The Way Out Is In / A Quiet Beauty in Everything (Episode #111)

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Welcome, dear listeners, to this latest episode of the podcast series The Way Out Is In.

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I am Jo Confino, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change.

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And I am Brother Phap Huu, a Zen Buddhist monk, student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition.

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And today, dear listeners, we are going to be talking about finding beauty and reverence in the most ordinary of things.

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The way out is in.

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Hello dear listeners, I am Jo Confino.

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And I am Brother Phap Huu.

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And brother, this is the first time we’ve done a recording since we came back from India about six weeks ago. And since then, you’ve been in Australia doing a tour. So tell us, how are you?

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I’m really tired and it feels so good to come back home into spring because it’s really beautiful at the moment and very hot. We are going to hit 36 today. And, reminder, we are in May so this is absolutely not normal. And we are gearing up for a very large gathering in Plum Village. It is the 60 year anniversary of the Order of Interbeing and we will be hosting three weeks and plus one more extra week for a number of friends staying behind. And I think personally with everything that is going on for me in this year, I’m also slowing down more. So I’ve decided not to facilitate in this retreat. I’m going to be making tofu for three weeks. Back to the roots, back to the novice days. Still be giving one or two teachings, but why not take refuge in the community as a practice, like, you know, there is a large community that is here and a lot of OI members are coming as well as Dharma teachers, so learn to relax, let go, and take refuge. That’s my practice this coming month.

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Great. And so the topic today, brother, is finding the beauty in ordinary things, or which seem to be ordinary, because of course nothing is ordinary. And part of the reason for doing this is I have a new book coming out, or that’s come out by the time this has been published, which is called Between Earth and Sky, 100 Days of Deep Looking in the Place of the Dead. And this was… It’s a photography book and a visual meditation of my time in lockdown in a place called Mitla in Mexico. And it’s a desert-like scrub land. There’s virtually, it looks to the surface to be completely empty of life. And I spent a hundred days walking, hiking in this land, taking photographs. And it was a time of great transformation, a time when I’d just left New York as a journalist and was on my way to live here, next to Plum Village. And it was a time of literally of slowing down, of stopping, of deep looking and realizing that even though the land looked completely empty, it was actually full of life and full of beauty. But it was only when I stopped and changed my way of seeing that I was able to see that. And this is something that’s been sort of in a sense core to my life, which is about not feeling very beautiful when I was young. And then finding the beauty in myself and realizing actually that could be found everywhere. So I’m gonna just start off before we go into things, brother, with just a little passage which just talks about my photography. And it says: “It’s easy for places like the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas to generate awe, but I discovered the same sense of wonder in the most ordinary things. During the five years I lived in New York, while most photographers were drawn to Manhattan’s dramatic skyline, I focused on objects like the splattered doorway of a Brooklyn metal merchant, a dirty rag hanging from a pipe in a bus depot in Red Hook, and a twig poking through the snow in Central Park that reminded me of the struggles of life. I would cycle to industrial parks and photograph discarded objects such as a crushed plastic cup floating in a puddle, giving them a sculptural dignity to help others see that quiet beauty. That same impulse to hold space for what often goes unseen or unacknowledged continues to animate my work. This way of seeing the world is very much attuned to Thay’s invitation to view our consciousness as an artist, painting our world into being. I spent my childhood believing I had nothing to offer, that I was small, insignificant, irrelevant and ugly. I did not feel I had a place in the world, I did no feel at home. As I gradually healed my wounds, I learned first to like myself and then to love myself. My photography has evolved alongside my growing understanding of my place in the world. I want people to see the monumental in the mundane, to understand what we often dismiss as ugly or worthless can embody profound beauty and deserves reverence. Sometimes all it takes is reframing the way we see ourselves and the world around us.” So brother, with that in mind, one of the things I love about Thich Nhat Hanh is that he said we can see beauty everywhere. And he talked about the fact that actually, if we really focus on drinking our tea, then actually what more do we need? That actually when we feel alive and present on this Earth, what more do we need? So can you tell us a bit about this sense of seeing the beauty in the ordinary, not looking for the fact that we have to climb to the top of the Himalayas, not saying that we have to see the Grand Canyon, but actually we can actually sit and look at a tree or look even at a rock and find all of life in that.

