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Public Lecture in French
Telephone meditation transforms a source of irritation into a bell of mindfulness. Instead of running, stay where you are, breathe in to calm yourself, and breathe out with a smile, waiting for the third ring before answering. If you are making a call, a poem can be recited: Sound can travel hundreds of miles, and speech can bring mutual understanding and mutual acceptance. Each number dialed corresponds to a breath, because time is life, not money. This practice establishes calm and improves the quality of the conversation and of business.
Driving meditation uses red lights as friends who say “Stop” to dispersion, and the license plate “I remember” to remind us to breathe. A poem accompanies starting the car:
- Before starting my car, I know where I am going;
- The car and I are one;
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If the car goes fast, I go fast.
We must not become slaves to our instruments or destroy our ecological environment, because within us, there are the trees and the clouds; to destroy the tree is to destroy oneself.
Meditation brings us back to reality rather than being an escape, and we must invent opportunities to practice even in difficult conditions, like political prisoners cutting bamboo. It is essential to know one’s limits and learn to say no, because to make others happy, one must first establish calm and happiness within oneself. Faced with insecurity and suffering, the only answer is to live every minute in mindfulness, treating the person present as the most important one.
