The Way Out Is In / Being with Painful Feelings (Episode #73)

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Dear friends, welcome 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 evolution.

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And I’m 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 talk about how to handle our pain. And we know that actually we have our individual pain. So we have our suffering, but also we have collective pain. And one of the most important things is to know how to handle that, how to be aware of it, to understand it, and then to be able to start transforming it. And Brother Phap Huu has eight stages for how we are able to be with our pain.

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The way out is in.

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Dear listeners, I am Jo Confino.

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And I’m Brother Phap Huu.

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Brother Phap Huu, we are sitting in the Sitting Still Hut of Thich Nhat Hanh, during the summer retreat in Plum Village. The door is open because it’s quite warm today, and so, we may hear the sound of children running around and screaming, which means that they’re having a good time. If there’s complete silence, we would worry about them. So dear listeners, if you hear any sounds in the background, it’s not children running scared, it’s children running free. Brother Phap Huu, pain. What a joyous subject. What a lovely thing to discuss on an afternoon. We all suffer from pain. We all sometimes feel overwhelmed by pain. Often we don’t know how to handle it. So this is an important area of practice. And the Plum Village tradition has been looking at pain and, of course, through Buddhism for 2600 years has been exploring the mind. And one aspect, key aspect, is suffering. So tell us what we mean by pain? First of all, let’s just open up. What do we mean by pain?

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I think pain is a universal thread that connects all of us human beings, because it is inevitable that each and every one of us experience pain, whether it is physical, whether it is emotional. And part of the Buddha’s journey in understanding his spiritual investigation was how can he touch deep freedom and deep awakening? And that is the path that helped him inquire and then give up everything he had in order to commit his whole being into exploring a way to understand suffering. And so when we speak about pain, we speak about suffering. And we know in the teachings of Buddhism, suffering is a noble truth. It is the first noble truth of Buddhism. And this lets us know that if we have an opportunity to look at suffering with the eyes and the lens of mindfulness, we have a big opportunity. And this opportunity is that we can learn from our suffering. We can even learn from our pain. And in our times, and I don’t… I wouldn’t even just say it’s our modern time, but I would say, like many, many lifetimes, many generations, we have the fear of being with suffering. We have the fear of being with pain. And because of this fear and because of this habit of avoiding pain, we have created many, many pathways to run away from it. And in our modern times, we have devices, we have consumerism, we have eating, we have doing like almost like every activity that we can experience, in a way, it is to run away from the pain and the suffering. And because sometimes we don’t have the insight in knowing how to be with the pain and the suffering, therefore we continue this cycle of running, and this cycle of avoiding. And the Buddha, and our teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who we refer as Thay, has explained that there is goodness in suffering, and if we know how to look deeply into suffering, we will know how to suffer. And the key is we know how to be with pain, we know how to embrace pain, and we know how to transform pain. We know how to heal pain. And so I think this is a wonderful topic that we can explore today because I think it is a deep aspiration for all of us in having the ability, whether we call it tools or skill sets or in our language was we have a practice to be with pain.

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And brother, just to be clear, when the aim is not to eradicate pain. And the reason I say that is because a lot of people think that actually transforming pain is eradicating it for life, but actually then you can be happy. But one of the things, during the research when we were writing our book, Being with Business, which comes out later this year, is that Thay wrote a letter to the monastics talking about, you know, that the Buddha suffered throughout his life, that he was nearly assassinated a few times, or assassination attempts against him, that his old kingdom was invaded by an evil king and taken over, and that Thay himself, you know, during the Vietnam War, had suffered immensely. And he said, actually, the suffering is a way to actually understand ourselves and to find a pathway through. So can we just talk about that we’re not trying to say no more pain ever.