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Well, first of all, congratulations, Jo, on the book.

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Thank you.

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This is such a moment to celebrate. And I think just that taking the time to celebrate is also really important because so many times we finish a project and our manas, our mind is like, okay, what is next, right? So I just want to honor this moment of receiving the book just a few minutes ago. And I know how much effort and energy has been put into it, so thank you. Wonder, the word wonder is what I discovered in Plum Village. And wonder is always around us, but most of the time we miss the wonder, because we live kind of like in a fast-paced world where we are always striving, and it comes from many different circumstances that we have to strive. And all of us, we have our different stories and our different journey. And meditation itself is… The first act of meditation is learning to stop. It is learning to take a pause and feel the present moment. And feeling the present moment is more important than thinking about the present moment, because when we attune ourselves into our own body, into our senses, like what we see, what we smell, what we hear, what touch, it gives us this opportunity to be in touch with life in the very here and now. And it sounds very, very simple in a way. It’s like, just stop and see what’s happening. But our mind is not trained in that way. Our habit energy is not trained that way, so the art of stopping is really a masterclass and it is a lifetime journey. And when we could really come back and just be present and just enjoy a moment, it can teach us so much. Like your reading just now, it allows us not then to chase after what beauty may be promised into the future, but already see the wonders and the beauty like of the trees, of the leaf or the sounds of the birds. Like I’ve never listened so profoundly to the music of the words until I learned to stop. And even though I’ve lived here for 25 years, in Plum Village, I would say like only this year I really enjoyed the melodies of the birds. And it’s not through me, it’s through the people that come through Plum Village. And when they go back into the cities, they would write me messages and they would say, oh brother, I miss the singing of the birds. And I was like, huh. And I have it every day and I don’t enjoy it as much as the bird is gifting its melody to me. So this art of stopping, this art of pausing, of seeing the wonder that is present, it’s a journey of growth individually. It’s a spiritual growth. I really connected to that. And just this morning, we have volunteers arriving for the June retreat. And I just sat with a volunteer and we just looked at the forest. And I felt so enough in that moment. I felt like we don’t need to even think about the retreat that is gonna happen starting this Monday. But this moment, sitting with a friend, having a cup of tea, and the beauty of the forest is really present. And as a novice, I didn’t enjoy it like this, even as a young bhikshu. But now, I feel this is it. Like Thay has so many phrases that reminds us of the beauty of wonder. And there’s this calligraphy and it says, this is it. And there are moments that you can sense that and you can say, ah, this is it. But this morning I had that moment of this is it as not in a moment of success or a moment of like, of insight, but this is it as in like, there’s nothing more important than this forest right now. There’s nothing more important then being fully present with a friend sitting on my left. There’s something more important than just sharing our presence and not having to think, oh, what am I gonna say so that this friend think that I’m a wise person? You know, like our discourse of the mind can really take over the present moment. So the understanding of wonder, it is a journey in itself for each and every one of us. And I think, as practitioners, we all have to ask ourselves, do we see the wonders in the mundane? And I thank our teacher Thay, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, he was a master at this. And for him, it’s because of his own journey of suffering. He doesn’t want to take for granted any day that he gets to live because he’s already seen death. He’s already seen the violence, he’s already seeing the discrimination and the present moment when you can be grounded in it and feel this breath is the wonder, this tree is the wonder, this is it. What else do you wanna search for? But these moments can escape really quickly and that’s why the practice of mindfulness it is learning to sustain it also in everyday life.

