Dear Thầy, dear Sangha, this week we've learned how to heal ourselves and thus heal the world. We've also learned in healing ourselves we need a Sangha community to do so. In our world we've also tried to create Sanghas to promote the well-being of our countries and our societies. We call them government. But often with good intentions the Sanghas have also created practices and environments that have caused much suffering as well. So my question is: how do the practices of our Sangha, of this Sangha, influences the practice of the Sanghas that we've created of our society so that they may promote more healing and less suffering?

Respected Thầy, dear Sangha, during this retreat we learned how to heal ourselves, to heal the world, and one of the elements is to build Sangha in the world. But sometimes the Sanghas that we build also cause suffering. So how do we help those local Sanghas to develop in such a way that they can help and not cause more suffering? And how do we help the government to become a Sangha?

In fact, our family can be a Sangha. And our classroom can be a Sangha. So parents and teachers have to learn how to build the Sangha from their own family and their own classroom. Our Dharma teachers have been training parents and school teachers in many countries. We have trained thousands of school teachers in many countries, including India. These school teachers are bringing into their classroom the practice of calming the body, calming the feelings and so on, loving speech and so on. They learn to listen to each others—students and teachers—understanding the suffering of each others and improve the quality of learning and teaching.

You are motivated by the desire to build a Sangha. And building a Sangha, you have to learn. The Buddha was an excellent Sangha builder. It's not easy. You have to be very patient. You have to get a lot of compassion and patience. You have to practice loving speech and deep listening. And you can bring people together, you can reconcile people. We in Plum Village, in our practice centers like Magnolia Grove or Bluecliff or Deer Park, we live as a Sangha. And we practice and we serve as a Sangha. So we have learned a lot about Sangha building. We have even offered books on Sangha building.

The Sangha of the Buddha was also difficult to build. The Buddha put a lot of energy and time into building his Sangha. Without the Sangha, a Buddha cannot do much. The career of a Buddha depends on the Sangha. So I myself have learned a lot in Sangha building. And you need to give you enough time, space, and people in your Sangha enough time, space, to transform, to come together. The Five Mindfulness Trainings, if practiced diligently, then it is much easier to build a Sangha. Like the fourth mindfulness training is about deep listening and loving speech. That is very crucial in building a good Sangha. The third is true love. The second is true happiness.

In Plum Village we try to do it every day, building brotherhood, sisterhood, joy and happiness without consuming a lot. The Parliament, the Congress can be a Sangha. One day I talked to Mr. Narayanan, who was president of the Indian National Assembly. And we talked about difficulties in conducting a session in the parliament. Many people are angry, they don't listen to each other. And the atmosphere in the parliament sometimes is very hot. No one is listening to anyone, and so on. In the monastic Sangha, Plum Village, we sit down and listen to each other. We try our best to combine experiences and insight to come to a collective insight, consensus.

So I proposed to Mr. Narayanan that at the beginning of each session, we should read a kind of meditation. Like, "Dear colleagues, we have been elected by our people to be here and to combine our insight, experience and knowledge in making the kind of laws that can help the country to be more peaceful, to be prosperous, to have more prosperity, and so on. So let us listen to each other."

And using the kind of speech that can help other people to receive your point of view. So bringing the fourth mindfulness training into the Congress. And he agreed! He said, "That is very needed: listening to each other with compassion and using loving speech, not shouting too much."

And then the second thing I proposed is when the chairperson notices that the atmosphere in the Congress is so heavy, so oppressive, so hot, then he has the right to invite the bell of mindfulness. And everyone is invited to breathe in and out, until calm is reestablished before the person continues his speech. He was very excited about that. Unfortunately, one month later also, he was elected as president of India. So he could not realize his dream in making the parliament into a Sangha.

In fact, he tried. It was after I left him, I went to Mumbai and lead a retreat, and someone one day brought a daily paper to me. In that paper, they announced that the President of the Congress had set up a community taking care of the ethical aspect of the life of the Congress. He asked the former prime minister to be head of that committee. He really tried to build a Sangha out of it.

I think if President Obama has a nice Sangha behind him, he will be able to realize his dream. When I met Martin Luther King in the sixties, we discussed about Sangha. He did not use the word Sangha, but he used the word beloved community. And we both agreed that without a community, a loving community, we cannot realize our dream. But not long after that, he was assassinated.

For myself, I had the chance to continue Sangha building. And my Sangha—I was not allowed to go home in forty years and I had to continue to be here building the Sangha. And now my Sangha is composed of monastics and lay practitioners. We have many Dharma teachers, both monastics and lay Dharma teachers. And here is my Sangha, you are my Sangha. I take refuge in you all. Thank you dear friends, now time for us to take a break and then we shall gather, there in order to begin our walking meditation.