The Way Out Is In / Bridging Being and Doing (Episode #75)

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Dear friends, do you have a deep love for the Earth and want to learn how to bring the energy of mindfulness to your climate response? Well, we’ve put together an online course called Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. It is a seven week online learning journey where we will learn how to nurture insight, compassion, community and mindful action in service of the Earth. The course harnesses the wisdom of our teacher Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and includes new Dharma talks and practices, community sharing groups and live interactive events with monastic teachers. I’m looking forward to teaching at these live events together with Sister True Dedication as well as many other monastic Dharma teachers and lay teachers. We begin on the 20th of October 2024 and learn together for seven weeks until our closing event on the 8th of December. And following the course, you’ll still be able to access all the talks and practices for one whole year. Join us by heading to the website today. plumvillage.org/zasp. That’s z a s p. Hope to see you there.

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Dear friends, welcome to this latest episode in the podcast series The Way Out Is In. I’m Jo Confino, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems evolution.

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

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Now, brother, today we’re going to talk about being and doing. And the reason is that society, or mainstream society, seems to value or believe that action equates to what we do and that how we are and the way we are in the world tends to be relegated to a very, very poor second place. So today we’re going to look at actually how do we allow and create the conditions where our way of being is truly valued.

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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.

00:02:49

So brother, as I was walking up, what Thich Nhat Hanh referred to as the legendary path from the small Son Ha monastery up for this recording, what was coming into my mind was that a lot of the conversations I have with people I’m coaching is around that while they may personally have understood the benefits of being present, of reflection, of slowing down, of being truly present to what is that they’re often working in environments that value only we’ve got a job, we’ve got to get it done, we’ve got to act fast. It’s an emergency, let’s get going. And that kind, of course, happens not just in organizations, but in families and other places where we socialize. So what I want to explore today and with your guidance is to really help people who understand this, to start talking with people who don’t really recognize it, because often people, for instance, come to Plum Village and they have a deep experience of the practice and they go back to their families, organizations and they want to imbue that, they want to bring that in. But often speaking about it is quite hard because we have to experience it. But nonetheless, people do need to find a way of saying how can we encourage other people to start to see the benefits of this practice even if they haven’t sort of experienced it. So I want to start by sort of really just putting some context in. Is being and doing, what’s the difference between those two?

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Being is being alive, being present. And doing is actually a part of being in the spiritual world in the way we look at action. But I think in the worldly manners and the worldly view, doing is thought of as production and a means to achieve something. And I think in the worldly manner doing also carries the idea of ego and self in terms of being. In the deep view of Buddhism being can only be when you interbe with everything else. And so, first of all, to really come back to your first question of explaining it, we would say, in the Zen language, don’t try to explain it, be it first. And this is very important, and it’s so crucial because words sometimes are misleading and words and energy when it is there to persuade others it carries the the energy of doing. But being it shows and it expresses the insight of being present. And so we have to understand in terms of spirituality and in terms of the teachings of the Buddha and the essence of our practice is to develop more and more our quality of being present. And being present is a ground of all actions. A lot of the time we are doing it is not with the foundation of right intentions in our doing, so when we practice meditation and we studied the teachings of the Buddha and we put it really into practice, it all comes down to becoming more and more present and alive for whatever that is present for us. And being is kind of like mindfulness of something, as like being of something, being in something, being in the body, being in the present moment, being in the work. We can be in the work and be so present and having the insight of non-self in it. So we have to first break it down, so when we look at human beings, already the idea, human beings, is a separation already. And this speaks on the self. Like as a human, we tend to have the idea that we’re at the top of the pyramid. And therefore, we cultivate a lot of views that is very destructive because we think we have a lot of power and we have the right to extract, we have the right to take, we have the right to control. But to be is to interbe. And what does interbeing means? Interbeing means we cannot be alone on this planet. When we come home to the present moment and we really start to feel our body, we start to look within even our consciousness, it is not ours alone. And to truly be alive and to truly be here, be you, you have to interbe with everything that is. And therefore, in Buddhism we also call this the insight of no self. But no self doesn’t mean you are not here. You have a self in order to understand no self. And even in the trees, we may think that the tree has its own self, but the tree is also you. There is already a very deep connection and interrelationship between you and the tree without even knowing. And so is the tree a human being? It’s not a human being, but it is a being. And in the tree you are also present. So we have to start to almost like digest this. And I want to turn towards my teacher because he wrote, he spoke on lazy day and he spoke on doing nothing. And I think in some ways this is to help us be free from the chain of habit that have been passed down from generation to generation with this mentality and this energy of don’t just sit there, do something. And he has a reflection back and this Don’t just do something, sit there. And I just want to read this and then we can digest it even more.