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If we think about it, it’s impossible. It really is impossible to eradicate, to erase pain and suffering. And our teacher speaks on this in a very loving way, because sometimes we have a notion, we are religious or we practice spirituality in order to arrive, maybe in our next life or after death to… in Buddhism, this notion of the Pure Land of the Buddha, or in Christianity, the Kingdom of God. And we may think that that destination where we will come to is a place where there is no suffering and there’s no pain. And that is a notion. That is a view. And I just remember Thay teaching us that I would never want to send my student to a place where there is no pain and no suffering. Because if I send my student to this location, this destination, my students will never, will never have the opportunity to learn and to grow as a human being. So pain and happiness are two pairs. Or we can say suffering and happiness are two pairs. In Buddhism, where the Buddha emphasizes his teaching directly to the two at the same time, not one instead of the other. But when we speak on suffering, we have to see it coexisting with happiness. And when we are taking care of our happiness, we are also taking care of our pain and our suffering. And these two pairs, they coexist. They are like, light and darkness, up and down, like all the pairs of opposites. So these two, these two fundamental elements in life are very important element of our ingredient in spirituality. So Thay has an approach that he looks at… he gives the image like a rose. When a rose blossoms, it’s beautiful. It offers its freshness, its colors, its fragrance. But the rose also has the nature of impermanence. And the rose will turn into compost. But a practitioner is not afraid when the rose is not fresh anymore, and the rose is not there anymore, because it knows that the rose returns back to the earth and nourishes the earth, which generates more roses. So our relationship to pain and suffering and pain and happiness, as a meditator, we see it in a very different light. And so already understanding that pain and suffering is a very important element of spiritual growth or as growth as a human being in general, we can remove, we can start to remove some layers of our views towards suffering. And Thay always explains it also like if we have experienced hunger we will know the value of food. And so if we’ve never experienced being hungry, sometimes Thay would instruct us to practice fasting at least once a year, for example, in order to know the difference of having something in front of us. And something even more stronger, Thay would say is sometimes we don’t value peace because we live in peace. But for someone like Thay who has experienced war, he will never take a peaceful day for granted. And that becomes a root of insight in his understanding because he’s gone through so much suffering, so much despair, so much killing, that the peace that he is able to experience in 24 hours, this is the greatest gift. So it offers deep perspective to understanding. And understanding is one of the fruits of meditation. It is insight. It is enlightenment. So when we can touch our own pain and our own suffering, that is mindfulness already. Just knowing that we suffer. And how many of us suffer without knowing we suffer? And we create more suffering. And we indulge ourselves also in suffering. We can also become attached to suffering. We can identify with a suffering. And when we practice meditation, the first wing in meditation is stopping, to slow down, to allow our mind to be still so it can reflect, and so that you, as an individual, can see clearly why there is pain. And the second noble truth in Buddhism that the Buddha has offered us it is the root of our pain, the root of our suffering. And this is very important because the Buddha and Thay has emphasized that everything needs food to survive. So when we suffer, it is because it is being nourished. So we have to have the ability to look deeply, to see where our way of living is it that we are cultivating the suffering? So when we start to have a relationship with our pain, with our suffering, a way out starts to appear in front of us.

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Thank you, brother. One thing before we get into the eight steps, although, of course, we’re already entering those, is that you talked about the fact that people get caught in their suffering, but also people get caught in their happiness, which itself creates suffering because we’re trying to avoid suffering and just chase after happiness, whether that’s through sex, fame, whatever. Then actually that also leads to suffering. So one of the things I love about Buddhism is this idea of the middle way which you’re talking about, which is actually the extreme… neither extreme work to just go after our suffering means we’re going to suffer even more, and just to go after our happiness will lead to suffering. So actually, the path is to be with our suffering in order to generate happiness. But let’s go to these eight steps, because I know that in Buddhism everything has a number. So there’s the Three Doors of Liberation, there’s the Four Dharma Seals of Plum Village that I think… Is there 84,000 Dharma doors or 87,000?

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Sounds about right.

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Sounds about right. Well, there’s lots of them. So, do you want to sort of introduce us to how, first of all, why is it helpful to have a number of steps? And how did you come up or how did Plum Village come up with these eight steps?

