Thầy teaches that the fruit of our practice is not only for the future: as we practice, we receive an enjoyment body, and others can enjoy it too. When the sound of the bell brings us back and we make a peaceful step, the transformation can be seen in every cell of our body and in the landscape around us. “Pure Land or not Pure Land depends on you.” Looking at the hamlets of Plum Village and at the retreatants before him, Thầy tells them that they are his rewarding body.

Thầy begins with the Fourfold Sangha of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen, and how each takes part in making decisions. For lay Sanghas, he names a common weakness: getting together only to organize, and forgetting that working together is itself the practice. Describing life in Plum Village, where no one has a credit card or a private bank account, he shares the story of a nun who listed having no money among the things that made her happiest, and speaks of Sangha building as the most noble task of our time.

With the images of bees gathering for the hive and ants choosing twigs of exactly the right size, Thầy invites schoolteachers, parents, biologists, and others to look deeply into the suffering of our time—violence in schools, the temptations of genetic technology—and to bring that understanding back to the Sangha, since there can be no path without understanding ill-being.

Thầy then explores five of the six eyes, leaving the Buddha eyes for the next talk. Many of us, he says, have never looked into the blue sky and smiled to it with our fleshly eyes. Our heavenly eyes include telescopes, television, and the internet, which can help us understand the world or pull us into despair and craving. Dharma eyes see which of the many Dharma doors suits a particular person; wisdom eyes see the cloud in the rose. Finally, Thầy adds the Sangha eyes, brighter than our individual eyes. He describes the practice of kneeling before our brothers and sisters to ask them to shed light on our strengths and weaknesses, and how in Plum Village decisions are made not by the teacher but by the Sangha. Our own eyes, he says, have the Sangha eyes inside.

This is the fourth talk in a series of fifteen given during The Eyes of the Buddha, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2000. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.