This talk opens with the Great Bell Chant, sung in Vietnamese and translated into English by a monastic. Jack Kornfield then introduces Thích Nhất Hạnh, sharing his own realisation about the practice of bowing and reading a poem on the spirit of innocence.

Thầy begins by pointing out that meditation is a way to investigate our self—our true home—which we may have left a long time ago. To become familiar with our self, we use the light of mindfulness, and that allows us to embrace anything we find. When we generate the energy of mindfulness, Thầy explains, we send beams of light from our spirit that stimulate mindfulness in others.

Looking deeply into a flower, Thầy shows, we find the entire cosmos—the nature of interbeing.

Thầy shares how, through our practice, we can walk in the Kingdom of God, the Pure Land, with every step. He recalls asking his teacher, as a young novice, whether there were orange and lemon trees in the Pure Land—if not, he would rather stay here, where he already loved them. In the Avataṃsaka realm, Thầy describes boundless space and time in which we abide in the present moment. He speaks of love as being truly present, offering two practices: “Darling, I am here for you,” and “Darling, I know you are there, and I am very happy.” When we touch our true nature—nirvāṇa—we release our notions of being and non-being, birth and death, and no longer have fear.

Thầy then relates the story from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra of the young Sudhana and his quest to find Mahāmāyā, the mother of the Buddha. He finds her on a thousand-petalled lotus, and she tells him she is the mother of all buddhas in the past, present, and future. In a similar way, Thầy says, each of us is pregnant with a buddha. He goes on to tell of Sudhana’s journey with Maitreya into the Vairocana Tower, which Thầy relates to the nuclear physicist David Bohm’s explicate and implicate order.

Thầy teaches that mindfulness is the doorway to living happily in the here and the now, beginning with simple practices such as smiling to our eyes or our heart. He explores the Three Refuges and why taking refuge in the Sangha is the most important—it is what allows our practice to continue. Thầy likens the five sensual pleasures to bait with a hook inside, recalling a mobile phone advert he saw on the way from the airport: “Hold it, and you are hooked.”

This talk was given during a Day of Mindfulness on the US Tour in the year 1997. Thầy offered this talk at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, California, the United States.