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Dharma Talk for the Monastic Community
Eighty Vietnamese students, together with young friends from Southeast Asia, will attend a retreat beginning in four days. To support them, 42 Dharma teachers from Bat Nha Monastery, Tu Hieu Temple, and Plum Village have arrived—many of them leaving the country for the first time. The retreat will be conducted entirely in English, with the intention of sowing “seeds of the Dharma” far and wide, like dandelion seeds carried by the wind.
The training of monastics in the Plum Village tradition emphasizes:
- Ordination is “marrying the Sangha,” taking the happiness and collective career of the Sangha as one’s personal goal.
- After shaving the head, one immediately receives novice precepts, without having to wait many years; after five years of training, one can become a Dharma teacher in training.
- Learning English as “wings” to go abroad to guide and share the practice.
- Relying on the Sangha to transform weaknesses: the suffering of one person is the suffering of the whole body of the Sangha; it must be recognized and healed together.
- “Go as a river”: every activity—walking meditation, washing dishes, cooking rice—is for the Sangha, not for establishing individual bases or promoting oneself.
