Thầy teaches that true happiness is made of four qualities we can bring into our daily life: peace, clarity, compassion, and courage. He begins with peace. With half a minute of mindful breathing, our in-breath and out-breath become more peaceful and pleasant, and that peace is transmitted to our body and our feelings. When we sit down, the first thing is to bring peace to our breath and body, for, as Thầy says, “If you come into your body, you touch life.”

When we are peaceful, we begin to see clearly, and clarity removes the wrong perceptions that lead us to create suffering. Seeing clearly, we no longer want to blame or punish, and we look at ourselves and others with the eyes of compassion. Compassion, in turn, gives us the courage to cut through craving and anger. Thầy contrasts this with the world’s idea of happiness as fame, power, wealth, and sex. A right understanding of happiness matters, he says, because our practice should bring more happiness to ourselves and to others.

Thầy then speaks of other elements of happiness. Brotherhood and sisterhood, he says, last longer than romantic love, and he recalls the four hundred young people who came to Bát Nhã Temple to become monastics because there they could say what was in their hearts without fear. Having a path, the path of the Eight Right Practices, is another. So is seeing people relax, smile, and reconcile during a retreat of only six days, which shows that our life is useful and meaningful.

Preparing the Sangha for the Winter Retreat, Thầy invites everyone to share their stories of transformation and healing, and to sit together to generate a collective energy of mindfulness, peace, and compassion. He introduces two texts for study: the Paramārthagāthā, the verses on the absolute truth, and a treatise on the object of consciousness. Walking meditation, he says, is to touch the Earth as a real bodhisattva, and a flower, a seed, or a speck of dust shows that the duality of matter and spirit can be transcended. Recalling Lady Mahāmāyā’s words to Sudhana in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, that she is the mother of all buddhas of the past, present, and future, Thầy calls this the voice of the Earth, a bodhisattva we can touch whenever we want, to receive the healing and transformation we need.

This is the last talk of the Fall Retreat, in the year 2011. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.