Thầy teaches that nirvāṇa is not a destination: “There is no way to nirvāṇa; nirvāṇa is the way.” Every step on the path can bring happiness, and with mindfulness and concentration, even the walk from the parking lot to the office becomes a chance to touch nirvāṇa, the Kingdom of God, and the wonders of life.

Thầy begins by reading a letter from Elizabeth, who came to Plum Village carrying great pain and found, after five days of practice with her New Hamlet family, that she could breathe, listen compassionately, and smile. Thầy then shows how mindfulness reflects all the other elements of the path, and why no one should be excluded from the practice.

At the heart of the talk is Right Diligence. Drawing on the teaching of Manifestation Only, Thầy describes store consciousness as the garden and mind consciousness as the gardener: diligence is not struggling or fighting, but choosing which seeds to plant and water. He speaks of vāsanā, learning that becomes habit energy, and of bhāvanā, practice as cultivation, recalling the tobacco once grown around Plum Village and the Buddha’s words on the mind as the one thing that, well cultivated, brings much happiness. Thầy offers the four aspects of Right Diligence, comparing mind consciousness to a living room and store consciousness to a basement, and asks why we would keep listening to a CD we don’t like. He explains why hitting a pillow rehearses anger rather than releasing it.

With the image of Boston and New York, Thầy shows that nirvāṇa and saṃsāra are present at every point on the path, depending on the direction we face. He shares a verse from a chapter on nirvāṇa found in the Chinese Dharmapada—the deer enjoy the countryside, the birds enjoy the sky, and the wise enjoy nirvāṇa—and sets the Buddha’s words on what is not born, not made, and not conditioned beside the same teaching in the Pali Udāna.

Thầy closes with the teaching on subject and object, using the two sides of a piece of paper and his own teacher’s image of a snail with two antennas, and names double grasping as a habit energy we can recognize with the torch of mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

This is the twelfth talk in a series of thirteen given during the What Happens When We Die?, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.