the cosmic body, with the Dharma body and the Sangha body in between; from formal practice, such as retreat-based bell ringing and walking meditation, to continued practice throughout everyday civilian life; from one’s current birth, lifetime, and passing to one’s continuation apart from the dualism of being and non-being.

Thầy’s overarching point is the continuity and ultimate unity of the one and the all. The talk begins with the Dharma body, the Buddha’s teaching and “spiritual dimension of our life,” and, as part of that, Thầy’s own “continuation body,” the embodiment of his lifetime of teachings in all who learned from them. He then focuses on how to properly wake and invite the bell, which calls us back to our “true home” in the here and the now, and his request that we all become bell masters in our own homes. Thầy transitions through a story about a dream he had about the Buddha’s intention for the music of the bell to consideration of what Nirvana is and is not: it is not an after-death reward and it is available to all, as it was for the Buddha, in every present moment. There is no birth from nothing and no annihilating death; Nirvana is our always available home in the here and the now—this is “the cream of the Buddha’s teaching.”

Thầy then shifts back to walking meditation and a story about the Sangha’s mindful walk up a mountain in China. He wraps up with his instruction for after the retreat ends to keep generating joy, peace, and happiness for ourselves and for all others.

This is the final talk in a series of thirteen given during the What Happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

In this session of questions and answers the following questions were asked:

By the teens and young adults:

• How can I practice to handle a challenging academic year as my old ideologies fall apart?
• How do we avoid suffering from the idea of eternal life through no birth and no death?

By the adults:

• Are the images of hell in Buddhist teachings literal or metaphorical?
• Can you bring your teachings to Poland to help people still suffering from war effects?
• What determines whether life conditions are sufficient or insufficient at critical moments? How can we transcend dualistic concepts in daily life?
• Why do human beings have different karma?
• How to continue Thầy’s teachings to heal oneself without having too strong a sense of self? Is everything that God sends to be received as good?

This the second of two Question and Answer sessions organised during the What Happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this session at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.