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So, a part of teaching, it’s always helpful to put things into buckets in order to start to break it down. It’s kind of like sometimes when we just talk about suffering or be with your pain, that’s very general. And it’s important to have the ability to articulate it and to just see it as a pathway. But like in all Buddhist teaching, don’t be caught by step one, you may touch step three and then you’re able to understand step one. And these eight were actually spoken recently in a retreat that we were doing in South America. And Sister True Dedication in her teaching, her responsibility was to continue from my talk, which was I talked about the first four exercises of mindful breathing, which is recognizing our breath and then following our breath, developing our concentration, and then being aware of our body and then releasing the tension in our body. And then the next set of four from the Buddha’s time it is cultivating joy and cultivating happiness. So I just want to speak very slightly here, because we’ve done a whole two episodes of a podcast on the 16 exercises of mindful breathing. So not to go too much into it, but we can even see 2600 years ago, the Buddha was already very intelligent in his teaching, like a doctor, like before you go into surgery, before you go into the pain and the injury of the body, you have to make sure you’re healthy enough. You got to be strong enough, right? Like, before we get into surgery, we meet a few doctors, there’s a few steps before we arrive there, and one of it is like, they have to check how well are we. Are we able to go under the knife, for example? So the Buddha had that insight. So before we tap into suffering, the Buddha teaches us and tells us the importance of having the capacity to generate joy and cultivate happiness. And it is not something that that you can spiritually bypass. And I know a lot of us, when we listen to the words joy and happiness, we may have a reaction. We may think, oh, you know, that’s so superficial, or oh, you know, joy, happiness is something like, you know, skipping down the road or just like doing something that is not important. And when we think about spirituality as like, let’s talk about pain, let’s talk about suffering, let’s, you know, let’s talk about enlightenment and so on and so on. But as a practitioner myself, I can share with all of us the deep responsibility we have to have as an individual and a collective to have the ability to touch joy and happiness in our daily life. And Thay in his renewing Buddhism and his way of teaching he brings it really down to earth, that joy and happiness is not something that is far in the future, which all advertisement tells us, you know, invest here and you’ll receive this, you know. Put all your effort in this path and you will get this position, and so on. And that comes back, it plays on our fear of not enoughness. And so therefore we’re chasing something in the distant. But when we talk about joy and happiness, Thay speaks about these two elements, present moment, centered, meaning in this moment just coming back to your body, knowing that you have eyes that can see, that is joy. Having lungs that can breathe in air, there’s no difficulty. That is deep happiness. Having two legs that are healthy, that we can imprint our footstep on earth. We can feel the sand under our toes. We can hug a tree. We can hug a loved one. We can enjoy the taste of a tangerine. That is deep happiness. And so these two steps, before we arrive at pain, we have to really identify as a practitioner. Is that balance? The middle way that you have mentioned? So as a practitioner, we have to be able to see that we are not forgetting nourishing an important element in our daily life, which is having the ability to experience joy in the present moment. And then recognizing happiness in the present moment.

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And brother, it’s seems important to mention, although it’s obvious that we don’t just do this for ourself. It’s an individual act, but towards a collective service because actually there is a lot of pain in the world. A lot of people don’t know how to handle it. And so if we’re able to bring more joy and happiness and be able to transform our own pain, we are actually generating that in the world. It’s like throwing a stone in a water. It will create ripples through throughout and continue and affect lots of other people. So I think one of the ways that I think helps people to have the courage to step forward is to know that they do it for themselves. They do it for their family, for their friends, for their community. It’s not an individual effort.

00:22:17

Exactly. So now let us…

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We’re gonna hit. We’re gonna go down. Buckle up, everyone, we’re heading down.

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Let’s dive a little bit deep into our favorite subject, suffering.

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Yeah.