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And it’s really interesting, brother, because when you look at sort of social media, there’s such a competition for the very best. So someone who’s showing you the very, most beautiful view, and they’re such a striving to have an experience. And then everyone looking at that wishes they had the experience. And as you say, if we actually stop and be present, you know, there’s a question, can we find as much beauty in looking at a rock as in going and having the most exotic experience? Can we actually sit with a rock and see that there’s life in the rock? And what I loved about Thay is he said there’s consciousness in everything. And it’s so easy to look at things and to think that there is no life in them, but actually a rock, the dust, everything has consciousness in it, and actually everything is in us. So the minerals in a rock are in us, we actually can learn an amazing amount from a rock. So one of the things when I was on these hiking, these walkabouts in Mitla in Mexico, was I could only go in one direction. So every day I would pass the same rock or the same little bush or the dried-up riverbed. And actually what I realized is, if I paid attention, I would become friends with these places that actually I would say hello to the rock. I would form, I would be in relationship to those things. And that took time, that took awareness. So can you talk a little bit about what it means to find consciousness in everything? What it actually means to be present for life in all its manifestations?

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I think we have to start with oneself, like being aware that we have a consciousness and our consciousness is very conditioned. So what we hear, what we smell, what taste, what touch through our senses, they’re the window into our own consciousness. And our consciousness is always in relation to the outer world. And as a practitioner of practice we learn to see our consciousness as a reality, not just something that happens and we forget about it. And our consciousness is very alive. It is where our mental formation, mental formation is a very Buddhist word, and it means our feelings, our emotions, they’re a manifestation of what we’re in touch with and it can evolve into, let’s say, a feeling of peace, is a mental formation, a feeling of ease, a feeling of tension, a feeling of agitation, a feeling of anger, of frustration. They don’t just come from nowhere. They are already stored in all of us. And we see them as seeds that we all have. Even mindfulness is a seed. It is a mental formation, awareness. And we cannot be given, it is already in us, but it is conditioned by our surroundings, even the transmission of birth, like when we are born, our parents already transmit to us a consciousness, transmit to us different mental formations that are stronger or weaker because we are linked to them. So a practitioner, we want to break it down to something very practical and fundamental, and the best way is start to tune into our habits. How does our habit show up in our daily life? As simple as when we open a door, how do we open a door? It’s a very mundane thing. We open many doors a day. Are we opening the door with consciousness, with awareness, or are we slamming the door, or are we carelessly just, you know, come through the door as if nothing is happening. Or, as a practitioner, we can open the door with such awareness that opening a door, going through a door is like going through a new universe. How we show up, our way of being can shift and change our whole mental formations, our whole consciousness of reality. So consciousness is not limited to just human beings. And science, and I think artists have already demonstrated that everything has consciousness, everything has energy, everything is in relation to, and that’s why I think for us, meditators and artists, we go hand in hand very seamlessly, because as artists, there is an imagination and an understanding that there is language that is beyond what humans kind of just think of as speech or bodily language. And science also now provides us a lot of insight. In Australia, I was in a trail and we had a pause and I really held my tongue because I really don’t want to be that person, but there was a conversation that was going on and I was eavesdropping because I was really mindful, but they were talking about if trees have consciousness. And the mother really believes that it doesn’t. It doesn’t have feelings. And I was just like, oh no, no, this is such wrong view. But no, I don’t wanna be a monk in this moment. I don’t wanna be that person to come and say, well, by the way, did you know what I’ve learned? But sometimes us, as human beings, we’re so ignorant. We only think about ourselves and we only think that we have consciousness and therefore, because of that wrong view, we don’t have reverence to life. We don’t have reverence to a rock, to a table that we’re using, but in the monastery, especially with Thay, you know, the table in his hut, it hasn’t been changed. It’s been the table… It’s my older brother, it’s my ancestor. And I’ve really learned to see it as a living thing. It’s part of Thay. You cannot talk about Thay without talking about his Sitting Still hut, where he’s trained, where he stayed, where he’s lived. Every time I come into this place, one of our mindful manners, we have to knock three times, because we believe that there is consciousness in this space. That when we come into this hut, even though Thay is not alive today, but life is not limited from him physically. Life is in this space. And he really told us that when you come into my hut, you better behave like I am here. And if you don’t, then you’re not meeting me. And consciousness as Buddhist is very evolved. As a meditator, we have to have reverence into everyday life, reverence into our habits, reverence into the way we walk, the way we look at each other. So this is what I can add to the practice of understanding consciousness and reverence, how reverence is also a manifestation of our mental formations.

