So if you are sitting with your husband in your living room, and if both of you are honest. If both of you make an effort to identify the causes of your suffering and your difficulties, you will see the path that leads to well-being, to reconciliation. If your relationship, if the connection between you and your husband is not good, if communication has become impossible, it is because mistakes have been made in the past. And now, the practice is to restore this communication which is so important. Restoring communication is an absolutely necessary practice.

And with the practice of deep listening, the use of loving speech, we can always reopen the door that has been closed. You can no longer open the door of his heart. And he cannot open the door of your heart. Communication has become impossible. So we must do something to restore this communication. In our time, the means of communication are very sophisticated.

We have email, we have fax, fax machines, telephones, communication satellites. It only takes us a few minutes, just a few seconds to send our news to the other side of the world, but in our time communication between people has become very difficult. Communication between communities, between countries in the global community, has become very difficult. So the practice of restoring communication is a practice for all of us. In the family, in society, and in the international community. Even with ourselves, communication has become difficult. It is because you with yourself, between you and yourself, there is communication. Perhaps communication has become impossible between you and your body, between you and your feelings, with your perceptions. Each of us is made of elements called skandhas. [Thay writes on the board.]

First of all, we have the physical body, called form. And then sensations. Then perceptions. And then mental formations. And finally, we have consciousness, the knowing consciousness. Consciousness, vijnana.

And these elements, these five elements, these five skandhas, form our territory. And this territory is vast, immense. And each of us is a king or a queen who reigns over this territory. But we are not responsible kings or queens.

It is because there are things happening in this territory that we cannot control. There are conflicts, there is war within our territory. You cannot watch over your territory. You do not have the capacity to bring peace and harmony to your territory. That is why you have the tendency to run away from your territory, the five elements. When you watch television, it is an escape.

You take refuge in the television in order to forget yourself. If you are a king or a queen who is truly responsible, then you must return to your territory to rearrange things, so that harmony and peace become possible. But this is something you do not want to do. You try to escape from your territory, from yourself.