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Dai Tang 3 - Bac Truyen No2
Two recorders are always affectionately called “delicious, aren’t they.”
Morning walking meditation among the flowers and grass:
I encounter a yellow flower, tilting and smiling, asking about loving-kindness, realizing that the Buddha loves all beings—squirrels, deer, antelope, birds, fish, plants, earth, and stones. I invite the flower to receive that love, join my palms into a lotus bud, and vow to walk the Buddha’s path with mindfulness in my breath and smile, in order to transform sorrow and anger, and generate sweet loving-kindness.
Touching the sutra directly with oneself:
In 1991, while studying the Sutra of the Wealthy Householder Ugga, Thay Nhat Hanh advised us to use our innate Buddha nature—independent awareness—to read the Buddha’s words directly, instead of relying solely on commentaries. Let us maintain “he is a true person, I am also thus,” listen to the views of the ancestral teachers to understand how they received the sutra, but not to imitate mechanically, for only by absorbing the original source (matière brute) can we discover and share for ourselves.
Studying the Buddha through history and philology:
Today, we can access the entire 2,500-year Buddhist tradition, using historical science and philology to compare the scriptures—from discoveries in Nepal to Dunhuang—helping to determine the dates, origins, and contexts in which the sutras appeared, clarifying the tradition and allowing us to evaluate and discover for ourselves.
The lifestyle of the Bodhisattva monastic:
– The aim “let wisdom be our career”: to take wisdom as our life’s work, to be realized immediately, like putting out a fire on a burning cloth.
– Four basic needs: robes of faded color, alms food, simple bedding, just enough medicine (knowing what is enough).
– Going on alms round among laypeople to nourish humility, mutual dependence, and to give rise to great compassion for all, whether gentle or stingy.
– Going from house to house, not skipping any, maintaining the correct method of monastic life.
– Keeping a quiet, secluded place to practice non-self, to realize the Noble Eightfold Path together with the six paramitas.
– The three doors of liberation: non-self, signlessness, wishlessness.
– The Four Reliances: rely on the Dharma, not on the person; rely on the definitive meaning sutras, not on the non-definitive; rely on meaning, not on words; rely on wisdom, not on ordinary consciousness.
Mahayana precepts:
– Originally, there were 10 novice precepts, 250 monastic precepts, and 5 lay precepts.
– Mahayana developed the Bodhisattva precepts in the Brahmajala Sutra, divided into individual acceptance (receiving one set), total acceptance (receiving all three sets):
- Precepts of restraint (avoiding evil),
- Precepts of cultivating wholesome actions (doing good),
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Precepts of benefiting all beings (bringing happiness to all).
– Precepts not only maintain true freedom but are also acts of generosity, offering the Dharma to the world.