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Thank you, brother. And also that reverence is, it sort of creates a sense of reciprocity because when we have reverence, we are actually in conversation with whatever is in front of us. So when we think of things as objects, we’re looking at them as separate from ourselves. And when we are in reverence for things, what we see is that they are talking to us as well as we are talking them. And I talk in the book about one experience I had when I was doing a master’s degree, we were in a place in Devon, in a forest, and we were split into twos and we where taken into the forest and one of us was blindfolded and the other was asked to lead us, to lead the other person around. And I was blindfold to begin with and we spent 15 minutes where we were touching everything. So we were touching the bark of a tree or the moss. We’re feeling the unevenness of the ground. So without our sight, we were having to rely on our other abilities to sort of feel and touch. And then after 15 minutes, the instruction was changed saying, now can you sense nature feeling you? And it was the first time I’d had that switch from a human-centric view to which I am experiencing nature to the fact that actually nature is experiencing me and to recognize that we are in relationship with each other. And that was such a change because I had always thought, and I think this is what’s led to the scientific materialist view of the world that we can extract, we can dominate, we can take whatever we have because we are not in relationship. And when we think it’s just an object, we can abuse it. But as soon as we’re in relationship with someone, it’s like a person. If we are talking to someone on the phone, it’s different from when we are sitting in front of them. We tend to treat people with more respect. We tend be more open. We tend see that there’s a flow of energy between us. And I’ll just read a little section on reverence, which I wrote. “My embedded scientific materialist outlook on life often leaves little space for sacred reverence. Most of the time, I see life through an intellectual lens. I have been awestruck by nature many times, but usually in spectacular circumstances, standing atop a mountain peak, for example. That sense of wonder has rarely extended to more everyday experiences. In Mitla, this begins to change. In particular, I start to feel animated by the same sunrise that used to fill me with foreboding over the coming heat. The first rays of the sun usually crest the mountains after I’ve been hiking for about an hour. Rather than turning around, I stop and stand in the stillness. I feel the light and warmth enter me to my core, like tea leaves suffusing a glass of hot water. I open my arms to the sky and allow it all in. For a few short minutes, I stand in quiet wonder as the earth is bathed in a golden halo, bringing incomparable beauty to the most ordinary objects, things I know will appear drab after the sun rises higher in the sky. A leaf, a tiny piece of bark, a droplet of sap. Spiderwebs shimmer with all the colors of the rainbow and some arachnids take on a translucent glow”. So brother, I just want to come back to the tea leaves suffusing the tea because this was one of Thay’s signature. If he was a chef, it would be his signature, one of his signature dishes, which is that he was able to showcase the beauty and reverence life in a single cup of tea, glass of tea. So can you just tell us about how that allows us to experience reverence? And I always remember in one of the interviews I did with Thay, he talked about himself like a cup of tea. He said, you can keep adding water to the tea leaves, but eventually there’ll be no tea left. But then you can put the tea leaves on the compost and that will bring forth new life. And he was talking about his passing as being like, you know, that he would be on the compost and then produce new life too. So if you take one small thing, you can actually open it up to the whole universe. So I used to, and I still do, forgetful sometimes, but I’ll make a cup of tea in the morning. And I’ll be doing other things, I’ll been drinking it and I’m not present for my tea. So, tell us a bit about what it means to be in presence to something and how that changes our relationship in the most ordinary thing, like a cup of tea in the morning.

