Thầy speaks of a country that can never be occupied by anyone, and from which no one can remove us: the country of the present moment. Offering this talk at Christmas, he describes the Kingdom of God and the Pure Land of the Buddha as that same country, available here and now rather than after we die. We often leave it, sometimes for years, yet seeing the way someone walks or smiles can bring us home in a flash.

This is not a country without suffering. Thầy teaches that happiness is made of understanding and compassion, and that these need suffering in order to grow, as the lotus needs the mud. He shares why he would not want to send his children to a place where there is no suffering, and what we might tell our own children instead.

Thầy then turns to the gāthā that names the Buddha as mindfulness, the Dharma as our breathing, and the Sangha as our five skandhas. Walking mindfully becomes the living Dharma and a bell of mindfulness for those around us, and he points to the ancestors who smile with us in every cell of our body. Loneliness, he suggests, comes from feeling that we are a separate self, and the practice of “I have arrived, I am home” reconnects us wherever we are. A letter written by a monk in the Upper Hamlet to his younger brother shows that the distance is not the question.

Thầy offers the image of the organic gardener, who never throws the garbage away, and looks at how easily we stop cherishing the conditions of happiness we already have, even in a marriage to the person we love. Like riding a bicycle, the practice of transformation has to keep moving.

Thầy closes by speaking to church leaders and to parents: “The Kingdom is available to us. The question remains whether we are available to the Kingdom.” Young people, he says, want the Kingdom of God now, and they are right.

This talk was offered on Christmas Eve during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 2003. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.