Peace Treaties for Families, Interbeing, and Accompanying the Dying

Thầy opens by inviting children and parents to practice two specific exercises when anger or dangerous behavior arises: reflecting deeply on what a child needs when angry, and establishing a “peace treaty” during moments of harmony to establish how parents can intervene gently. He introduces hugging meditation as a profound practice of reconciliation that integrates mindfulness of breathing with deep physical presence, urging practitioners from all backgrounds to use this art to heal relationships and restore peace.

Turning to a question about living happily in the present moment, Thầy explores how true happiness becomes available when we break through wrong perceptions and touch the nature of emptiness. Demonstrating with a rose and a glass, he shows that to be empty does not mean non-existence, but to be empty of a separate self and full of non-rose elements like sunshine, clouds, and earth. “To be” is truly to “inter-be”. He burns a sheet of paper to demonstrate that nothing is ever reduced to nothingness—it continues as smoke, heat, and ash—mirroring both the Heart Sutra’s teaching of no birth and no death (bất sinh, bất diệt) and French chemist Lavoisier’s principle that nothing is created and nothing is lost.

Finally, Thầy addresses the art of accompanying a dying person, drawing on the story of the lay disciple Anāthapiṇḍika as recorded in The Discourse to Be Given to the Sick. He explains how to help a loved one focus on positive seeds through the recollection of the Three Jewels and the contemplation that “this body is not me”. Sharing the moving story of accompanying his peace activist friend Alfred Hassler during his final hours through music, loving conversation, and foot massage, Thầy shows how touching the nature of interbeing liberates us from fear, allowing both the living and the dying to enter the peace of nirvāṇa in the present moment.

This is the nineteenth of twenty-one talks given during the Summer Opening retreat, in 1995. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.