Thầy shares the Buddha’s teaching that nothing can survive without food—not our depression, not our anger, not even our love. Looking deeply at what we consume, and how, puts us on the path of well-being.

The talk begins with a cup of tea. Looking deeply, Thầy sees a cloud in it, a cloud that has not died but only transformed. For the children, he shows a circle drawn in ink mixed with tea, drawn on one in-breath and one out-breath, and sometimes together with his teacher, his ancestors, and the Sangha.

Asking, “What is so noble about suffering?”, Thầy shows how ill-being and well-being inter-be, like left and right, and tells of the light that waits for darkness so that they can manifest together. Looking into our suffering, we discover the nutriments that have been feeding it.

Drawing on the Sutra on the Son’s Flesh and the Fifth Mindfulness Training, Thầy goes through the four kinds of nutriments: edible food, eaten in a way that keeps compassion alive in our heart; sense impressions, with the Buddha’s image of a cow that has lost its skin; volition, our deepest desire; and consciousness. He speaks of returning again and again to the suffering of the past, and of collective energy—mothers nursing their babies in a peaceful Dharma talk in Germany, and the fear and anger he felt in America after September 11th.

Turning to the Noble Eightfold Path, Thầy shares the Buddha’s answer to the monk Kātyāyana: Right View transcends the notion of being and nonbeing. With a cloud, the French chemist Lavoisier, and a match waiting to be struck, he explores no birth and no death, no coming and no going. He then traces Right Thinking, Right Speech—with sessions of deep listening for teachers and students in schools—and Right Action, showing that no thought, word, or act is lost: we continue always.

Thầy closes by reminding us that well-being is not waiting at the end of the path: “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.” Nirvāṇa is available in the here and the now, and we are already what we want to become.

This is the fourth talk in a series of five given during the Happy Teachers Will Change the World retreat in the year 2013. Thầy offered this talk at Brock University, Ontario, Canada.