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It, you know, it is a very important step. And I’m very happy that I can laugh about suffering, because humor is good sometimes, to embrace a difficult theme. As Sister True Dedication was teaching on steps seven and eighth, which is being aware of our feelings, our emotions. And then the eighth step is caring for our emotion and our pain. And then from here she said, now let’s go into Buddhism being with pain 101. So, I don’t know the exact source, like, what list it is in, but of course, being in Plum Village since 2001, all of these steps I’ve heard Thay speak about it through his teaching career. And it’s always wonderful to have smart and brainy siblings and those who, like, record everything and write everything down, take note and then represent it in a very clear process. So, step number one.

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Here we go.

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Step number one is mindfulness. And it is just having the ability to recognize that there is pain. And I like how she wrote it, she said, ah, there is pain here. And this is just like how we practice recognizing, we have an inbreath, we have an outbreath. So already with this cultivation of our awareness, which is mindfulness, when pain arises, we can call it, we can see it, we can feel it, and we say, pain, you are here and I’m not going to run towards the refrigerator to eat and cover it up. I’m not going to, you know, run toward social media and start doomscrolling. So it’s really an act of courage which leads to the second step, which is naming the pain. So pain is an umbrella. But as a practitioner we can have the ability to name the pain, to identify it, to call it by its name. And we may start to see like a ripple effect. It’s just like maybe when I’m angry, for example, anger didn’t just arise from one emotion. Anger also before it even came to anger in me, maybe fear was there. And then hurt was there. So by naming it, you can go deep into identifying how the evolution of the present moment pain is present. So this is a step of looking deeply. The second noble truth is seeing it, recognizing it, and even seeing some of the source of it already.

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So, brother, I just want to stop there for a moment because that sounds so obvious on one level, but it’s actually a revolutionary act because most people, when pain arises, they don’t… they think they are pain and there’s an automatic sense of that’s who I am. That’s my nature. And there’s no sense of being able to put your arms around it and sort of understand it. It’s just basic people think immediately without a think, they don’t even think it. They just feel that they’re right, that is who they are and the other person is wrong. So the sense of stopping and naming it and then seeing the source of it is such… I mean, I know it’s very easy just to say it, but it’s such a powerful effect because it immediately shows us that we actually have to take some responsibility for it rather than just painting it on the other person, on the society or whatever, that we have to actually start to take responsibility and then accountability.

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And what you mentioned that you’re not just pain, it’s very important. And I remember coming to Plum Village as a teenager before being a monk, and Thay would give talks, and he knows that there are teenagers within the audience. And I’ll never forget this one time it was like this voice and this power that Thay had in his way of saying it. He said, and dear young ones, please remember you are more than your emotions. So not to to die because of one emotion, not to give up life because of one emotion and because of pain. And Thay speaks on it also given the insight of impermanence. Pain comes and go. Our emotion arises like a storm, but it also has the nature of impermanence. It will pass by. So this is very important because sometimes when we are being overwhelmed by one feeling, we can become totally imprisoned by it and we know we can become numb by it. So this is why the third step is so important. And it is where is it in my body? Where is this pain in my body? Where is this feeling in my body? Where is this emotion? Because we, as a practitioner, we know that there is an interrelationship between mind and body, and we cannot really remove the two. But when we really practice, we see that interbeing thread how it plays out, how it pans out. So each and every one of us as a practitioner, we can start to practice step number three and four in the 16 exercises of mindful breathing is having a relationship with our body, a real relationship like really knowing our body. For example, I know when I’m tense, my jaw gets really tight and I know when I have a lot of stress my hands can cramp, like my fingers, like my palms can even cramp up. So you start to identify where the reactions of your body manifest with particular feelings and emotions. So this is a wonderful exercise in meditation. And this is why the practice of body scan it’s not basic, it’s fundamental, because in the most intense moments in your daily life, when all these emotions arise, whether we are in a meeting, whether we just received an information of the world or of our child, of our community, our body will react. And so to really know where is it in my body, it’s very important.

