Today is the 12th of June, 2014 and we are in the Still Water Meditation Hall, Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, in our twenty-one-day retreat. Today is the 12th, so our cornstalk has grown ten centimeters. [Thay touches the corn plant next to him.] Do you think that is the same corn plant, or is it a different one? The Buddhist answer is that it's not the same, because it has grown up, it's not exactly the same, but it's not a different plant of corn either. No sameness, no otherness, that is the nature of all that is.

When you look into the family album, you see you as a five-year-old boy or a five-year-old girl, and you ask: "Am I the same person with this little boy, or am I a different person?" because now you look so different from the little boy. Your form, your feelings, your perceptions, your mental formations, your consciousness are very different from the five aggregates of the little boy. So you are not the same with the little boy that used to be you, but you are not a totally different person either. So the truth is that you are neither the same nor a different one.

We know that this plant of corn is the continuation of the kernel of corn that we planted several weeks ago, and the grain of corn is still alive. And even if we do not see it in the form we used to see, it's always there. We cannot remove the grain of corn out of the plant of corn, it is there in every cell of the corn stalk. So with those of us who know how to look deeply, we can see the presence of the kernel of corn in every cell of the corn stalk. The same thing is true with our parents.

We may think that our father has passed away, has died, but our father is always alive in us, and we can get in touch with our father in every cell of our body, and you can talk to your father: "Daddy, I know you are there". So a conversation between the son, the daughter, and the father is always possible, even if the image of the father you used to know is no longer