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You Are Your Actions
September 11, 2011. 120-minute dharma talk with Thich Nhat Hanh from the Ocean of Peace Meditation Hall at Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, CA. The sangha is on the North American Tour, and this is the final dharma talk for the Together We Are One retreat.
We begin with a guided meditation looking deeply at ourselves and our ancestors. We need to cultivate love and compassion, which are essential elements of happiness. Maitri has the power to bring happiness. We must understand our suffering to understand the suffering of others. We must begin with ourselves.
In true love, there is no individual suffering; you can’t say it’s not my problem. Understanding is the foundation of love, and mindfulness and concentration are the two elements that can bring about understanding. The roots of terrorism are wrong views and wrong perceptions. We use loving speech and compassionate listening to help get rid of wrong views. This too is the practice of true love. The path proposed by the Buddha is a noble eightfold path, which includes mindfulness, concentration, and insight. We can travel to the shore of liberation and non-fear.
Right view is an element of the noble eightfold path. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are a very concrete method to have right view. Thay talks about being and non-being as it relates to our way of thinking. Right thinking is another part of the path. To continue the explanation, Thay tells a story of a cloud. The nature of a cloud is no-birth, no-death. Our cloud has not come from non-being. A cloud can never die. Being and non-being are just notions. When conditions are sufficient, I manifest myself. My nature is non-local. Right view can liberate us from fear, despair, and anger.
In the mind of discrimination, we always want to choose only happiness. We want to ban the suffering and only have happiness. But happiness and suffering inter-are. It is the understanding of the suffering that compassion/happiness can arrive. We do not discriminate against suffering. Birth is now. Death is now. We can touch that fact. Being and non-being are notions and cannot be applied to reality.
Right speech, the next in the path, means speech without discrimination. Next, we look at Right Action. What we do with our body should reflect our right view. No discrimination. The same can be said about Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. Finally, Thay talks about karma.
Understanding of suffering allows compassion to arise, and the energy of compassion can be very healing. You feel much better after having understood your own suffering. And your own suffering reflects somehow the suffering of the world. That is why once you have understood your own suffering, it is much easier to understand his suffering, her suffering. And when you are able to see the suffering in him and in her, you’re no longer angry. He goes on to share about right view and how it can free us from notions of being and non-being. If God is the ultimate, He transcends both the notion of being and non-being. You cannot talk about the birth of God or the death of God. You cannot talk about the being of God or the non-being of God. Notions such as birth and death, being and non-being, coming and going, cannot be ascribed to God. In fact, it cannot be ascribed to the flame or to the cloud. The true nature of things is the nature of no-birth and no-death, no coming, no going, no being, and no non-being. He finishes the talk discussing what is right action.
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