00:10:07

Great.

00:10:10

The lazy days that we practice in Plum Village is a kind of drastic measure against the kind of habit energy. On lazy days you refrain. You do your best in order to refrain from trying to do something. You try to do nothing. It’s hard. It’s hard, but we have to learn. We have to learn to open up, to start a new civilization because we have the tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. That is not true. Our time is, first of all, is for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peace, to be joy, to be loving. And that is what the world needs the most. So we train ourselves in order to be. And if you know the art of being peace, being silent, then you have the ground for every action, because the ground for action is to be. And the quality of being determines the quality of doing. Action must be based on non action.

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Wow. He really knows how to get to the heart of the matter. And brother, one of the words he used was training. And I want to ask you about that, because, you know, some of the people I speak to, as I said, they recognize the importance, but they’re working in or they’re living in an environment that doesn’t value that at all. And that can sometimes feel quite draining because people are almost trying to help other people to see and, as you said, convincing people of this is very difficult if you haven’t tasted it. So how can individuals who maybe want to be more present, how can we start to train ourselves so that despite the circumstances we’re in, that we can maintain that level of presence?

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It’s very simple. Create a schedule for yourself. Create a schedule of practice in being and. It is very simple and at the same time it is very difficult because in our 21st century, in our collective idea of life, we think it has to be overwhelmed with a lot of actions, a lot of noise, a lot of tasks to do. And therefore, we have the concept of multitasking. And actually multitasking is just doing everything at once without focus and without concentration. And yes, sometimes we may be able to do a few things multitasking, such as when you may be listening to this podcast and cleaning your home. And in a way, if you’re fully focused in cleaning your home, you may be so mindful in sweeping the grounds or cleaning the dishes, and if you’re very mindful in the cleaning the dishes, then you can be mindful of the water that is coming through the faucet and what a miracle that is. And then the feelings of the water on your hands. And then the podcast just becomes white noise and maybe the voices are coming through and maybe nothing is also lost because it enters your store consciousness, it enters your consciousness of being. But when we start training in the monastery, we are really instructed to learn to do one thing at a time. And funny enough, our teacher’s name is one action. But look at his life and look at how much he has accomplished. And to think that doing one thing at a time will not have enough time is already, dare I say, a wrong view. And of course, there is crisis. There are things, there are actions that we need to do. But what grounds of actions, what grounds of energy are we infusing into our way of thinking, into our way of doing, and then understanding the impact of energies that follow along with action? So, here, when I say really set up a schedule, that’s what we do in the monastery. And it’s creating this kind of discipline and creating this new habits for us and new habits for our mind, new habits for our bodily actions that it can tune into mindfulness whenever we need to. It can tune into deep presence whenever we need to. So, for example, every time we wake up, how we wake up is a choice. We may wake up, start scrolling on our phones, or we may wake up and just open our eyes and realize that we have 24 brand new hours ahead of us. Sitting up on the bed, putting our feet down on the ground, standing up, knowing that we’re going to take a first step. How would that first step be? Will that first step be with an energy of hurry or a fear of today or the step of being alive? These are all choices that we can ground ourself with our insights of the present moment and the insight of impermanence, the insight of life is a miracle. And we trained us from the moment we wake up to the moment we are making a cup of tea. When we’re drinking that cup of tea, how are you drinking that cup of tea? So I’m giving, I’m trying to, like, really break down to you how I wake up. And how did I get here after 22 years? First, I got to start with the first very simple actions that I can maintain on a daily basis. Maybe I’m not going to be successful in waking up and having peaceful and compassionate thoughts, but I train myself every morning, waking up, I smile. Period. And I just do that even though it may become autopilot, but then that smile becomes a bell of mindfulness, reminding me that today is a brand new day. And then in living in community, we have a schedule set up by the brothers and sisters. And the schedule is really our teacher. It is like the spine of our body. It is the pathway to well-being. And even on days when we don’t want to go sitting, you go. So it becomes a discipline. It becomes a way to get yourself out of your own thought of what you need. Because sometimes what you need is your own delusion of what you think you need. And our teacher always says, on days that you think you don’t need to sit, you go sit. And on days you feel like low energy, when you sit, you can actually tap into the collective energy of everyone and you feel more present and more alive. So really, like fundamentally, really choosing a few actions a day that you really devote that action as a holy action, as a spiritual action, as a zone of mindfulness for you. And our teacher really encourages household that has the conditions. You know, we have bedrooms, living room, entertainment room. And Thay really encouraged to have a breathing room or a room where we can cultivate spirituality. And we don’t have to make it like a temple, you know, we can have a flower. And every day we just check, is that flower still fresh? Do we need to tend to it or do we need to upgrade it? And so the space becomes a space that reminds us to help cultivate our energy of being. So mindfulness, the practice of mindfulness, the first establishment of mindfulness, which is on the body, is the ground of being.

