Thầy teaches that our deepest desire is a kind of food. Revisiting the four kinds of nutriment, he asks how much fame, power, wealth, or sex we really need in order to be happy, and invites us to look honestly at what we want to do with our life. He speaks of the Buddha’s strong intention, which led him to refuse to be a king, and of bodhicitta—the mind of love, the mind of enlightenment. Understanding and love are not two separate things, and understanding our own suffering is the foundation for understanding and loving others.

Mindfulness shows us why we reach for a piece of cake we are not hungry for, and helps us go home to take care of the suffering inside. Thầy speaks of cultivating the mind like soil, and of the lotus that is made with mud. Continuing with the exercises of mindful breathing, he turns to concentrating and liberating the mind. Concentration is like cooking potatoes: the fire has to be kept alive until insight comes, and in Buddhism, he says, we speak of salvation by insight and not by grace.

The meditation on impermanence—visualizing our beloved one three hundred years from now—can free us from anger, sometimes in just a few minutes. Thầy shares how the insight of impermanence helps him enjoy walking and every breath: “Long live impermanence!”

Thầy then presents the Three Doors of Liberation, found in every school of Buddhism. With aimlessness, happiness is possible here and now, and we are already what we want to become. With signlessness, a cloud never dies, and we can recognize our beloved cloud in the rain and in our tea; Thầy brings in Lavoisier, and the Buddha’s teaching to Kātyāyana that Right View is the removal of the notion of being and nonbeing. With emptiness, a glass of tea and a flower full of the whole cosmos show what it means to be empty of a separate existence.

The talk closes with the Three Natures of the Manifestation Only school, and the practice of releasing notions—birth and death, being and nonbeing, subject and object—in order to touch the ultimate, nirvāṇa.

This talk is from a series given during the Fall Retreat in the year 2012. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.