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Visiting the Inner Buddha: Mudras, Hugging, and Heart Sutra Insight
Thay begins by inviting us to discover our most comfortable “chrysanthemum position” for sitting—one that brings solidity, freedom, and joy—and shares the story of a five-year-old’s brief but potent practice. He offers the practice of visiting the Buddha inside: sitting mindfully, inhaling and exhaling, then asking twice, “Dear little Buddha, are you there?” until you feel the calm, fresh, loving presence respond. Thay illustrates how this inner Buddha needs our attention just as we need its qualities, and suggests touching this presence morning and evening, using the mudra of auspiciousness whenever you need reassurance that “everything is fine.”
He then introduces three more embodied practices:
- Mudras—signs that cultivate energy of peace and concentration, especially the Touching the Earth mudra, recalling how Buddha called the earth to witness his breakthrough and banished doubt.
- Hugging Meditation—preparing with three mindful breaths, opening into a loving embrace: “Breathing in, I know the person I love is alive in my arms. Breathing out, I feel so happy.” It heals quarrels and reawakens the joy of being alive.
- A poignant poem on the “historical dimension” of anger—“In three hundred years from now, where will you be?”—to foster immediate reconciliation and the insight of impermanence.
Turning to the Heart Sutra, Thay highlights:
• The Five Skandhas—forms, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness—are empty yet real, “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”
• All dharmas (phenomena) bear the mark of emptiness: they are neither produced nor destroyed, defiled nor immaculate, increasing nor decreasing.
• The Four Noble Truths interpenetrate: suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path are inseparable.
• The eighteen realms—six sense organs, six objects, six consciousnesses—inter-are, revealing nirvana in every moment and every thing.
Finally, he underscores caring for the dying through presence, chanting (e.g. Namo Avalokiteshvara), massage, and the “Teaching Given to the Dying Person,” helping loved ones touch the ground of no birth and no death and die without fear. He closes by inviting us to build Sangha—small practice groups and a new center at Blue Cliff—to sustain these practices of mindfulness, deep listening, and loving action.
