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Reconciliation
Reconciliation, Transforming Violence, and Interbeing
Thầy describes a practice in which we return to our five-year-old self, and then we imagine our parents at five years old. In this way, we can heal our past trauma with them. When we make peace with the past, we heal not only ourselves but our ancestors and future generations. We must transform the violence in us, so we don’t inflict violence on others or ourselves.
It’s possible to bring non-sectarian mindfulness practice to our communities to transform violence into compassion. One such effort is the Association of Mindfulness Practice Centers being established in Europe and the USA. At these centers, anyone can come and participate in activity-based mindfulness practices or more formal retreats. Thầy talks about the history and nature of these Mindfulness Practice Centers and about several upcoming retreats.
Thầy next discusses how the sex industry and show business have created suffering in our society and how we can help people protect themselves from this suffering. The Five Mindfulness Trainings allow us to do this—especially if practiced as a Sangha.
Thầy then returns to reading and commenting on The Fifty Verses on Manifestation Only, resuming with the sixteenth verse and continuing through the twenty-second, all of which are about the seventh consciousness, manas.
A discussion of the three fields of cognition and three modes of cognition begins with verse twenty-three. Thầy explains these and describes the path to non-discriminative wisdom (nirvikalpajñāna).
The thirty-second verse states that all consciousnesses have three parts—darśanabhāga, nimittabhāga, and svabhāvabhāga—that cannot be separated.
This is the seventh talk in a series of eight given during the Opening the Door to Healing & Transformation retreat, on the teachings of Buddhist psychology, in the year 1997. Thay offered this talk in Key West, Florida, in the United States.
These teachings later appear in the book Understanding Our Mind
Thầy concludes by reminding us that each seed (bīja) in our store consciousness contains every other seed—for example, the seed of anger contains the seed of love. If we can perceive deeply the true nature of any mental formation—wholesome or unwholesome—we can attain enlightenment. This is because the one contains the all.