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I think that’s the beauty of Zen, is turning a simple moment into a beautiful ritual, we can say, or ceremony even. And I would say that drinking tea, it’s really part of the monastic culture. Like I’ve never experienced like what joy having a cup of tea could be like until I came to Plum Village because that was the way that monastics celebrate being together. And Plum Village is only a continuation of that lineage and tea drinking was already associated towards the monastic life and a monastic culture because they would wake up really early and to have clarity and energy for the meditation, tea has caffeine, so it would help with us staying awake for meditation. And it has become a kind of staple in the Plum Village way of life, where it has become our survival kit. Like if you were to ask us, whenever we travel into teaching tours, what do monastics bring? And everybody has a thermos. And in today’s world, the thermos can be cold and hot. And a teapot, tea, and cups. And it’s really become a kind of support, you know, it’s a reminder for us that no matter where we go on this planet, don’t forget about dwelling in the present moment and enjoying the presence of yourself and the presence of other. And for Thay, it was his way of showing up for his students because so many of us, we want to spend time with him, but it’s also really scary to be with a Zen master. So drinking tea is a way of breaking the ice, inviting a person to hold the cup of tea with your two hands. I learned that in Plum Village, to hold a cup of tea with two hands. And there’s so much reverence in just that simple action of, you’re not just gonna hold it with one hand and the other hand now with your phone and just scrolling through the feeds. But no, you’re gonna let go of that phone or you’re going to let go of your thinking and you’re gonna hold it with two hands. And I invite everybody, just your next cup of tea or a cup of coffee or orange juice, actually hold that cup with two hands. It shifts you into a different space. A simple action of just two hands, like I’m fully present. Just like when we join our palms and offer a bow, it represents the body and the mind and it comes together. So in the practice of meditation, form comes into play to support the intention of our… the intention of wanting to be mindful. That’s why we have a whole training called mindful manners. It’s like when you ordain, you’re like a baby again. You’re literally gonna be taught how to drink a cup of tea. You’re gonna be thought how to eat your food. You’re going to be taught how to walk again. You’re gonna be taught how to greet members in the community again. We’re going to break you down into everyday life and we’re going to give you a way of understanding so that you can give reverence to every action. And it’s so beautiful and it so intentional it can feel a little bit, a little bit rigid. And in the introduction it even says if something feels off for you, don’t react right away, but be open, because there’s cultural aspects that come into it, right? Like Eastern culture, and now there’s Western culture that we’ve adapted because we are in the West, but sometimes it is the things that makes us uncomfortable is the mud that gives us an opportunity to look again at oh, how is it that I interact with something in a particular way so that it makes me more attentive and more aware of actions. This training is very simple, but it’s very… it can help us really relate again to every day, just as a cup of tea. And that’s why Thay, no matter where he goes, he brings that cup of tea with him.

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So brother, this is really interesting because I’ll tell you what came up in my mind as you were talking is I know a lot of people these days who are taking ayahuasca or other sort of…

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Substance.

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Substances. Because what they’re looking for is a sort of out of body experience. They’re looking to touch a deep spiritual experience that they hope will then relate back to their lives and help them to see their lives more clearly. And as you speak, and you know, it’s not to judge whether that’s appropriate or not, everyone has to make their choice of what they want to do. But it’s like, similar to the fact that we want to explore outer space, we want to know what’s out in space, but we don’t know what’s in our inner space. And what I hear you saying is if we really touch the beauty of a stone or really are present for a cup of tea, then actually we can find our spiritual nature in that. It’s like we… And it relates to the idea we don’t need to go and colonize Mars. Why don’t we actually care for our home? Why don’t we actually look inside of ourselves to find the answer? And I just wonder if you can speak to that because it’s, because I don’t know many people who I speak to say oh, you know, I’m going on a journey this weekend where I’m just going to enjoy my cup of tea. They all say I’m gonna go and do ayahuasca, I’m doing this or I’m going to do that. And there’s a part of me that understands that wish to touch the ultimate dimension outside. But what you’re talking about is actually touching the ultimate dimensions on the inside. I just love your perspective on that.

