The Healing Power of Mindfulness

Relating to the transformation of suffering, Thay 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, Thay 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 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.

This talk details cultivating joy and happiness through mindfulness in Plum Village. Each breath and step can bring joy, and mindful words create happiness. Life and time are precious gifts, with 24 new hours each day to live deeply. Mindfulness nurtures happiness and legacy for future generations. Handling emotions like anger, fear, and despair is essential, with practitioners sharing methods in supportive circles. The Buddha taught the importance of Sangha, forming it immediately after enlightenment. Building a harmonious Sangha involves deep listening, loving speech, and nurturing Buddha nature within. Recognizing interconnectedness with the cosmos reveals profound wisdom and compassion. Through mindfulness, we perceive the cosmos’s true nature, transcending dualities and realizing inherent Dharma realm within us.

This talk details a tale from Hue, Vietnam, illustrating enduring love through a wife’s ritual of making tea for seventy years, and how their son’s compassion shielded the father from grief after her sudden death. Reflecting on the essence of love transcending physical form, it underscores nurturing love with kind thoughts, words, and actions, akin to sustaining happiness seeds through mindfulness. Revisiting cherished memories, like reading old letters, rekindles joy and nurtures relationships. Buddhism teaches interconnectedness, emphasizing unity between creator and creation, transcending dualistic notions of being and nonbeing. Recognizing this unity reveals the profound interconnectedness of existence, akin to waves embodying water.

This talk details the exploration of mental formations, emphasizing the importance of appropriate attention (yoniso manaskara) for well-being. Universal mental formations include contact, feeling, attention, perception, and volition. Mindfulness helps recognize these formations and their objects, guiding reactions towards compassion and understanding. Recognizing interconnectedness, the essence of no birth and no death transcends notions of being and non-being. Store consciousness preserves seeds of all possibilities, transcending notions of good and evil. Mindfulness and concentration cultivate wisdom of non-discrimination, embracing both suffering and happiness for growth.

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. Mahayana Buddhism discusses origination from suchness, emphasizing interconnected phenomena. Buddhism literature includes sutras, Vinaya, and Abhidharma, with Mahayana 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.

Thay 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.

Thay 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. Thay concludes with the eight characteristics of seeds.

This the sixth 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.

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.

Thay develops the teachings on the nature of birth and death. What happens when we die? What happens when we live? Thay 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. Thay 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 thirteen given during the What Happens When We Die, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thay offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

Thay 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. Thay’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, Thay 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. Thay 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. Thay offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

The theme of Plum Village’s 21-day Retreat of 2014 was “What happens when we die?” In this clip, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh offers “the shortest answer” to that question. He also tells us that “We are our action. And we are continued by our action.”

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This talk details a retreat at Plum Village in 2014, highlighting Elizabeth’s transformation from grief to compassion through mindfulness, leading a grief group rooted in mindfulness. The Buddha’s teachings emphasize interconnectedness in the eightfold path, focusing on mindfulness, concentration, and insight. Right view, thinking, speech, action, livelihood, and diligence are integral, reflecting mindfulness. Mindfulness can transform harmful actions and cultivate happiness by nurturing wholesome qualities. The alaya consciousness stores seeds of learning, shaping existence through thoughts, words, and deeds. Practicing mindfulness involves cultivating compassion and joy while avoiding negativity. Nirvana and happiness are found in each mindful step, transcending duality. Consciousness manifests interconnectedness, highlighting the unity beyond distinctions like birth and death. Mindfulness reveals the essence of Nirvana within us, aligning with timeless wisdom and interconnected existence.

Thay 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. Thay’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, Thay’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. Thay 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.” Thay 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 last 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 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.