Thầy begins with the Third Mindfulness Training and the four elements of true love: loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness. Love, he teaches, is a living thing, like a tree: when it stops growing, it begins to die. A story from his years as a young monk—a durian on the altar, and the bowl bell he used to cover it—shows why we cannot impose our idea of happiness on the one we love.

Thầy then points to the Kingdom of God and nirvāṇa as available in the here and the now, not after we die. Distinguishing the conventional truth from the ultimate truth, he introduces the Three Doors of Liberation—emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness—three concentrations found in every school of Buddhism that can remove fear and despair.

Looking at an empty glass and at a flower full of sunshine and cloud, Thầy asks what emptiness is empty of. He explores how the human being is made of non-human elements, why our father is in every cell of our body, and what neuroscience has found: a symphony with no conductor. When we walk, all our ancestors walk with us.

With the eyes of signlessness, Thầy shows how we can see a cloud in the rain and in our tea, and the one we have lost in her new form. Thầy shares, “The death of a cloud is the birth of the rain.” A wave does not have to search for water, and a lotus prepares her continuation in the mud. Aimlessness invites us to stop running, because we are already what we are looking for.

Thầy also tells the story of Anāthapiṇḍika, the generous lay supporter of the Buddha, whom Śāriputra guided in meditation as he was dying, so that he died peacefully. Thầy offers this as a practice for anyone who accompanies a dying person.

Thầy closes by encouraging everyone to go home and build a Sangha, because with a Sangha we can maintain our practice for a long time.

This is the fifth talk in a series of five given during the Happy Teachers Will Change the World retreat in the year 2013. Thầy offered this talk at Brock University, Ontario, Canada.