00:20:06

Thank you, brother. And it’s interesting because I was having a conversation with someone this morning about about this topic, actually. And I said, well, you know, they said, I’m very good at organizing things for work, but I don’t want to bring my sort of work organization to the rest of my life. And I said, Well, it’s not actually your organization for work. It’s the way your mind can cultivate change. So the fact is that you’ve used that idea of planning or scheduling for work to get things done, but you’ve never used it in the rest of your life. And actually, rather than seeing it as I don’t want to transfer my work schedule to the rest of my life, is just to say actually what helps me to be effective, what helps me to develop a practice, what helps me to get things, you know, in a sense what you get done in your work life, what helps to create the conditions for you to improve in your other life. So I think that is very helpful to people. So Thay, as Thich Nhat Hanh was known, he talks about that being is the ground of our action. Let’s talk about that. What does that actually mean? So if… So let’s maybe look at the opposite of that, which is if we just do stuff and we don’t actually, we’re not in our being, what is the risk if we just say, I’m just doing stuff, I’ve got a list of things to do, I’m just going to do stuff. I’m going to have a strategy, I’m going to do it. What’s the risk if we don’t actually bring the being into that?

00:21:41

The risk of that is we get lost in doing nothing, essentially, or we get lost in… we get lost in the idea of achieving something without really being there, even for the achievement. And we’ve met so many folks come to Plum Village that are doers, wonderful doers, doing amazing bodhisattva works, you know, from activists to educators to compassionate leaders. And when they come to Plum Village, they have seven days to really start slowing down. And to really start reflecting on their presence for the loved ones. We… Our life is very limited. 80 years. 70 years? 100 years. Maybe if we’re lucky, 120 years. That’s very short in the span of the Earth, in the span of the ultimate dimension. And a lot of people’s awakening when they come to a retreat is they realize that everything that they’ve done is for others, even in the idea is for the goodness of others. But they still feel so empty, so lost because the dualistic mind that we have, this idea of everything is separated. I cannot be happy until I accomplish that. And then when I arrive at that accomplishment, I’ve lost all of the time in between. And I didn’t see that the time in between, what we call the process, was an important moment to also be present for. And how many people have left Plum Village and left the retreat realizing that when they go home, they’re going to hug their child with their full presence, with their full being, and see the child as a child, not see him as a child in ten years from now. I need to invest this for him because then he will be like that, da da da da. And then our mind carries us away into the future. And so this mindset of doing and being have been divided. And the difference in our training is we don’t separate between the spirituality and the doing. And I think this is, once again, it’s a dualistic mindset. How many times have I heard as a facilitator, as a teacher, as a mentor, I can’t do this, brother, in the real world, because work and spirituality are different. And I said, That’s just your view. Are you breathing while you are working? Are you present while you are working? Where is your heart space when you’re connecting with your colleagues, with the people that you are interacting with? Are you able to offer kindness to the ones that are tending the gardens that you see every day before you enter your office? But our world, we are so divided in stages, in hierarchy, in status, and it’s become a huge competition. And so therefore, we even think that being and doing are two separate things. And so here the Zen master teaches us that the foundation of doing it comes really from the base of our true presence, that what we really remember. And we have to understand in the understanding of Buddhism, our actions are our truest karma that we leave behind in this world. They are our true continuation of our actions, of our thoughts, our actions of our speech and our actions of our bodily actions, our today action. How I open the door, how I see you, how I speak to you, how I engage in difficult conversations. And so, you know, I just want to bring it to a very fundamental, just realistic Plum Village now. We just finished week two. Today is departure day…

00:26:43

… of the family summer retreat.

