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Reflective Inquiries - Tầm tư tự tính
Thầy begins with Nāmaparyeṣaṇā (Inquiry into the Name), warning that names create a false sense of stability. While a name like “Mississippi River” or “Frenchman” stays the same, the reality it points to is in constant flux. He specifically addresses the danger of labels like “terrorist” or “enemy,” explaining how these words trigger immediate emotions and discriminations that prevent us from seeing the human being behind the term. Using a personal story from a 1966 peace demonstration, Thầy shows how refusing to be “boxed” into a label (North vs. South) can shatter dualistic thinking and open a path toward truth.
In Vastuparyeṣaṇa (Inquiry into Reality), Thầy shifts from the label to the thing-in-itself. Using the meditation on a cloud, he illustrates that we are not separate entities moving through time, but a continuous stream of manifestation. Just as a cloud “inter-is” with the rain, the river, and the ocean, we are a composite of “non-self” elements. Thầy challenges the common notion of birth and death, proposing a logic beyond the formal: “No one will die, because no one has really been born.” Like a flame that manifests when conditions are right, we are a “Happy Continuation” of our ancestors, our environment, and our actions.
The heart of the teaching lies in nirvāṇa, which Thầy defines not as a place, but as the extinction of the eight basic notions (Birth/Death, Being/Non-being, Sameness/Otherness, Coming/Going). He uses the metaphor of a wave and the water to show that we suffer when we identify only with the “historical dimension” (the wave) and its limits. When we touch our “ultimate dimension” (the water), we realize we were never born and can never die. This non-dualistic insight is the foundation of non-violence; it allows us to handle even our most difficult emotions—like anger and fear—as organic elements to be transformed, much like a gardener turns garbage into beautiful flowers.
This is the twelfth talk in a series of fourteen given during The Feet of the Buddha, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2004. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.
Part of the following collection
Reflective Inquiries, Karma Retribution