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That’s why traditions like Zen and Plum Village are so important because it holds this wisdom of slowing down and seeing the beauty in the present moment. I think I would be one with everyone if my family wasn’t introduced to Plum Village. And in a way that’s such mainstream way of life, which is we don’t have enough, we need more, we’re not enough, we need to do better. We’re always comparing with one another. And how many countries have you visited? And the list goes on and on and on. And the marketplace is wonderful because it knows how to meet our void in us. And it tells us, like, buy this and feel better. You know, even us, monastics, like from time to time, we said, like let’s go, let’s go buy something and feel good. You know, it’s really a, it’s like you said, it’s not a right or wrong thing, there is just, there’s a manas where, it’s a very technical term in the school of Buddhism that learns and studies consciousness. And part of manas is afraid of the present moment in a way because it’s afraid of suffering in the present moment and it wants to run after desires and pleasure and buying something is pleasure or competing and winning is a pleasure. It is seeking something that is outside of us. It’s a pleasure. And, like you said, the culture that we have, it doesn’t teach us that we have enough. You know, it doesn’t teach us, that actually come home to yourself and take care of yourself and rest and learn to just be at home and enjoy like what you’ve been working your whole life for. It’s like, so many of us we finally have a home, but we don’t enjoy the home. We are going out more and so on and so forth. And once again, it’s just a reality, it’s not a judgment, right? Even in us, Plum Village, like from time to time, there is a balance of moderation in not taking for granted what we have. So from time to time we say, go, you should leave Plum Village. Like go out there into the world and be in touch with what you have. Right? We have to have these balancing moments that reflects back to us what we are in abundance of and not take it for granted. But the masters, like Thay, and some of the senior monastics that I get to live with, they don’t need that comparison anymore because they have really arrived at the awareness that this is it. There’s so much life, there’s so many beauty here. And so I think that this is what we are training in our meditations and in our daily life to not forget the beauty that is around us.

00:37:36

Thank you, brother. So, just to follow through, I just want to read one last passage from the book, which is in a section called Seeing in Silence, and it says: “It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when the very emptiness of this land, its silence becomes my salvation. Because I have nothing to divert my attention in the quietness of this place, I start to hear the softer and wiser voice within me, the voice that is drowned out most of the time. It suggests gently that the problem is not what I see, but the eyes through which I look. Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching, the ancient text written by Lao Tzu around 400 BCE, which has accompanied me since I first came across it in my early 30s, surfaces in my mind. It perfectly sums up the gift Mitla is offering, is quietly offering me that Manhattan, for all its energy and vitality, never could. Colors blind the eye. Sounds deafen the ears. Flavors numb the taste. Thoughts weaken the mind. Desires wither the heart. The master observes the world but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go. His heart is as open as the sky. Here the sky is all-encompassing. Can my heart also be that open? So, how do we open our heart that wide, brother? Because that speaks so well to me because I was in New York with all the sights, sounds, textures, I mean, so alive. But in one way, it’s also very draining. And then I suddenly arrive in Mitla in the middle of nowhere in a very fearful time. And just I’m in a place of real emptiness. And it’s only when I was in the emptiness that I was able to experience that sense of deep connection. So it’s difficult, isn’t it? Because as you say, there’s a part of our mind that wants the excitement. But also, when we quieten our mind, there’s another part of ourselves that is already present, that already speaks to us about wanting something deeper. And in a lot of the coaching, my experience of people is that, you know, that quiet, wise voice is in all of us. It’s not like we have to go out and find it through drugs or any other means. It’s already present, but it’s like we’ve buried it under so much habitual thinking, wish to show up, wish to perform. But actually that voice is in us, and it’s very quiet. But when we listen to it, it shows up. And I was coaching someone the other day, very, very senior in the legal position, in the legal profession rather. And she was talking about how, when she was a child, because I said, when we work together, let’s, we’re going to play, you know, let’s be playful about this. And she said, oh my god, I realized that actually, when I was a kid, the responsibilities I had to take on as a young girl mean I stopped playing. But that little girl inside her is still there wanting to play. So I’m really interested in, you know, your sense of when we quieten the mind, when we slow down, what we do is we touch another part of ourselves that often hasn’t had a voice and may be a part of us as a child that was closed down and has been quietly calling out, let me out, let me out, but in our business we haven’t allowed it out. So is that an experience you’ve had or something you see in people who come to Plum Village that actually, you know, and we’re doing a podcast soon, which is, you know, you’re already the person you want to become. So the answers are inside us already. What’s your sense of all that?