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And brother, just related to that, so I want to speak up for people who feel disassociated from their body because, that’s, you know, I felt for a lot of my life that I didn’t connect with my body. I was much more in my head. So, I sometimes find it quite difficult when an emotion comes up to sense it in my body, to place it. You know, sometimes it’s obvious, but sometimes I don’t feel very much. It’s not very clear. So you mentioned about a body scan, so maybe to talk more about that. But are there ways that you can advise people that if they hear that and they say, well, that sounds great, but I find that difficult… How do we start to train our mind to connect to our body and train our body to connect our mind?

00:31:38

I would, physically have a practice, especially when my mind is very overwhelmed, I would hold, like, a hot cup of tea. So the feeling, I’m not staying in the realm of thinking, I enter into the realm of feeling. And most of our practice, actually, we say, don’t think about your breath, feel your breath. Don’t think about your body. Feel your body. But what can help us direct it even more, holding a cup of tea or a hot cup of coffee or a hot cup of warm water, a hot cup of hot water, or a hot cup of chocolate milk. You know, just anything to just guide us so that we can have a sense of feeling. And another practice that I do is I see, I visualize my palm of my hand like my mindfulness. And with a lot of tenderness, a lot of care, and I would place it where there is a lot of pain in my body. So, for example, I used to have a lot of injuries in my knee and sometimes from sitting meditation… I cannot sit for too long. After 20 minutes, there’s just excruciating pain. So when I undo the legs, all of this tension and pain are still there. I would use my hand as my mindfulness and tenderness, and I would place it on my body. And so my mind associates directly with the palm of my hand. And this is just one example. So we start to have a relationship very… yeah, very directly with a sense of connecting to our body. And I remember, one brother, I still practice it today, every time there’s a very intense subject whether it is in Dharma sharing or it is in meetings, and there’s a subject that is hard to listen to, he would put his hand in his heart. So it’s something very practical. It’s like your bell of mindfulness. So you want to be with this, the sensation.

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So then it leads to step number four, which is… The third one is where is it in our body, and the fourth one is embracing it. So just like recognizing it. And then you bring your mind of tenderness. I like the word tenderness in this moment. And to visualize like the pain as a little child that needs your attention. And when it’s a little child that is you, instead of wanting to punish it and wanting to push it away, just embracing it and just knowing it, that it is here. And our practice is not to cut it off like you mentioned, but to see that it is a part of you. And this is connected to the understanding in Buddhist psychology where we have 51 mental formations, and this is a formation that is arising and this formation is present and we can embrace it. This is step number four, just knowing that is there, the tendency to push it away can be very strong. And we can even recognize that that feeling of wanting to run away and we befriend it and we say, in this moment, let’s embrace it a little bit. And then we want to ground it. So the fifth step is to breathe with it. So just like giving it a bath of your mindfulness, your attention to it. And our teacher always beautifully explains this in dharma talks, when when there is a strong emotion that arises, it’s like you’re holding a baby child in your two arms, and instead of punishing it, you’re cradling it. And you are beautifully holding it with tenderness, with care. And in this moment there is a deep, a deep practice that is happening that you’re offering yourself love. You’re just being attentive to yourself. You are being kind to yourself. And so you embrace this pain. You breathe with it. And another step that is related to step number five, when we are one with it, we may like to also take refuge in nature or in a walk. So we want to see ourselves allowing this feeling to be with us, and we’re like accompanying it. And our teacher always gives advice like when we’re, especially when there’s a very strong emotion, don’t practice sitting meditation because when you’re doing sitting meditation and you’re just allowing the storm to brew up and it’s overwhelming, what we can be doing is we’re adding more ingredients to it. We may be adding more stories to it. We may be adding more thinking towards it. And the Buddha calls this we’re adding arrow number two, arrow number three, arrow number four. And what that means is the Buddha said when there is pain, instead of learning to skillfully remove the arrow, we’re adding more arrows by our judgment, our perceptions. And we get carried away by our mind. And this makes the pain more excruciating. So embracing and being with it. So whether it is through our breathing, whether through our walking or just like laying down and just like letting that pain also be rooted in the earth.

