Nirvāṇa is Available in Each Sound of the Bell

Thầy organizes the talk in two sections, the first one addressed to the families and, at times, especially to the children and the second addressed foremost to the adults. Section one focuses on the practices and practicalities of listening to and inviting the meditation bell, and section two provides an overview of a series of interconnected concepts that are foundational to Buddhism.

Thầy opens and closes the bell section with encouragement of families to bring the bell into their home and to use it for facilitating mutual respect, love, and harmony in the household, especially when unhappiness or disagreement arises. Thầy empowers the children, as well as the adults, to initiate use of the bell and to serve as bell masters in the home. He recommends a family “treaty” concerning use of the bell and regular inviting of the bell at agreed upon times each day. He then provides a tutorial in bell practices: “waking” the bell with a “half sound”; the bell-waking gāthā; synchronizing gāthās with in-breaths and out-breaths; and, “inviting” the “full sound” of the bell three times, interspersed with the bell-inviting gāthā and synchronized breathing. Thầy coaches the children on their breathing and on the specifics of inviting the big bell. In closing this section, Thầy encourages families to create a small meditation space in the home, a “breathing room.”

Thầy opens the second section with a short history of karma and reincarnation prior to the emergence of Buddhism in ancient India, concluding that those doctrines are “not at the heart of the Buddhist teaching,” because they rely upon the concept of a separate, autonomous self. Thầy shows us how the Buddhist concept of “non-self” emerged from a deeper understanding of the true nature of impermanence and interdependent origination. Accordingly, all selves consist of non-self elements, “continuation” is a more accurate description than “rebirth,” and karma, rather than being formulaic award or reparation, is the ongoing ramifications of our thoughts, speech, and actions that constitute our continuation.

Thầy then turns to showing how these understandings issue from the bedrock teachings of the Buddha, the Noble Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths. In short, the first of the Eightfold Path, Right View, is the true nature of reality as expressed by non-self, impermanence, and inter-being. Thầy shares as good news that non-self means that there is no birth and no death; no sameness and otherness; no coming and going; no being and non-being. Thus, nirvāṇa is available in this life, in this body, in the here and in the now; that is the only place it is available. Happiness is available—literally, physically—in every step.

This is the ninth of thirteen talks given during the Summer Opening in the year 2013. Thầy offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.