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Retreat for Vietnamese People - Love in the Buddhist Path
This morning, many people received the Three Refuges, taking refuge in the Three Jewels and the Five Mindfulness Trainings—not merely as a ceremony, but as an essential practice for true happiness and genuine freedom. Practicing the Five Mindfulness Trainings helps protect people, nature, the earth’s resources, and rebuild broken families. The Three Refuges and the Five Mindfulness Trainings have been repeatedly mentioned at international conferences, and five times in the Discourse on the White-Clad Disciple, to emphasize the power of dwelling happily in the present moment, right in the here and now.
Questions and answers about love and suffering reveal that violence, lying, and betrayal—violating the training on sexual responsibility and the training on loving speech and deep listening—destroy self-respect and trust. True love must have the four elements of loving kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness, which preserve freedom and nourish happiness:
- Loving kindness (maitri): offering happiness to one another
- Compassion (karuna): helping to transform the suffering of the one you love
- Joy (mudita): sharing joy together
- Inclusiveness (upekkhā): not possessing, not discriminating, preserving freedom for each other
Observing the Third Mindfulness Training also helps build lasting relationships, as demonstrated by stories from Westerners and exemplified in the Tale of Kieu. When body and mind deeply understand each other, intimacy is like the last drop of water; if not, it is merely an attachment of desire, easily leading to suffering and loss of freedom.
