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Not Inside, Not Outside
In the nonviolence retreats that began in 2006 at UNESCO, Paris, with the support of Frédéric Mayor, there was a proposal to establish a training center so that teachers could learn methods to transform the energy of violence in the classroom—according to statistics in 2006, there were up to 88,000 cases of school violence in France. Plum Village drafted and published two materials, Anger and Creating True Peace, as textbooks for the Wake Up School movement, which have been sent to many countries (Bhutan, India, Thailand, France, the United States, the United Kingdom). Direct cooperation with UNESCO, the United Nations (proposing ten years of nonviolence practice for young people), and the Ministry of Education of Vietnam is expected to bring this practice into schools, helping teachers and students together create an environment of peace and loving-kindness.
In the teachings of Manifestation-Only (Vijnaptimatra), the eighth consciousness—Alaya (store consciousness)—is fundamentally indeterminate (neither wholesome nor unwholesome, neither defiled nor pure), serving as the common ground for all dharmas, containing the seeds of the six realms of samsāra and nirvana. These six realms are:
- the heavenly realm (deva)
- human
- Asura
- hell
- hungry ghost (preta)
- animal
From Alaya arises both birth-and-death and liberation; they inter-are—whenever the six realms are strong, nirvana is weak, and vice versa; the outflows and the non-outflows also rely on each other. When we practice transformation, Alaya becomes the mirror-like wisdom (immaculate consciousness), containing only wholesome seeds, in harmony with the five particular mental formations (desire, determination, mindfulness, concentration, insight), manifesting the clarity and freedom of true understanding.