Today is the seventh of August, 1999, and we have one hundred and forty-seven days left to live before the arrival of the year 2000. Time goes by quickly.

Mindful breathing is something very wonderful. If you practice with the bell, it is very easy. But if there is no bell, we can still practice. When we are nervous, when we get angry, when we are sad, or when we are disappointed, we must return to our mindful breathing.

At home or at school, we should be able to practice this. Because it does us a lot of good. With mindful breathing, with calm, we can remain our best selves. We will not explode. We will not fall apart.

And mindful breathing is the most effective way to protect ourselves. So we train ourselves in deep breathing in mindfulness, and we train ourselves to practice smiling. Smiling is something very wonderful.

People say that we only smile when we are happy, when we have joy in our hearts. Of course, if we have joy in our hearts, we can smile. But that kind of smile is not a practice.

You know that on our face, there are hundreds of muscles, about three hundred. And every time we are furious or nervous, those muscles become very tense, and we can see it. If you look at a person who is angry, you see that all the muscles on their face are tense. And they look very much like a bomb ready to explode.

We do not feel safe in front of a person like that. We are afraid. It is a person, but they look like a bomb. So we have to know how to defuse the bomb.

The bomb is here, within us. The bomb is also in the other person who does not know how to protect themselves from anger. So every time you feel that the bomb is manifesting in you, you have to practice well. You have to defuse the bomb.

And this is something doable with mindful breathing or with slow walking, walking meditation. And this is what we learn at Plum Village. You see the brothers and the sisters, they walk like that, they breathe like that. And sometimes it takes a year or two to be able to really master the practice.

And every time the fire of rage, of anger, or of depression takes hold of you, then you can practice. You practice so that you are in control of yourself.

And we have to practice this at school. Because at school there are boys and girls who do not know how to protect themselves. They let themselves be carried away by anger, by despair, and by violence. This is not a good thing.

In the United States, from time to time, we see young people killing young people with machine guns. It is terrible. To see young people burned by the fire of anger, the fire of despair, expressing their violence with guns, with machine guns.

We do not want this to happen anywhere, in America, or in Asia, or in Europe. So the violence is in us, the anger is in us. We have to practice so that we are in control of this. And so that kindness and freshness can manifest many times during the day.