The Core Teachings of the Buddha

Thầy opens with the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, emphasising Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration, and Right View, before exploring how these teachings connect to Karma, compassion, loving speech, deep listening, and reconciliation, and integrating the Five Mindfulness Trainings and the Sūtra on Mindful Breathing throughout.

Rather than covering up suffering through unmindful consumption, Thầy teaches that Right Mindfulness serves two purposes: touching the wonders of life in the present moment for nourishment and healing, and recognising, embracing, and transforming our internal suffering.

Citing the sūtra where the Buddha defines Right View as transcending the notions of being and nonbeing, Thầy shows how the common belief that we begin at birth and end at death is a misconception. Drawing on the conservation of matter and energy, and the image of a cloud that never dies but simply changes form, he points to the truth that we are made of non-me elements and continuously inter-be. This same insight appears in John 14 — “I am in the Father, and I am in you, and you are in me” — a quiet moment of interfaith recognition.

Interbeing becomes the foundation of deep ecology: caring for human beings requires caring for the entire planet. In our closest relationships, overcoming the illusion of separation means seeing that a partner’s suffering and happiness are truly our own.

On the Law of Karma—compared here to a savings account—every thought, word, and action bears our signature and becomes our continuation. We have the power to neutralise a harmful thought produced yesterday by generating its opposite today.

Thầy then focuses on the Fourth Mindfulness Training — loving speech and deep listening — and the single intention that makes deep listening possible: “I listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to suffer less.” He shares the story of four German men who, on the fifth night of a retreat, each telephoned their estranged fathers and reconciled.

The talk closes with the first eight exercises of the Sūtra on Mindful Breathing, and a Lamp Transmission ceremony for Sister Trí Giác—a tender moment in which Thầy reads her insight gāthās and lights a candle.

This talk was given on a Day of Mindfulness during the spring retreat in 2012. Thầy offered this talk at the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, France.