00:39:08

Can I just stop you there for a moment, brother? Because this is such an important point. In my experience and, you know, I see it in my everyday life, in my coaching practice, people berate themselves when they feel pain. They actually, they actually, you know, they use it as an excuse to beat themselves up. And even yesterday I was talking to someone in Plum Village and they had made a decision in their life that has not worked out. And you could just see that their energy was not kind, but it was self-flagellating. She said, you know, I made a mistake, I was stupid, I shouldn’t… I should have realized, I did this, I did… And you just realize that what that does is it just keeps people away from any possibility of healing, because not only has, and this is the perfect example of the second arrow, not only do they feel they got it wrong, but then they beat themselves up for getting it wrong. And I feel that when I coach people actually what… and you use the word tenderness a lot. And I think it’s such a fabulous and under used word because I think that what I offer often people is just tenderness, just to help them to touch the wisdom in themselves. Because when people make a mistake and then they berate themselves, they cut themselves off from any self-compassion. And when they’re able to actually stop and to embrace what they realize is they have the capacity for their own healing, it’s within them. It’s not like they go off and buy a self-help book, or they go and listen to a podcast or whatever. This one’s fabulous. But actually we all have within us the capacity, but in order to touch that capacity, we have to let go of this self attack. And we people have it so much.

00:41:15

Yes. Because, by doing this, what you just explained here, it will also help transforming a collective consciousness. And a part of our collective consciousness, there’s so much violence that have been passed down from generation to generation, violence in household, violence within schools, violence within work, communities, and then violence in nations and wars and so on. And so we follow that pathway much more easier than being kind. It really is a very intentional practice that we have to gravitate towards, where it’s very funny, where it’s very easy to be unkind to oneself and very mean to oneself. So in this practice already, when you are being with pain, you are already also transforming ancestral trauma, ancestral habits and ways of being. So this is deep Buddhism. And being with pain is not something that is just for oneself. And we always have to have that wisdom of interbeing in all of our practices.

00:42:44

So just related to that, often when people feel pain, they withdraw. They actually feel that they have to hide away and that they feel embarrassed or humiliated or feeling a sense of failure. And one of the sort of, in a sense, one of the greatest assets of Plum Village is community and the sense of, you know, sharing one’s pain is a deep practice of, you know, if you find someone that you can trust to share it, one’s pain, allows a release. And when we’re holding it all in our bodies and minds and aren’t able to release it, it just it’s so tight. And just the way of expressing it just is a release. And actually it’s like a pressure cooker when we start to let the steam out, actually everything starts to relax.

00:43:36

And you know these two steps, step four and step five. Another word that just manifested in my mind is we’re accepting that we have pain. How many of us suffer and go, no, I’m too good for this. I can’t be suffering. I’m Jo Confino, I’ve been a journalist for 30 something years. I have all this insight. How dare you tell me that I suffer? Or I’m Brother Phap Huu, you know, 20 years of practice. How can I be suffering? And that becomes a blockage to our own reality. So this step of accepting, embracing, being with it, it is an acceptance that I have pain and it is okay. It is totally normal.

00:44:22

And then we have the humility for other people to face pain, because if we block it ourselves, actually we block it in allowing other people to be in their pain.

00:44:31

And this step, I really encourage us to really be one with the body too, because when we’re in fear, you can see your body like hiding yourself, like hunching over. And so our body language, we can support our body language to be with the pain. And this is where, in our modern time, there’s so much tension in the body is because we don’t know how to be in our body, and we are tensing up with all of these emotions and all of these feelings and all of this suffering that is present. So I, in this retreat in the summer, in the first talk that I offer, like I really invited everyone just to be mindful of their posture. And then I intentionally asked everybody now to really just open your chest, and open your upper body, because there’s so many people were sitting with their shoulders hunched down, their back a little bit curved. And this is also the modern sickness of being on the computer so much. But we lose this relationship to our own body, you know, so this practice of being with pain, being with the body, it’s such a support to our well-being. So step number six.

