Thầy teaches that the simple things we learn in Plum Village—how to breathe, how to walk, and how to sit—are an art. With enough mindfulness and concentration, one in-breath can bring body and mind back to the here and the now, release the past and the future, and help us touch eternity and our nature of no birth and no death. “If you have practiced fifty years, you still breathe in and you still value your in-breath.” Thầy shares that mindful breathing has helped him through many difficult situations: it is a second body that goes everywhere with us, the living Dharma.

Sitting on the Earth, Thầy invites us to see that we are sitting on the whole Earth, a living bodhisattva, and that we are the Earth. A cloud can become rain, snow, or ice, but it can never become nothing.

Thầy reminds us that the Buddha’s teaching is practical, not metaphysical. He tells of one school that stuck to the words of the sūtras, the vast Abhidharma literature of others, and the Sarvāstivāda school, which held that past, present, and future all exist, with images such as one piece of gold made into a necklace, a ring, or an earring. Thầy calls this too much speculation. In the light of interbeing, past, present, and future are notions that lean on each other like left and right, and none of them can be grasped. Yet touching the moment deeply, we touch eternity.

Thầy points out that the scientist Lavoisier almost reproduced the Buddha’s teaching when he said that nothing is created, nothing is lost, and everything changes, and offers the line that would complete it: nothing has a separate existence. A rose is made only of non-rose elements, and we are made of non-us elements.

The talk then turns to the first eight exercises of the Sutra on Mindful Breathing: enjoying the in-breath as we enjoy a sunrise, a bell of mindfulness on the computer, the walk from the parking lot to the office, sitting and doing nothing, the joy of eyes that still see, the lotus of happiness that grows from the mud of suffering, and mindfulness embracing our pain like a big brother, so that we can help the other person suffer less. Thầy concludes that every moment of daily life, from brushing our teeth to cooking breakfast, can be a practice: we practice everywhere.

This talk was given during the Spring Retreat in the year 2012. Thầy offered this retreat at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.