00:26:45

Yes. And we had 800 people here. And do you think spirituality and doing are not being rich in Plum Village? We are cooking for 400 people, 400 in our hamlet. We are planning the bus rides, the transportations, we’re planning how the service is going to happen, how the dishes are going to be cleaned for 400 people. The children programs are being put into actions. What is the next program tomorrow? And so doing is always, is always present, but is how we are doing it, how are we giving space for each action and that we’re not being distracted. And I think like today we have to train ourselves even more intensively than maybe 20 years ago when the phone wasn’t the computer it is today. And this is like a supercomputer, but we allow it to have it in our pocket. And the supercomputer is also a super distractive being that sucks our being into it. So we have to truly, really train ourselves to be concentrated and disconnected from distraction. And I think of it like this. You know, when we read Wikipedia, we want to read about podcasts and then it teaches us how to do podcasts or, you know, the idea of a podcast. And then you see a sentence with blue letters and you get interested and then you click in it and it leads you to another page, and then you read the next page, and then you see another link and you click on it, and then you go down this rabbit hole. And after three hours of down this rabbit hole, you’ve totally lost focus of your true purpose. And so being it grounds us to the intention of what we set and the groundedness in our concentration of actions. And I return back to this insight that, wow, the Buddha that taught us this teaching 2600 years ago is still so on point. The three trainings in Buddhism is mindfulness, concentration and insight. And a second one is concentration, because we can be aware of something, but we may lose our concentration really quickly. We may lose our mindfulness very quickly. So to have the focus on just one action, to have a whole being in that one action, these are actions that have deep impact and it can be so simple, but it has deep and long lasting impact.

00:29:45

Thank you, brother. I want to talk a bit about doing as being an avoidance of being. And I was having a conversation yesterday with someone, an activist. And when we were exploring their doing, there were two things that came up. One was that they’re doing to try and help people and save the world was because of their fear of abandonment. And on the other side, they’re sort of doing was because when they help other people, it justifies who they are and they feel good about themselves. So those are very natural sort of needs not to feel part of something, to feel important. But what was really… what I’ve noticed so much is that people do in order to avoid their feelings, in order to avoid just being present. Because actually a lot of people are scared of stopping, of just being. And I just wondered, what do you think it is about people that are fixated with doing and are fearful of being. What is it about being that scares us?

00:31:07

I think being can be very confronting because when we’re truly there, we start to see ourselves more clearer. And in the silence of being, like Thay shared, we have to be able to cultivate a stillness and a silence in our being. Just think of a lake, when the lake is very calm, the lake reflects everything. It reflects everything as it is. And part of being is to embrace everything that is a part of you from the beauty, the talent, the aspiration to the ugly, the desire, the craving, the complexes that we have, the idea that I actually have these really dark thoughts. And I think when we start to be and we start to see all this, we have the tendency to avoid pain and suffering. And that is one of the characteristics of our manas. In terms of manas in Buddhism, it is part of the mind consciousness and manas has the tendency to be, but to be recognized, to be praised, to be acknowledged, to be loved. But manas also has the fear of suffering. And so therefore, it craves sensual pleasure. It craves instant happiness, instant gratification. And I think doing gives us this. For example, like, you know, like lazy day. Like sometimes I do wake up and I’m like, wow, I got so many hours ahead of me, I don’t know what to do. And then I get carried away by that thought alone. And instead of just enjoying doing nothing. And then, you know, I set intentions and then I go and I clean my room and I feel really good about it. And then after that, I’m like, What now? And so this habit of that, OK, next. That article that you were supposed to write five years ago, maybe it’s time. And then you get carried away and then you start to write it and then you feel you’re not good enough. Then you drop it and then you lose yourself again. And then… I’m just telling you what I went through, like a few days ago. And then you come back to the present moment. And then you realize, actually, how about the 400 people that are here? Why don’t I go be with one person and really just be there for that person, like you’re being there for yourself? And so I think the confrontation of being is… Being takes energy, but it also gives energy. And being also it forces us to surrender to the present moment, to surrender to yourself, to surrender to the person. And I just had an amazing week of practice with 20 people in the sharing group. And some of them… the first three days it was so difficult because being in Plum Village was so confronting. Confronted even with nature, with the bugs, even though, you know, we know we preach Oh, nature is life, I’m part of the ecosystem. And here you are in Plum Village, you see a little spider and you freak out. And I get it. I’m not… I’m sorry, that sounds very criticizing. I apologize. Or, you know, grass is on you and you freak out, you know, and I loved… I mean some some of Gen Z’s like quotes and joke is go touch grass, like you have way too much time like go touch grass. So I actually wrote a calligraphy go touch grass as a good reminder. And then you don’t have all this distraction and all these amazing folks, like, really put into practice not carrying their phones with them, only using it in the room because then it’s very intentional why I’m using it. But I don’t want to be carrying this machine while I’m in Plum Village. Then it carries me away from being in Plum Village. And so therefore being like you start to almost like see the world for what it is, but you haven’t seen it for what it is. And so therefore it’s confronting. And so many folks were living in their minds, in their views of what Plum Village is. So when they came and, you know, there was a little bit chaos with 100 children running around the monastery, especially at meal time is like, it is loud, you know, like no matter how many bells we invite and everybody stops for the sound of the bell, and everybody comes back to their breathing, but then they go pa ra ra again. And, you know, some of them were so even frustrated. And I loved it because they were able to share it. But then they had the biggest breakthrough from being in community like this. And one just had a breakthrough when he saw two children sitting on a swing. And every time the swing would go up, the kids would go, Yay! Yay! And he just realized this is what life is about. And this is why I am doing what I’m doing to protect this innocence, to be reminded of the curiosity and the amazement of an innocent child of just going up and down, feeling the breeze of the wind as the swing is going up and down, and seeing the mother happy as she is swinging her daughters. And just the simplicity. And at first he was so against that the kids are here. And that moment when he touched that miracle, he also touched his inner child. And then he was able to fully be and be free from ideas of Zen idea of meditation, idea of a retreat. So I think being is also the key to deconstructing our views that we have accumulated and viewpoints that we hold onto what we think is right and wrong.

