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Reconcillation
The Retreat on Buddhist Psychology continues in Key West, Florida, on November 8, 1997, with the seventh talk. Thay opens with the story of David, who was asked to write a love letter to his father. To touch his own vulnerability, he practiced being a five-year-old boy for a week and then visualized his father as a five-year-old child.
Thay teaches the “emptiness of transmission,” in which transmitter, object, and receiver inter-are and cannot be separated. A second story, of Michael, illustrates listing the wholesome qualities of one’s parents in order to soften anger and resentment; this exercise enabled Michael to write a beautiful love letter to his mother and experience liberation, non-fear, and joy.
When we have been treated with violence, anger, or discrimination, a block of suffering forms within us. If we do not transform this negative energy, it will destroy us and those we love. Criminals and terrorists are people who have been unable to transform their violence. Mindfulness practice must therefore be offered throughout society—in schools, prisons, and police departments—in a non-sectarian, non-religious form.
Thay proposes an Association of Mindfulness Practice Centers and describes three centers taking shape in Washington DC, Vermont, and California. Living according to the Five Mindfulness Trainings and being affiliated with a sangha are essential; the sangha is our refuge.
At 58 minutes the teaching on the Fifty Verses resumes with verses 15–22 on the seventh consciousness (manas), verse 23 on the sixth consciousness (mental consciousness), a review of the three modes of cognition—the realm of things-in-themselves, the realm of representation, and the realm of mere image—and verses 25–27 on the root of all actions, followed by verses 28–30 on the five sense consciousnesses.
Thay also announces a 21-Day Retreat on the Sutra on Mindful Breathing to be held May 23, 1998, at St. Michael’s College in Burlington, Vermont—the first 21-Day Retreat in North America—and shares news of a 200-acre land donation in Vermont for a future practice community.
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