Thầy introduces walking meditation on a Day of Mindfulness, inviting everyone to walk together as a spiritual family and to enjoy every step. To be alive and to walk on this planet is a miracle, and he shares Master Linji’s teaching that the miracle is not to walk on fire or on thin air, but to walk on earth.

Thầy then offers the lines we can practice with our steps. Breathing in, “I have arrived”—not a statement but a realization that frees us from the past and the future. Breathing out, “I am home”: our true home is the Pure Land in the here and the now, and Amitābha Buddha is our own nature. We listen to our lungs and give them the number of steps they want, so that walking is a pleasure rather than an effort. With a nod to Michael Jackson, Thầy says, “This is it, this is it, this is it.” What we have been running after our whole life is available in this moment.

He describes the collective energy of a large Sangha walking together, like a formation of birds that lets the whole formation carry it, and offers further lines—“In the here, in the now” and “I am solid, I am free”—pointing to solidity and freedom as the ground of true happiness.

Thầy closes on the Pure Land as now or never: we don’t need to die to go there, and with mindfulness it is with us wherever we walk, even at the airport or the supermarket. He then invites everyone to sing “I Have Arrived, I Am Home” before the walk begins.

This introduction was given on the Day of Mindfulness, Becoming Truly Alive, during the Southeast Asia Tour in the year 2010. Thầy offered this introduction at Tunku Abdul Rahman College, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.