00:38:54

Beautifully spoken, brother, and it sort of speaks to what you were saying at the beginning, which is that we can’t convince people of the importance of being because you have to taste it. And also, one thing I want to come back to is the ability to be vulnerable, because, you know, as you say, a lot of the time the doing is an avoidance of being because we fear the dark side. I’ve learned for myself that actually allowing and sharing my vulnerabilities is actually a super strength. And the reason is because if I’m able to share it without fear or favor, I’m actually more present for myself. I’m able to share who I am. I have sometimes people, when I’m coaching, say, oh god, you’re very wise or this… And I said, I’m just as screwed up as everyone else. I said, If you want to think how wise I’m, go and ask my wife Paz and she’ll put you straight right away. And there’s something so relaxing about being complex and allowing it all in. And there’s this wish to be perfect, there’s this wish to show up in the best way, actually is so energy sucking. I mean, what we’re having to do is be somebody else. And actually to be ourselves is like we think there’s something wrong with us. And when we’re able to open up and say, This is who I am, these are my wounds, these are my scars, you know, this is who I am. What we’re doing is releasing ourselves and actually releasing other people.

00:40:45

And these are my potentials. And I think that that is one of the keys that helped unlock my complexes in me. In the teachings of Buddhism we embrace the mud and the lotus and we see all the potentials that are in us. And that beauty of seeing the potential in us gives us this understanding of growth and us being like an organic plant. That there are seasons, that moments… Maybe it’s the autumn and we are a little bit more introverted because we’re starting to get cold and we need to go inwards a little bit more. And then the spring and the summer when we were more alive, were more vibrant, we have a lot of energy and we need to be more outdoors. And to just coming back to… in the process of being we are not just one moment, but we are a stream of moments and it speaks on all the potentials that we have. And knowing that even if our potential is not reached in this lifetime, it is not lost because we have transmitted the potential to the next generation. And I think when we look at doing and being in this light, we can free ourself from the historical view that we need to accomplish everything to save the world in this moment, in this lifetime. Because the truth is, after we are not here, the next generation would take on that torch and carry it forward. And the language I love in Zen is transmission. What are we transmitting in our lifetime so that the next generation can continue on with the torch of wisdom and actions? So that we are building a culture of love, a culture of understanding, a culture of protection, a culture of interbeing and nondiscrimination. And unfortunately, these views are not that sexy. And maybe it doesn’t bring in a lot of money and so on for whatever reason, it hasn’t become mainstream. And the the views of being successful, being number one, being the saviors, is very based on individuals. And we can see a lot of this mindset is also part of colonialism and systems. And now to change the system, we have to change our way of being. And by changing our way of thinking, changing our way of interacting and changing our way of being, particularly on the discrimination side.

