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Cultivating Mind’s Seeds Through the Three Doors of Liberation

Thich Nhat Hanh · June 8, 2010 · EIAB, Germany · Audio Only
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The orange represents the five elements of form, feelings, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. Consciousness acts as the soil containing all seeds, including the wholesome seeds of mindfulness, concentration, insight, and Buddha nature, as well as negative seeds like anger and fear. Practice consists of watering the good seeds so they manifest as mental formations, of which there are fifty-one categories. Wrong perceptions can bring about pain, sorrow, and despair, so it is necessary to ask “Am I sure?” to avoid being fooled by them. To protect against wrong perceptions, there are three kinds of concentration known as the Three Doors of Liberation:

  1. Emptiness: To be empty means to be empty of a separate existence. A flower is full of the cosmos—sunshine, clouds, and soil—but is empty of a separate self because it is made entirely of non-flower elements. Similarly, a father and son inter-are; the father is fully present in every cell of the son, just as all ancestors are present within us.
  2. Signlessness (animitta): A sign is an appearance. This concentration helps one recognize that nothing passes from being into non-being, just as a cloud does not die but becomes rain. The nature of reality is no birth and no death. We continue through our karma, or actions, which consist of three aspects: thinking, speaking, and physical action. Right thinking, right speech, and right action ensure a beautiful continuation.
  3. Aimlessness (apranihita): There is no need to run after objects like diplomas or jobs to become someone else. You are already what you want to become and the Kingdom of God is already available in the present moment. This insight allows one to stop running and enjoy simply being.
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