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Questions and Answers
Anyone who wishes to share happiness, aspirations, or concerns may use the microphone; otherwise, you may go outside to play. The three Dharma birds, Phap, Bodhi, Hanh Nghiem, and Chan Nghiem, have already flown away. Someone is concerned about the situation of watching movies and listening to worldly, unwholesome music in the Village, and about young brothers and sisters working late with computers and the Internet, which can easily stimulate sensual desires. Dear Thay, please show us how to let go of judgment when facing negative situations, how to choose between ignoring and intervening in the Sangha when we do not have enough authority.
In the monastic community, there are strict regulations regarding the possession and use of media:
- All romantic music, worldly music, and illegal novels must be handed over to the abbot within 48 hours, confessed in order to be forgiven and become the teacher’s beloved child.
- Even instrumental music with a romantic nature must be completely let go of.
- Books with a few unwholesome pages may have those pages cut out, placed in a locked box, or the removed pages may be burned so that the ashes become the warm smoke of loving-kindness.
- The library is not a trash bin; we must carefully consider the value and harm before keeping anything.
Regarding reading books and sutras, novices, novice nuns, and newly ordained bhikshus must ask for the guidance of the teacher or senior brothers and sisters to determine:
- the order of priority—for example, “A Thousand-Petaled Lotus” is part of the core curriculum and must be studied first,
- capacity, age, and level, to avoid reading Pearl Buck, Krishnamurti, or Vajrayana texts too early.
The limit of “attachment” in the Sangha is likened to the energy of a flock of wild geese: there is true love, but there must be a “red line” reminded by the sound of the bell. When four people notice the threshold has been crossed, they must stop immediately. The Sangha is expanding to establish new monasteries (in Germany, America, etc.), but we must maintain the formless continuation, connected like a river, protecting each other through insight and embodied practice, in order to realize the unborn, to be free from birth and death.