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No Opposition Between Dream and Reality in the Teachings

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The Path of the Buddha

Thich Nhat Hanh · January 22, 2009 · Plum Village, France · Audio Only

Transcript English

January 20, 2009, was likened to a collective sitting meditation session for America, as the whole nation listened attentively to President Obama’s inaugural address, the content of which clearly embodied the four aspects of the Four Noble Truths: suffering, its causes, hope, and the path that leads beyond suffering. The image of the entire people standing behind the president evokes the five aggregates within each person. In reality:

Form
Feeling
Perception
Mental formations
Consciousness
If these aggregates do not cooperate, if each acts on its own like a drum beating out of sync with a trumpet, there will be a lack of strength. The solution is to bring mindfulness – concentration – insight into the breath, transforming the breath into a symphony: body and mind participating together, creating a solid state of concentration, similar to the unity, trust, and cooperation the American people offered President Obama.

The Buddha’s teaching offers four methods of investigative contemplation to look deeply into the truth:

Contemplation of designation – seeing that names are only conventional designations
Contemplation of phenomena – returning to the material phenomena, the five aggregates apart from names
Contemplation of self-nature – discovering that the ontological ground is non-self-nature, form is emptiness
Contemplation of differentiation – seeing dependent co-arising, that there is no independent entity (left exists because of right, right exists because of left)
The four contemplations take us from the phenomenal world to the ontological ground, and then from the ontological ground back to the phenomenal world. Applied to ethics, good – evil, right – wrong are also only conventional designations; their relative value is built from our capacity to transform suffering into understanding – love, and peace.

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Loving Speech Is an Art

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Poetry Commentary

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No Opposition Between Dream and Reality in the Teachings

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Transcript English

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A Day of Mindfulness for America and Lessons for Each Individual

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Calling the Mental Formations Home with Music and the Energy of Concentration

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Breathing, listening, walking as one body

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The power to sustain and to break habits

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The Sangha – A Flock of Birds Flying Far with Little Effort

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The Four Methods of Investigation – Opening the Door to Exploring the Dharma Realm

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Seeing the self-nature of no-self – form is emptiness

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Distinctions Interpenetrate – The Interbeing of Left and Right

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Contemplating the Nature and the Manifestations, and the Path of Entering the Nature through the Manifestations

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Transcendent Ethics – Good and Evil on the Ground of Emptiness

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Closing the Retreat – The Music of the Breath Continues the New Year

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