Thầy invites the poets, composers, and musicians in the Sangha to write new verses and songs for the practice. He recalls the gāthās he memorized as a novice monk, beginning with the verse for waking up, which greets twenty-four brand-new hours as a gift, and shows how each line goes with an in-breath or an out-breath, so that everywhere becomes a meditation hall, even the bathroom.

Thầy then proposes three gāthās for the Sangha to write during the retreat. The first is for when we suffer or are angry: to remember that the other person suffers too and needs help, not punishment, rather than escalating our anger and creating hell for each other. The second is for moments of confusion, when the right thing to do is to go home to ourselves with mindful breathing, like someone who stays calm in a boat about to capsize. The third is for when we feel restless in the present moment. Here Thầy teaches aimlessness, one of the Three Doors of Liberation, with the image of a wave that knows she is already water.

In the second part of the talk, Thầy turns to the Buddhist teaching on genesis. He speaks of the nonduality of the Creator and the creature, invites theologians to look again at the words “creation” and “creator,” and suggests that we touch God when we touch a pebble or contemplate a cloud. He then introduces three kinds of arising from Mahāyāna Buddhism: arising from suchness, like clouds arising from the ocean; arising from the dharma realm, where all phenomena lean on each other, which Plum Village expresses, in answer to Descartes, as “You are, therefore I am”; and arising from store consciousness, taught by the Manifestation-Only School, whose place in the Abhidharma literature Thầy briefly traces. The talk closes on the seeds from which everything manifests: there is no creation, only manifestation.

This is the fifth talk in a series of twelve given during What Happens When We Die?, the Twenty-One-Day Retreat in the year 2014. Thầy offered this talk at the Lower Hamlet, Plum Village, France.