English Dharma Talk #5 — The Groundedness of Profound Buddhist Teachings

Thich Nhat Hanh · July 30, 1994 · Plum Village, France

Thầy weaves together five or more interrelated themes that resonate in a recurring pattern. One of them is family, children, ancestors, and Saṅgha, which relates to Thầy’s presentation of the Vietnamese Thanksgiving’s four gratitudes: to ancestors, teachers, friends, and nature. Thầy then focuses on friends, telling a traditional tale of two male friends and the fiancé of one in which the couple saves the other man from a dissipated life by a risky strategy that shows him that what may appear as betrayal of friendship can in the end be the truest of friendships. Eating is an issue in the story, and that links it also to the recurring theme in this talk of eating as a practice, a gift to and bond with those who share meals, a meditation. A carrot on our plate consists of “non-carrot elements, namely sunshine, clouds, soil, water, and so on,” exemplifying interbeing, and, so, “When you look at a piece of carrot, you practice relinking with the cosmos.”

The talk guides us to consider the groundedness of expansive Buddhist teachings. Thầy returns to the ongoing introduction of the Noble Eightfold Path, circling again to mindful eating, which, he shows, can exemplify Right View, Right Action, and other path factors. He then touches on the Buddhist theory of thinking and shows that the use of meditation gāthās, rather than constituting thinking, are “devices” that help us quiet the monkey mind of random thinking. Thay then gives an introduction to the Three Seals of Buddhism—impermanence, non-self, and nirvāṇa—touching also on emptiness and dependent origination, all of which, he explains, are part of Right View and “touch nirvāṇa.” The talk thus alternates between theory and practice, showing how the two ultimately are one in the same. Thầy concludes the talk by teaching a gāthā—“In, Out”—its practice and theory, and then leading the singing of it as the Sangha moves outside for walking meditation.

This is the eighth of seventeen talks given during the Summer Opening retreats in the year 1994. Thay offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.