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The Legend of the New Year's Tree - The Nature of Seeds
Plum Village reminds us that even after becoming a Buddha, happiness and insight are still impermanent; it is necessary to practice regularly—from sitting meditation, walking meditation, silent meals, to going on retreat—in order to strengthen and persevere, not to be swept away by the hurried pace of life. The story with Father Daniel Berrigan shows that practicing slowly and wholeheartedly is like a raft that takes us across the river, but it is not the final shore; only when our steps and our breath are firmly rooted in mindfulness can we maintain peace amidst the chaos of life.
In the talk, Thay also tells the story of the Buddha inviting Mara into the meditation cave, symbolizing the non-dual nature between good and evil, Mara and Buddha, compassion and delusion. In Vietnam, the legend of spreading the monk’s robe represents the vast territory of the Buddha’s practice, recalled through the New Year’s bamboo pole on the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month and the custom of making square and round sticky rice cakes—so that each family may maintain mindfulness, generate happiness, and reduce suffering during the ten days of Tet.
Key concepts in the teaching on Manifestation-Only (Vijnaptimatra) include:
- Indeterminate (avyākṛta)—neither wholesome nor unwholesome, neither with outflows nor without outflows
- Store consciousness (alaya-vijnana) contains seeds that are “neither existent nor non-existent” and are subject to momentary impermanence
- Interbeing and interdependence—subject and object, good and evil, birth and death… all “are each other” and rely on each other to manifest
- Momentary impermanence and lifetime impermanence—continuous transformation in every instant and throughout the cycle of a human life, not just at the moment of death