Thầy explains that the practice of living mindfully helps us to reclaim our freedom and view all beings with compassion. This, in turn, creates immeasurable merit.

He then points out that the Buddha is much more than a historical person who lived at a certain time and place. The true body of the Buddha is the living teaching—the Dharma. The Buddha is present wherever there’s understanding and compassion, which defines the realm of Avataṃsaka.

The realm of Avataṃsaka is one of light. Buddhas and bodhisattvas are made of light, and we, too, can become light through mindfulness. Other characteristics of the Avataṃsaka realm are boundless space; thousand-petaled lotuses; oceans of merits, vows, joy, and peace; jewels of insight and happiness; clouds of every color; lion seats; and parasols of mindfulness that protect us.

Thầy next takes us on a journey to meet Śākyamuni Buddha. We’ve heard that the Buddha is in Suyāma Heaven, so we go there. We’re told Śākyamuni isn’t there; he’s under the Bodhi tree in Uruvelā. We then learn that the Buddha is in Suyāma Palace and in Gṛdhrakūṭa. We realize the Buddha is everywhere at once. Anyone in the Avataṃsaka realm can perform this same miracle. By touching a flower, we touch everything in the cosmos. In this way, we transform our world into the Avataṃsaka realm.

Thầy reads verses from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra about what he’s just explained as well as the idea of no-birth, no death. The Avataṃsaka realm, the living Dharma, is available to us always.

Thầy shares the verse he practiced every day as a novice: “If people want to really know all Buddhas of all times, they should contemplate the nature of the cosmos. All is but mental construction.” He reads from the Flower Ornaments scripture: “The mind is like an artist. It is able to paint the world.” There’s nothing that the mind doesn’t fabricate—our sorrow, our fear, our birth, our death—and also the capacity to truly touch the Buddha.

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 Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

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