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Business Retreat Questions and Answers

Thich Nhat Hanh · October 31, 1999 · Plum Village, France

When you see only the wrong in another, you miss that person’s strengths—and you miss your own. Meditation is the art of looking deeply, made possible by mindfulness and concentration. It has two elements:

Samatha (calming and focusing on one object—breath, steps, a flower, even your anger)
Vipassanā (insight arising from sustained mindfulness and concentration)
Choose an object that truly interests you, use each moment (even the year 2000) as a bell of mindfulness, and learn to inquire into past or future while remaining rooted in the present.

Invest one hundred percent of yourself in whatever you do: eating, watering the garden, being with your child, doing business. Noble silence—more precious than gold—lets your true peace shine. Sangha building is vital: children’s retreats succeed when you gather a core “seed” group; classrooms change when teachers walk, write, and clap mindfully. Compassionate listening and loving speech open doors to nonviolent action, while Right View (“Even if you’re sure, check it again”) and non‐attachment to ideas prevent us from closing our minds to truth.

Awakening is not distant—it happens every time you drink tea or sit and know you are alive. These small awakenings lead to anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi (the highest awakening). Insight dispels ignorance (avidyā), the root of all craving—illustrated by the hook and bait, the dog and the bone, the torch in the wind—so that true happiness and compassionate relief of suffering become possible for ourselves and for the world.

Previous Talk October 31, 1999

1h 36m