Thầy teaches that Right View transcends all pairs of opposites—birth and death, being and nonbeing, coming and going, sameness and otherness—and that touching this insight frees us from fear. He begins with the beginner’s mind, the mind of love that gives us the energy to practice and to serve, and with the two kinds of truth, conventional and ultimate. Just as quantum mechanics asks us to release what we learned from Newton, true understanding asks us to become participants rather than observers. No one can give us the taste of a kiwi; we have to eat it ourselves.

Meditating on a cloud, Thầy shows that it has not been born and cannot die: it can become rain, snow, or tea, but never nothing. So instead of “Happy Birthday to You,” we can sing “Happy Continuation Day to You,” and if we have lost someone dear to us, we can learn to recognize her in her new form. Lighting a match, he asks the flame where she has come from and where she has gone, and whether a second flame is the same as the first.

Thầy then turns to the four notions the Diamond Sutra urges us to remove: self, human beings, living beings, and lifespan. A flower is made only of non-flower elements, and humans only of non-human elements: we carry mineral, vegetal, and animal ancestors within us. To protect humans, we have to protect the environment, which is why Thầy sees the sūtra as perhaps the oldest text on deep ecology. Recalling the verse he learned as a novice monk at sixteen, he explains why bowing to the Buddha is a meditation rather than worship, and suggests the same must be true when we bow to Jesus or to God.

From Right View come Right Thinking, Right Speech, and Right Action. Thầy shares, “To think is already to act.” Drawing on Sartre and Lavoisier, he teaches that we are our actions, and our actions are our continuation. He touches briefly on the rest of the Noble Eightfold Path and the Three Doors of Liberation—emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness—and tells the story of Śāriputra guiding the dying Anāthapiṇḍika to see that he is more than his body.

Thầy closes by asking the Sangha to keep the mind of love alive. The talk ends with the song “No Coming, No Going.”

This is the final talk in a series of three given during Cultivating the Mind of Love retreat in the year 2011. Thầy offered this talk at Magnolia Grove Meditation Practice Center, Batesville, Mississippi.