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Public Talk
Bich Nham is situated on the green mountain with the warm Great Together Meditation Hall, which has welcomed more than 1,000 practitioners from the United States and Canada in a large tent during the cold season. The famous work Bich Nham Luc records over a hundred Zen koans, beginning with Zen Master Yuanwu and including forty koans of King Tran Thai Tong. The first king of the Tran dynasty practiced sitting meditation six times a day and performed half an hour of repentance according to the Six Times Repentance Ceremony.
Two couplets in Chinese characters written by the teacher:
- Clear blue water, when a thousand rivers have water, a thousand rivers reflect the moon (Clear blue water, a thousand rivers have water, a thousand rivers have the moon)
- Beautiful and elegant mountain cliffs, each time you look back, each time is completely new (Beautiful mountain cliffs, each time you look back, each time is new)
Mindfulness in the breath leads to the complete happiness of the present moment. After nearly two years of suffering from pneumonia caused by antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas, the teacher was treated with a combination of two antibiotics for 14 days in America, and now breathes in and out gently, grateful for the two lungs—such a simple yet priceless condition for happiness.
Phuoc Hue currently has 194 monks and nuns residing in a cramped space, but it is the Bat Nha Sangha that is the heart of the country. For that heart to be nourished, each practitioner needs to let go of anger, breathe in and smile, cherish the breath, and radiate loving forgiveness, nurturing faith for oneself and for the community.
