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How to Enjoy the Practice
Thầy offers his own answer to why we practice walking meditation: “Because I like it.” He shares why he does mindful movements—not for better health, but for the monks of his generation who can no longer do them—and, with the image of scientists returning to Earth from Skylab, how mindfulness reminds us that to be alive and walking on Earth is a wonderful thing. Enlightenment, he suggests, does not need ten years; it can take a few seconds.
Speaking eight days before the end of the year, Thầy invites us to ask how we have spent our time. He describes Buddhism as an art of living, from brushing our teeth to the first verse he memorized as a novice monk, on waking up to twenty-four brand-new hours. He recalls a day of practice with Google employees, and what latecomers found when they walked in on a room of people sitting quietly, doing nothing but breathing.
Thầy explores how our civilization runs away from itself, afraid of the pain and loneliness inside, and how technology can draw us away from ourselves, our families, and nature. He shares conversations with directors of corporations about whether to sacrifice happiness for success, and responds to a question raised at a retreat for psychotherapists: what of those who teach mindfulness but do not practice it? With humor, he imagines a telephone with the practice of mindfulness in it.
Thầy tells why, after years of not wanting disciples, he began to accept them, and how he invited people at a retreat in Hong Kong to walk mindfully to the bus station each morning, so they could feel connected with their teacher—who has no telephone—and with the Sangha.
Thầy closes with the story of a proposal to UNESCO to train schoolteachers in mindfulness, which led to two books, and invites teachers, doctors, nurses, and others to make their schools, hospitals, and workplaces places of practice.
This talk was offered during the Christmas and New Year Retreat in the year 2013. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.