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Public Talk Bonn

Thich Nhat Hanh · May 29, 1993 · Bonn, Germany · Audio Only
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When we are at war with others, we must ask if we are already at war with ourselves, an internal conflict that drains our energy day and night. To stabilize our territory, we practice mindfulness to shed light on the five elements, or skandhas, that constitute a person: form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. This practice is not hard labor or a fight; it is likened to a buffalo boy tending to a water buffalo. The buffalo represents our habit energies, and the boy represents mindfulness. We do not kill or fight the buffalo, but observe and embrace it with compassion and non-violence.

Using the image of an orange with five sections, the territory of these elements is explored.
The first section is form, the body. Touching the body reveals wonders like eyesight or the non-toothache, but also the internal war and toxins we produce.
The second section is feelings, which are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Mindfulness intensifies pleasant feelings, soothes unpleasant ones, and reveals the joy within neutral feelings.
The third section is perceptions. Wrong perceptions regarding self, birth, and death are the root of suffering, and mindfulness helps us see their true nature.
The fourth section represents the remaining forty-nine mental formations (out of fifty-one), such as anger or love.
The fifth section is consciousness, the ocean from which mental formations manifest as waves.

Consciousness consists of store consciousness (the basement) and mind consciousness (the living room). We often suppress negative seeds in the store consciousness by filling the living room with distractions, causing bad circulation in the psyche. To restore circulation, we must remove the barrier and invite fear up to be bathed in mindfulness, utilizing the five remembrances:

  1. I am of the nature to grow old; I cannot escape old age.
  2. I am of the nature to get sick; I cannot escape sickness.
  3. I am of the nature to die; I cannot escape death.
  4. Everyone that I love, everything that I cherish now, I will have to abandon them one day.
  5. I am born from my own actions; it is the fruit of my actions that follow me.
    The solution to our suffering involves removing suppression and practicing mindful consumption, concretized by the Five Precepts: protecting life, social justice, sexual responsibility, mindful speech and listening, and mindful consumption to avoid ingesting toxins.
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