00:45:59

Hey.

00:46:00

Keep with the practice of deep looking is to start to inquire, investigate where are you coming from? Which then leads to step number seven is letting go of the story. I like this one because when we suffer, we hold on to one version of the story. And even if our version can be almost correct, but yesterday has passed already. We were in a new space. We’re in a new moment in this life. Can we also allow ourselves to be a new person today? Allow also the story to be reflected and to really check, are we sure? Is this story correct? And even if it’s right, does it offer happiness? And I know part of my practice in beginning anew is sometimes being right is not the best. And being right may be a big source of deep suffering. And the Buddha, its main guidance to us is to help relieve suffering. So in a story we can also check is this story leading to healing? And I think this element here, the story part is such a big investigation for all of us because, like I shared, we may identify with that story and we don’t want to let go of that story. And our teacher explains that each and every one of us, we have like a radio station and channels, and so particular suffering becomes a channel that we like to replay again and again and again. Right? Thay said, if you’ve been, and I’ve been slapped before, so I’ve been smacked in the face before, and if I don’t transform this and if I don’t let it go, every time I am in a blues, I remember that it’s like I’m being slapped again. So it’s also like, what are the new stories that you have today?

00:48:32

So, brother, that is so critical, because just the fact that we call it a story means it’s a story. It’s like, is it a fact or is it a story? And we are natural storytellers. And what you say is so important because, you know, I have seen in my life that I’ve had particular stories, and the way it works, and I say it with other people, is that when you have a story, what you’re doing is automatically when anything happens, you’re always unconsciously looking for evidence to show your story is true. And even when there’s lots of evidence that it’s not true, we sort of ignore that, and we just choose the little bit of evidence that supports that. So I give the example I remember, I was taught when I was at The Guardian, a management consultant said, you know, someone can come… someone can start as the new boss in the office. And they walk into the office and one of their journalists has their feet up on the table and is leaning back and is just sort of sitting there. And the boss may form an instant opinion that that person is lazy and is just sort of not working hard. And that thought, if they then see the other person working really hard, but on occasion putting their feet up, they will more than likely say, oh look, they’ve got their feet up again. And we are all locked in by our stories and by our habits. And as you say, they’re so powerful. But we have the capacity, as you say, to tell a new story. And in a sense that is not individual only, that’s collective. And, you know, there are a lot of people who are talking, who’s the language of, you know, in terms of the system we live in and moving beyond, you know, this particular form of capitalism and dealing with climate change and biodiversity loss and inequality, that we need to create a new story. Because we’re if we’re living in the old story, then we’re just perpetuating it. But if we actually choose a new story and trust in that, then we are building a different future.

00:50:43

And, you know, this practice here, you know, what is really hard for me and I am continuing to practice, is also letting go of the story of the people who hurt you. Because I remember one time, you know, there was a particular brother who caused a lot of suffering. He’s still a monk today. And in one of the sharing, like with my mentors, and my mentor just say, Phap Huu, have you seen this brother as a new person today? Or of that person two years ago? And in that moment, I still see that person as two years ago. And that was such a wake up moment for me. Like how we also hold on to stories of our community, our loved ones, and we just see them as that person, at that story, maybe two years ago, three months ago or 50 years ago. And we still hold onto that story. So this letting go of the story is really also the practice of the present moment. Because in this present moment, have we allowed ourselves to see that person as a new person? And have we allowed ourselves to see ourselves as a new person?

00:52:23

So, brother, is it possible to be free of all stories?

