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Restlessness
Thầy opens by reflecting on the greeting “How do you do?” — and finds in it an unexpected invitation to explore the five elements that make up the human person: body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. To practise mindfulness, he teaches, is to take care of all five — both cultivating peace and joy, and learning to handle suffering when it arises.
The talk centres on one mental formation in particular: restlessness — the absence of peace. Thầy offers parents and teachers practical encouragement: if we know how to handle restlessness in ourselves, we can help our children and students do the same.
Beginning with the body, Thầy introduces two of the sixteen mindful breathing exercises from the Sūtra on Mindful Breathing. The third exercise — “Breathing in, I am aware of my body” — restores what Thầy calls the oneness of body and mind. When mind and body are together, we are truly alive, able to touch the wonders of life available in the here and the now. The fourth exercise follows naturally: “Breathing in, I release the tension in my body” — an act of compassion toward ourselves.
Returning to the beginning of the sequence, Thầy then unpacks the first two exercises. The first — simply knowing the in-breath as an in-breath — is enough to set us free from the past, the future, and our worries. To breathe in mindfully is to touch the miracle of being alive. The second exercise deepens this through following the breath all the way through, stilling what Thầy calls the NST radio — non-stop thinking — that runs continuously in most of us. In a gentle inversion of Descartes, he observes: “I think too much, therefore I am not there to live my life.”
Thầy also introduces the practice of total relaxation — scanning the body from forehead to feet with the ray of mindfulness, offering compassion to each part, staying longer wherever there is pain.
The talk closes with walking meditation as a way of transforming the habit energy of running — the deep-seated belief that happiness lies somewhere in the future. Through the stories of a Hong Kong university rector and a Parisian journalist, both of whom found their minds agreeing to join their feet within fifteen minutes, Thầy shows that this practice is available to everyone. Every step carries the invitation: “I have arrived, I am home.”
This talk was given during the Spring Retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this retreat at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.
Part of the following collections
The Second Exercise on Mindful Breathing: Following