Thầy asks, “Is it possible to have a spiritual dimension to our daily life, political, economic life, without being caught in fundamentalism?” He points to the Buddha as very liberal, and yet deeply spiritual, and wonders how science and meditation can hold each other’s hand.

Returning to the morning’s teaching on space, Thầy shows how a second statement overturns the first, and teaches that in Buddhism a statement is offered to help us transform, not to describe the truth. “The intention of the one who makes the statement is not to get you out of a prison in order to put you into another prison.” Even impermanence, nonself, and nirvāṇa, he says, can become a new prison if we are caught in them.

Thầy asks whether there is such a thing as Buddhist fundamentalism, answers that there is, and sets it beside fundamentalism in Christianity. He contrasts intelligent design, and evolution seen as a merciless struggle to survive, with another view of life: single cells coming together, mitochondria in every cell, and non-human cells in our bodies outnumbering human ones. In the heart of reality, Thầy says, there is cruelty and violence, but also wisdom, compassion, and togetherness. The seeds of both, in our cells and in store consciousness, have something to teach us about Sangha building.

Exploring karma and retribution, Thầy teaches that our environment is also us. He illustrates this with a Vietnamese saying about a father who eats salty food and a son who has to drink a lot of water, and with a bus driver whose optic nerves many lives rely on.

Thầy tells the story of the Kālāmas, whom the Buddha advised not to hurry to believe anything, and observes how much even science relies on belief. Practice, he says, is empirical, but the practitioner is a participant rather than an observer—contemplating the body in the body. He notes that the physicist David Bohm came to a similar view.

This talk is from a series given during the Ninety-Day Rains Retreat in the year 2004/2005. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.