00:44:04

And is interesting about the way we use language because, you were just saying, being number one, whereas actually it’s doing number one, it’s not actually being number one where we’re doing number one. Brother, one thing I see in people is a fear that if they go more into being, that they’ll stop doing anything. And, you know, it’s like people people are, you know, like on a treadmill. They’ve got so many things, you know, they have to do, and some people, of course, you know, it’s not just work. It’s children. It’s a partner. It’s the house, it’s the mortgages, the taxes, da da da da. And they feel that if they take their foot off the gas, then the fear is everything will collapse. Because actually, if they let go, then actually they won’t want to do any of it. They just all, sort of in a sense, disappear. So I just think it’s really important to talk about that because in my understanding, and what you’ve been describing, the being supports the doing. But how do we help people to work with a worry that actually they’ll just become lazy, you know, not have lazy days, they’ll become indolent, just become, they’ll just stop doing anything, they’ll just almost quit. And that they have to keep going, going, going because of this fear that everything will collapse if they stop.

00:45:39

I think is a really important question. And the first thing that comes up is we have such a wrong view and a wrong idea about being. We think to be is to sit there and be silent. And we think that to be in terms of Zen is in the state of meditation, which is, you know, when I say the word meditation, I am sure everybody in their mind there’s somebody sitting cross-legged, back upright, maybe going mmmm. Right? So, you know, it’s a view that we have cultivated and curated. But once again, don’t break things down into boxes. When we have volunteers come here to help us and they’re thinking, you know, they’re going to be cutting carrots very slowly, one breath per one chop, we would get so pissed. The monastics were like, Guys, we have 400 people that we’ve got to cook for. Please chop, please cut. Please start peeling away. And this idea that mindfulness and spirituality is woo woo is like, lovey dovey, you know, just breathe in and you’re full, because you’re full of gratitude. It’s so, sometimes it makes me cringe and it makes me like, you know, very even like, hurt because like, that’s such a wrong view. You know? Here we are like waking up, you know, sometimes the brothers is not on a schedule to serve, but the soccer net was destroyed this morning, you know, after two weeks. And we got to put it together because we know that tomorrow we have a new group of people. And that is happiness. So the spiritual…the practice is… we, our action is not ours alone. I think where we can start to blend in the spiritual insight is our actions are not ours alone. And our completions of tasks is not only for our benefits. And I, like honestly, like some days, like in the retreat, I’m so overwhelmed. I have, like, meetings in the morning, Dharma talk. I show up for chanting, I leave the Dharma talk. I go and I, you know, prepare for the next meeting. And then I have to see people because, like, how many people have saved up their time to come here? And I want to be there for them. But I know I have limited energy and then I have a schedule 4:00, being with the family for Dharma sharing. And as a facilitator, it takes really a lot of my energy. And if I am to look at just doing for the sake of just doing, I won’t have energy. But when I think of it in terms of the interbeing aspect of this, the transformation of deep listening and loving speech and of vulnerability, because Dharma sharing is a space that we curate together, that we create this safety and this bond among practitioners, that we’re able to share something maybe of our deepest suffering that we’ve never spoke to, even to ourself about. And when I see it in the light of deep transformation and in the light of interbeing, it’s not even about me. I literally go there, invite three sounds of the bell, I help everybody arrive and I just open the door for the heart space to be open. That’s all I do. And I just listen. And in the end, I always feel more energized than when I came in and I feel more alive. And then I see my life has a purpose, my practice has a purpose, my doing has impact because it is interbeing into every aspect of everyone that is present, even the bamboos are swaying, becomes a part of our Dharma talks, become a part of our Dharma sharing. And the presence of action is also we cannot see it. We have this amazing child. Her name is River. She was in our Dharma sharing and her parents gave her the name River from their many years of coming to Plum Village. Because going as a river is the second Dhrama seal of Plum Village. So they gave her the name River. And she stayed with us for every Dharma sharing.

00:50:36

How old was she?

