And therefore, to create a pure land is the intention of all Buddhas and bodhisattvas. And all of us who come to the practice are children of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, and we want to have the same career also. We want to build a pure land, even if our pure land is small.

I don't know how large is the pure land of Amitābha Buddha, but that depends not only on Amitābha Buddha, but it depends on the population of the pure land also. If you have the intention to reconcile people, to bring warring parties together, to look at each other to realize how much the other side suffers also, then that energy is also an energy of a bodhisattva.

If you want to help hungry children, if you want to help refugees, if you want to help rebuild broken families, that kind of willingness, that kind of volition is described as the third kind of nutriment, cetanā. But in order to realize what we want, we have to train ourselves. We have to master the art of helping, of building.

And it is clear that by practicing mindfulness, we practice transformation of ourselves, of our environment, and then the capacity of materializing the thing we want to realize will become possible.

[One sound of the bell.]

Pure Land means a land where we practice purification of ourselves. [Thay writes on the board: pure land.] When our heart, our mind is not pure, our land cannot be pure. And therefore, a Pure Land is a place where many people come together with the intention to purify our heart, to purify our environment, to get happier.

And if we define like that, our community is a Pure Land—at least in our intention. And when we have that intention and we have some practice, the Pure Land is already there to some extent. We can always improve the quality, the beauty of our Pure Land.

And every time we see a person that is pure, that is happy, we try to invite him or her to stay in order to enhance the quality of our Pure Land. But if you are motivated by another kind of energy, you will not create Pure Land; you create hell and war, because war is a kind of hell. [Thay writes on the board: war.]

Where is hell? Hell is in Rwanda; hell is in Bosnia; hell is everywhere. If you are motivated by the idea of ethnic purification, then you create war, you create hell. The Nazis created hell for everyone. The fascists created hell because they have an intention, a will to do something.

But that will, that intention is on the side—on the other side—because it's not motivated by understanding, tolerance, loving kindness. It is based on discrimination. It is based on the belief that this ideology is the best in the world, and if anyone opposes it, well, they deserve death.

So together we create a Pure Land, or together we create hell for each other. And the energy behind is the third kind of nutriment. [Thay writes on the board: 業.] The desire, the willingness to consume, to have a lot of money also belongs to this category of food. If you think that without a PhD degree you cannot be happy, and then you are caught by that kind of nutriment.