00:41:33

I think what you just explained there, Jo, it is, and the question about like, how do we open our hearts, it’s an act of listening that comes up in my mind when I hear you speak about that experience. To listen to oneself is a journey of opening one’s heart. And listening to oneself is scary as well as it takes courage and it takes skillfulness also, because we have to listen to ourself authentically, not what it wants only, right? And when we speak about mindfulness and we speak about listening in the school of the tradition of Plum Village, which is rooted in Buddhism, when we say we have to learn to listen to ourselves, it means we have listen to our suffering. We have to listen to the ill-being inside of us, like the cry of the child, the pain that we went through, the sense of loss that we have, and actually name it, call it by its name, be aware of it, own it in a way, the scars that we receive to really not hide away from it but accept it with tenderness. And acceptance is an act of opening the heart. Acceptance is an act of reverence to who we are because we are exactly what we went through. But the present moment now gives us an opportunity to not feel trapped in that exact same story because we’re a new person now also. We have to learn to forgive ourselves also. And if we want to take it even further, we forgive the ones that have caused us harm and suffering. But when I say we forgive them, it doesn’t mean we have to be their friend now, we forgive the actions that we have received from them, because that is an acceptance of oneself. But it’s not meaning that I have to go and embrace and see them as my friend, but I see them still as a human being that has also suffered. And somehow that mechanism of practice and deep looking, it makes us less bitter and it makes us not lose our humanity. It gives us the eye of justice and the eye of righteousness of seeing what they did to me was absolutely wrong and not right action, but now I don’t want to do that because the cycle of suffering is what I have received, it is very easy for me to also offer to others. There is a trauma of samsara that we experience and we can give. And when we accept and when we can forgive ourselves and forgive the actions that have been put on us, there is a moment of ending that cycle of pain and ignorance. And so therefore when we speak about opening our hearts, it is a journey of listening. And that listening journey, it doesn’t stop after one retreat. It doesn’t even stop after even one insight. I think the Western mind, when we look at spirituality, where I feel it’s not correct, it’s like we look for formula, one plus one equals two, and it stops there. But in our way of looking at spirituality, we call it a path, Tao, Dao. The whole journey of spirituality, the whole journey wonder, the whole of opening the heart, it never ends, it never stops. We never say we are healed, we always say we’re on the path of healing. We never said, I am enlightened. I am on the pathway of enlightening. I am always awakening to the beauty of life, to the suffering, to the confusion of our times. So it is always a verb. And I really think it’s important for all of us to update this language because it is what we are transmitting to our next generation. When we speak about opening the heart, that is a skill that our teacher has said, like I wish that education would teach kids how to be to be present for their feelings and emotions, to learn to name it, to learn to say oh, I’m really angry right now, I’m gonna ask to stay in a space that I can come back to my physical body to feel where that emotion shows up in, so I can be present. You know, our teacher has sung this song for 40-something years as he was teaching in the West and I believe it will come true, you know, I believe that it will go mainstream, but if it doesn’t yet, all of us who listen, it’s like, how can we bring this culture into our way of life and then bring it into another way of live, which is our children, the next generation. And for me, spirituality and the practice that we do in Plum Village, it’s not something separated from the world, it’s actually something that we’re doing to be a part of… it is a part of the world and it is to be translated into everyday life, but it’s very difficult and it takes a community though to remind each other, to encourage each other. And that’s why Thay we would always say becoming a monastic is easier to commit to this life and this way of being because we are supported by like-minded people. But in the world, it takes much more effort. And therefore, that’s why building community of reverence is important. Building community of knowing how to be present is so important.

00:48:09

Thank you, brother, and just to reiterate that point, because it’s so important, in a sense, we’re, you know, and we’ve heard it a thousand times, but are we really listening to it? You know, there is no destination. We’re on a path, and I love Pema Chödrön, who says, you know, has a book saying, start where you are. Don’t try and be where you’re not. Start were you are. And one of the things, brother, I think that helps, is when we see we’re on the path, rather than we’re rushing to a destination, that, by its nature, means we’re gonna look differently at what’s around us. And I often use the metaphor of a racehorse going around a track because they put blinkers over its eyes so it can only see forward. So it will race around the track, but it won’t see anything outside of the track. And when we take our blinkers off and we realize we can stop running, then the whole of life opens up to us. And so when we’re walking the path, first, we’re not running the path. And Thay says, if you’re in a rush, you’re just rushing to your grave. So we’re a walking a path. And when you walk a path truly, you see everything that’s around you. You slow down. You’re able to enjoy the beauty of life. And brother, I want to come back to something you were talking earlier about reciprocity, about when we are in relationship then it changes the nature of the way we see life. And in indigenous cultures reciprocity is such a key way of seeing the world that when we are given something we want to give back. So we are sort of enter a life of service because actually, you know, you talked earlier about sort of, in a sense, reverse reciprocity, that when we go through a painful situation, often what we want to do unconsciously is pass that pain onto other people. But actually, positive reciprocity means that when you gain something positive, you want to share it. So, can you just talk about the reciprocity within, firstly, maybe even within yourself, how you feel at what you’ve been given and how you see your own life of service, but maybe also how Thay would see that because I think it’s such a powerful thing that when we’ve received something that’s really heartfelt and is not manufactured or created then all we want to do is offer that back out.

