Thinking Is Already Acting: Karma and Right Thinking

Thầy begins by admitting that, when he was young, he did not believe in the Kingdom of God or the Pure Land of the Buddha. He thought they were inventions of people who suffer so much that they long for somewhere else. Looking deeply at the flowers, the rain, and a child’s smile, he discovered that the Kingdom is available in the here and the now, and that we don’t have to die to go there. Every flower is trying to open, and Thầy invites us to let our heart open too, even if we have suffered.

We suffer, he says, because we don’t know how to think. Right thinking is free from discrimination and separation, like seeing your mother in you and you in your mother, and a group of people practicing right thinking together can build the Pure Land right away. The Upper Hamlet itself is a product of collective thinking. Thầy describes the eloquent silence when everyone stops to listen to the bell, and how the Five Mindfulness Trainings create an environment where even a visitor who is not a practitioner can begin to heal.

Karma, Thầy explains, simply means action: thinking, speaking, and doing. Thinking is already acting. Our action brings two aspects of retribution: our five skandhas and the environment we find ourselves in. That is why every practitioner wants to build a Sangha back home, a mini Pure Land. For Thầy, the Kingdom has become a reality of each moment: “The Kingdom is now or never.”

Like an orange tree offering its leaves, blossoms, and fruit, we are continued by our thoughts, our words, and our actions. Thầy invites us to look at him and see that he is not only this body sitting here.

But what if we have already said something unkind? Thầy shows how a thought of reconciliation today can embrace and transform yesterday’s action, even when the person we hurt has died: breathing in, we can see our grandmother in every cell of our body and tell her we are sorry. He closes with the vow to build a good environment for ourselves and our friends, offering them the Kingdom of God in the here and the now.

This talk is from a series given during the Spring Retreat in the year 2010. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.