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Last Dharma Talk, Nottingham Retreat
I believe every child here deserves a certificate for having “participated really into the retreat,” learning “things they can learn here but not in school,” like “sitting quietly, experiencing that atmosphere of peace and brotherhood,” playing mindfully and meeting peaceful, kind people.
Thay illustrates the wisdom of non-discrimination with the story of his two hands: though one writes poems and the other holds a nail, neither claims superiority, and both care for each other without anger when one accidentally pounds the other’s finger. Just as left and right hands “live very peacefully together,” if groups like Israelis and Palestinians or Hindus and Muslims see each other “inside of each other,” there will be peace.
There are three doors of liberation:
- The door of emptiness (Śūnyatā): everything—including a flower or piece of bread—is “made only of non-flower elements” and “empty of a separate self,” so “things are inside of each other, not outside.”
- The door of signlessness (Vô tướng/Animitta): forms are impermanent manifestations (cloud, rain, fog); clinging to one appearance blinds us to the “continuation” of what we love beyond that sign.
- The door of aimlessness (Vô tác/Apranihita): “you are already perfect” in the here and now, without running after enlightenment or any future condition—“the perfection of the present moment of life.”
