Thầy invites Sister Chân Không to sing a song that accompanies moon-walking meditation, before advising that we allow the rain of the Dharma to seep into us rather than trying to grasp it with the intellect. The love story he has been relating, he tells the Sangha, is no different from the Dharma itself.

Turning to the relational nature of Vietnamese culture and language, Thầy describes the need to have a “big brother” or “big sister” whom we can trust and respect and who trusts and respects us in return.

By living our daily life mindfully, we nourish the seeds of understanding within us so that we come to embody them without effort. We see this in children who have grown up in the Dharma — they live it, naturally and without intellectualising.

“What happened next” in the love story, Thầy teaches, is happening right in this moment, to everyone in the Sangha. There is no “first love,” no beginning of love at all — we are all streams flowing into each other’s river.

Engaged Buddhism, we learn, arose from the aspiration of monks and nuns who wanted to address the suffering of people everywhere. We continue the love Thầy feels for the nun by being ourselves and practicing compassion — and carry with us the pain he holds for the many monks, nuns, and laypeople who died in service to other beings.

The talk closes with the practice of a peace treaty — an agreement between partners, friends, or members of a community of practice for working skilfully with anger. Supported by an understanding of the Dharma, the treaty offers eight steps to guide the person who is angry: how to refrain, how to breathe, how to communicate their suffering calmly and within twenty-four hours. Among these steps is the recognition that our own misperceptions can lead us to see ill will in another when that person is simply reacting out of their own suffering. If the other suffers, we suffer. Happiness is not an individual matter. (Note: The video recording ends before the completion of the talk.)

This is the eighth talk in a series of thirteen giving during the Looking Deeply in the Mahāyāna Tradition, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 1992. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

These teachings later appear in the book Cultivating the Mind of Love.