Thầy teaches that a practice center without a Sangha is like a plate with nothing on it. When a Sangha lives and practices together, it generates a collective energy of peace and joy, and someone arriving from far away can begin to heal simply by allowing that energy to embrace her. Thầy shows how the Five Mindfulness Trainings make such an environment safe and nourishing, and why, after his enlightenment, the Buddha began right away to build a Sangha.

Thầy speaks of suffering as the mud we need in order to grow lotus flowers. Looking deeply into suffering brings understanding, and understanding gives rise to compassion. Suffering and happiness are both organic, and we are organic gardeners who can transform anger back into love. From here Thầy turns to holiness, which he says is made of non-holy elements, and which we need not look for only in saints: “When I see you speaking with compassion, when I see you looking with eyes of compassion, I know you have the element of holiness in you, and I like to call you ‘Your Holiness.’”

Thầy then explains brahmacarya, the holy life of a monastic, and why a novice needs a Sangha, a teacher, and elder brothers and sisters. He tells of a successful businesswoman who, during the Twenty-One-Day Retreat, wrote to ask to be trained as a monastic so that she could bring the practice home to mainland China. As a monastic, he says, the path can widen from a lane into a kind of highway.

The talk closes on bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment and the mind of love: the aspiration that led the Buddha to leave his palace at twenty-nine, and Thầy to leave at sixteen. Thầy shares that when this aspiration is kept alive, a monk or a nun stays happy and is not afraid of anything—just as Siddhārtha met many difficulties and never gave up.

This talk was given on a Day of Mindfulness just prior to the Summer Opening in the year 2012. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.