00:52:29

Another big question, Jo. We all have stories and we’re made of stories and the practice here when we talk about letting go of the story is to a story that is holding us to a pain that is becoming the obstacle for us to be free. But we can have stories. We do have stories. We are made of stories. Our present moment will become a story. Our past is a story, and the future will become a new story. But it is to be within the present moment, with freedom. We can reflect on the story, but we are free from it. We can look at the future with the insight of the present moment, the creativity, the new aspiration, the new ingredients to create a new story.

00:53:30

And that’s true, of course, brother of positive… it’s not to differentiate between stories of suffering and stories of happiness, because as soon as we attach to any of those stories, we box ourselves in and imprison ourselves with those.

00:53:45

Exactly. And this is where sometimes just checking in. Is our story supporting us? This way of looking at who we are or can we be free from it in order to be in this story that is happening now. And I think this is where we, it’s in a very intentional training in order to be in the present moment and to know that each moment is creating a new past. Each moment is creating a new future.

00:54:44

And also, brother, that brings in the subject of forgiveness. I remember reading many years ago an article in the Daily Mail newspaper, and it was of, there was an interview with a mother whose son had been murdered by somebody, and the article was about how she had forgiven the killer. And I guess it was really sort of imprinted in my mind so strongly at the time because the journalist said, you know, how could you forgive? And she said, if I didn’t forgive, all I was doing is perpetuating my own pain. So actually part of forgiveness is actually I’m freeing myself. Because if I don’t, you know, he’s not suffering extra because I’m in pain and I blame him, but I’m the one who suffers. And I think there’s such a powerful thing about, you know, and it’s very hard sometimes depending on, of course, on the scale of the hurt. But if we’re able to forgive ourselves first of all or forgive the other person, then we free everybody.

00:55:52

And, this comes to a story that really sticks with me. And Jo, you may have heard it, Thay has shared it a few times, and it was in one of his retreats for war veterans, especially American war veterans. And, at the retreat, they had a closing circle. There was one particular war veteran that was just in such despair and had no light in his eyes. And Thay just asked him directly, what are you holding on to? And in that moment, after six days of practice, this gentleman was able to shared that he’s been holding onto a pain and a guilt for so many years, and it’s been haunting him. And the story goes that during his time as a soldier in Vietnam, his special force was to go into the villages and identify the guerrilla warfare, the tactics, and then to eliminate the soldiers there. And one of their ways was to put poison in the food. And they had prepared a few sandwiches and they put the sandwiches in the village, knowing that everybody’s hungry in war. But unfortunately, it was children that saw the sandwiches first and they ate them. And, within a few hours, they were going to pass. And they were witnessing all of this, and they couldn’t reveal themselves and they couldn’t help. And he can hear the agony of the children. And this suffering and this, you know, the voice and the emotions of those children became his. And he’s been holding this pain and this story and him being a part of this story for so many years. And in that moment when he was able to share, he was also able to cry. And he said he has nightmares. And he shared with his mother. And his mother said, well, you know, this is the price of war. Sometimes we can’t avoid it. But none of that helped him. And in that moment, Thay looked at him and he said yes, your actions have led to some children being killed. But in this moment, do you know how many children are dying in America? Can you save a child today? Can you save a child tomorrow? You are not able to go back and to save those children in Vietnam. But in this moment, in the present moment, there are so many hungry children. Can you help set up a foundation, set up some kind of action to relieve a suffering of a child today? And in that moment, Thay explained it like his eyes became bright and he realized that in this present moment you can have new actions and he can create a new story and it can help heal the actions of the past by doing goodness, doing kindness today. And when I heard the story, I almost, I interbeing with the children and also with the soldier for how excruciating it must have been to hold all of this. But Thay gave him the key to the present moment, which is in this present moment. Do you know how many children are dying? And can our actions today help relieve suffering of the present moment, rather than shooting arrows back to the wound? And this is a very powerful illustration and a powerful truth and a powerful demonstration of how coming home to the present moment and seeing ourselves in the here and now and of not of the past, but embracing the past, learning from the past, and then to create a new pathway towards the future.