Thầy teaches that happiness is possible in the present moment, and that a good practitioner can generate a feeling of joy and happiness whenever they want. He begins with the French writer André Gide, who described God as happiness, available twenty-four hours a day, and with a Catholic priest in Rome who described the Holy Spirit as the energy of God. In the Buddhist tradition, Thầy explains, the energy that heals and transforms is mindfulness, concentration, and insight, and the capacity to understand and to love is already inside us.

Thầy guides us through the first eight exercises of the Sutra on Mindful Breathing, from following the in-breath and bringing the mind home to the body, to releasing tension, generating joy and happiness, and embracing our pain the way a mother picks up her crying baby. For those of us who practice mindfulness and concentration, he says, “the Kingdom of God is now or never.” He recalls the Gospel story of the farmer who sold everything to keep the piece of land with the treasure.

When our own mindfulness is not yet strong enough, we can allow the collective energy of the Sangha to embrace our pain, as a drop of water reaches the ocean by letting the river carry it. Thầy remembers babies at a retreat in Germany receiving two kinds of food: their mother’s milk and the Sangha’s energy.

Thầy then turns to the art of handling happiness and suffering. Just as no lotus can grow without the mud, there is no happiness without suffering; the two inter-are. He asks what is so noble about suffering, and offers his own definition of the Kingdom of God: not a place without suffering, but a place where people know how to make good use of it. He shares the Buddha’s teaching of the second arrow, and how not to let despair overwhelm us.

Thầy speaks about helping young people see that a strong emotion is like a storm that passes, about bringing the practice into schools as nonsectarian Applied Ethics, and about the reconciliations that come with deep listening and loving speech. The talk closes with the cloud that can never die: our thought, speech, and action are our continuation. Sister Chân Không then offers a song about no fear of death.

This is a public talk given during the North American Tour in the year 2011. Thầy offered this talk at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, Pasadena, California, the United States.