00:50:40

Generosity is such a power and it is a power of kindness. It brings me back to this story. I remember, in 2011, the year after that would be 30-year anniversary of Plum Village, which is 2012. And I just remember inviting Thay to take a YouTube pause and just like Thay, don’t go on teaching tours, just stay home, just enjoy Plum Village. It’s like your masterpiece. Like, you’ve… you spent so much of your resources of body, speech and mind to curate and cultivate this community and since being your student, you’re, you are on gear seven all the time, you know. And I just remember Thay answering back to me and just saying, but if we have something so precious, we don’t want to hold it for ourselves, we want to be able to keep offering it to the world because so many people are looking for these treasures and we found it. Why be gatekeepers and not be generous in offering? And he gave another metaphor, which is as a doctor, when you found the antidotes, you have to be generous to share it. And he said, and for us as monastics, that is our way of being, right? That is our of showing up, our way of listening, our way of teachings. The things, what we teach, is not just a theory, it’s not what the Buddha said 2,600 years ago, but it’s our own journey in life, like what we did when we met a difficulty. How did we hold our pain? How did hold our joy? Because joy needs cultivation. It’s like, how do you be happy? Like, how do you truly be happy? And it’s not even in the theory, it is in the showing it. And Plum Village is to show that it’s possible to be happy. It’s possible that we can all leave our egos at the parking lot and come into the community with just our skins and our journey of life. And to hold that with honor in a way. So now that Thay is not here physically, as his students, when we speak about giving, there’s something that’s happening at the same time, and that is we’re receiving something back also. When we give something, it’s not only that we’re losing resources, but we’re actually getting a lot more back. And part of my own happiness is understanding why I’m a monk. Why we do this podcast, why we share in a way? You know, it’s because we know it can support so many out there in the world. And when we see that, that gives you so much joy and so much happiness and that gives you the willpower to also journey through your own difficulties and your own complexes in a way, you know? When you see the vision that is bigger, you don’t become small, like the horses that you said. Like if you keep giving and you understand that impact of your giving, you won’t lose your path. But it’s only when you start to narrow down and you only think about yourself, that’s when you lose your sense of direction. And everything in moderation though, right? As a practitioner, we have to know our wellbeing. We have to understand our limits. We have to have boundaries. We have know our capacity of compassion. There is compassion fatigue. There are moments where we have to know, like, I can’t anymore. I can’t be of service in this moment. And it’s not a failure in those moments to retreat, right? It’s not in a moment to then say, I need to take three weeks off of service and come back to something more simple, you know? Like that’s what I’m recognizing for myself in this month coming. It’s like, I just wanna be with my hands. I just want to be physically more engaged than my mind engaging, than listening. I’ve listened enough, you know, I’ve heard so much, so much pain and so much suffering, and I need to digest all of this. And yesterday in the service, in the community, I was just gardening, you know, and the joy of just weeding and then seeing the garden alive, you know, and that is also service. I think sometimes we fall into the trap of we have one way of serving and we think that’s our only way of serving. But when we take a step back, which is the wonder, and it’s like, no, but I also enjoy making tofu. I also enjoy washing dishes. I also enjoying sweeping the grounds. I also enjoy being in touch with my own physical body. It’s like oh man, I’m so out of shape, you know? And I just need to get my heart rate up again. And all these little moments, it’s a generosity and opening our hearts to ourselves.