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Sitting Meditation Guidance: Warming Our Inner Home (Multilingual)
Thầy elaborates on sitting meditation as a precious opportunity to return home, cultivating harmony, warmth, and authentic presence within our body and mind. He introduces the five skandhas—form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness—as our true inner family, explaining that our first duty as practitioners is to perform a gentle “housewarming” for our own being.
Thầy clarifies the practical preparations needed for a successful sitting, illustrating how a relaxed posture, a straight spine, and a gentle smile can immediately release tension in the hundreds of muscles across the face and shoulders. He teaches us to utilize the breath as a flashlight to navigate our inner landscape, allowing us to recognize our abundance of conditions for happiness, such as healthy lungs and an active heart. Crucially, Thầy encourages us to meet our inner pain, anxiety, and sorrow with radical compassion, guiding us to speak directly to our difficult emotions as we would a suffering child—inviting our sadness to sit close by, share a cup of tea, and promising never to abandon it again.
Finally, he demonstrates the mudra of concentration—humorously called the “mudra of catching the dragonfly”—to anchor our restless mind and prevent us from running away from home.
This guidance on sitting was given during the spring retreat in the year 2000. Thầy offered this guidance in Plum Village, France.