00:50:37

She’s three years old. She came with us for every meal. And she is so peaceful. She’s so attentive. And there are moments she’s just being embraced by her mother and then her father, but always there. And knowing how to be in silence it’s amazing. And I just have to give credit to her parents because I really feel that their practice of many years have just been sown into her without her being in Plum Village. And so, this child being in the group, she’s listening to all of us. She’s seeing men being vulnerable, opening their hearts, sharing from their space of transformation. All of this, she is soaking it in. She is seeing action. And we don’t know, but I trust that all of these experiences will give her a wonderful experience of being in a community where it is safe, where she is witnessing love, kindness, even space for uncomfortable feelings, for confrontation, for suffering. But how it is being shared and how it is being held as a group. And so in the being and in the doing in terms of the looking of Zen, that already is action. And we don’t know this impact, but the impact is there. And so for me, you know, when I tap into interbeing, I receive a great source of energy. And this foundation, it comes really from love. Because when I love the transformation that I have been able to experience, then that love, I only want to share it with others. When I love this nature, this ecosystem, this environment, then I will do everything in my capacity to care for it so that the next generation can also be in this space of love, in the space of this environment and so on and so on. And so therefore, like even with this nonstop doing that we are part of, that we’re doing, there is still being in it because you’re reminded of why you are doing it and then that offers you so much energy. And then on the practical level of an individual practitioner coming home to myself, that my wellbeing, as in health, is the wellbeing of everyone. And we really practice. You know, when the brothers go play soccer with the teenagers and the young adults are at the soccer field, I say, brothers enjoy the game, but don’t get hurt because your well-being is our well-being. If you get hurt, we worry. If you get injured, especially in the summer retreat where all hands on deck, that means there’s another brother, another sister going have to be doing something that you were responsible for. So then in the real being, there’s a lot of responsibility. So as a mother, as a father, as a parent, your meditation and your being, that was the child. You see you in the child. The moments that you can be still and sit, you enjoy that. And the moments you can’t, you don’t think that is not meditation because your presence with the child, the way you love the child, the way you’re present for the child, that is your transmission. This distinction that we always create in ourself of resting, of meditating, of being, they’re all concepts and views that we’ve created. But in our reality, yes, there are moments we can truly enjoy that. And then there are moments when you got to act. You got to show up. You haven’t had your 5:00 meditation. I don’t care. Go to help cook breakfast, please. That’s your responsibility. And we start to break down also this idea of like, selfishness, even in practice. So like, I’ve had a brother who was like, I haven’t had my cup of tea yet, brother. And I won’t be fully there if I don’t have a cup of tea. And I’m like, and how about those two hours before this, the session that we were supposed to be present for? Why weren’t you there for that moment? Right? So it’s like I’ve also… I acknowledge this fear and I understand when people get scared of spirituality and get scared of these ideas of like, gratitude and of foundations, of like blissfulness. It’s very misleading sometimes. And the real art is being blissful and being present through every storm that arises.

00:56:14

Thank you, brother. And it reminds me that sort of being is holding space. Actually, it doesn’t look as though it has a physical manifestation, but actually create space for others also to be. So this comes back to my original question. How do you convince people, other people? Well, and it comes back to what you said at the beginning, if we are fully present or more present, then actually that is a state of being that people will listen to and open up to. And it reminds me of when I was a young man and I was working in New York, I went to a three day convening by a therapist at the time who was well-known, called John Bradshaw. And it was my first experience, actually, of the sharing circle. And I remember I was the last to speak in a circle of seven, and people were sharing how they had been physically, someone had been physically abused, someone who’d been sexually abused, and we were going around the circle and I felt my my problems were so minuscule that I almost felt embarrassed by them. And when I actually shared what my experience was of growing up, everyone was just present for me. And it was my first sort of, in a sense, one of my first spiritual experiences because I felt held. You know, I thought I would be judged that, you know, is that your only problem? Is that all you went through? But the way they held me and heard me, and were compassionate for me, and almost acknowledging that my hurt was also important, actually transformed my way of seeing. Because I think often we are a bit embarrassed by the problems we have. Or we feel that we should have handled them better or that it was our fault, or that we should have done it differently. And just that space of being heard, listened to, understood is transformational. And sometimes nothing has to be said. And we’ve shared this before, in other episodes, but in the sharing circles in Plum Village, no one is given an answer. No one is told, have you tried this? It is literally a deep listening circle where you can pour out your heart and you will be heard and listened to and you won’t be judged. You won’t be asked questions about it. You won’t have to justify it. And at the end of it, you are free. No one comes up to you unless they expressly ask you permission saying, can I talk to you about this? People are left to be present to their sharing and present to their pain. And I just find that that being with others so powerful.