Thầy speaks of the Third Mindfulness Training and the four elements of true love: loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness. Love, he teaches, is a living thing, like a tree: when it stops growing, it begins to die. A story from his years as a young monk—a durian on the altar whose smell he could not bear, so he covered it with the bowl bell—shows why we cannot impose our idea of happiness, even on someone we love.

Thầy then points to the Kingdom of God and nirvāṇa as available in the here and the now, not after we die. He explains the difference between the conventional truth and the ultimate truth and then introduces the Three Doors of Liberation—emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness. These three concentrations, found in every school of Buddhism, can remove fear and despair.

Looking at an empty glass and a flower full of the cosmos, Thầy asks what emptiness is empty of. He explores how the human being is made of non-human elements, why our father is in every cell of our body, and what neuroscience has found: a symphony with no conductor. Each of us is a continuation, which means that when we walk, all our ancestors walk with us. In the guided meditation that opens the talk, we invite our father, our mother, Jesus, and the Buddha to breathe with us.

With the eyes of signlessness, Thầy shows how we can see a cloud in the rain and the one we have lost in her new form. Thầy shares, “The death of a cloud is the birth of the rain.” A wave does not have to search for water, and a lotus prepares her continuation in the mud. The Third Door of Liberation, aimlessness, invites us to stop running, because we are already what we are looking for.

Thầy also tells the story of Anāthapiṇḍika, the generous lay supporter of the Buddha, whom Śāriputra guided in meditation as he was dying so that he died peacefully. Thầy recommends this as a practice for anyone who accompanies a dying person.

Thầy closes by encouraging everyone to go home and build a Sangha, because a Sangha supports our practice: with a Sangha, we can maintain it for a long time.

This is the final talk in a series of five given during the Happy Teachers Will Change the World retreat in the year 2013. Thầy offered this talk at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario.