The Way Out Is In / Feel It to Heal It: The Dharma of Music (Episode #79)

Jack Peñate, Br Pháp Linh, Br Pháp Hữu, Jo Confino


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Welcome to episode 79 of The Way Out Is In: The Zen Art of Living, a podcast series mirroring Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s deep teachings of Buddhist philosophy: a simple yet profound methodology for dealing with our suffering, and for creating more happiness and joy in our lives.

In this installment, Zen Buddhist monk Brother Phap Huu and leadership coach/journalist Jo Confino are joined by musician/producer Jack Peñate and frequent guest Brother Phap Linh, Dharma teacher/musician. Together, they talk about the release of A Cloud Never Dies, the debut album by the Plum Village Band – a musical meditation on love, continuation, and non-fear, inspired by and dedicated to Thich Nhat Hanh.

The album was produced by Jack, with the two monastics joining the conversation as co-creators of the album and representing the Plum Village Band: a collective of Zen Buddhist monks and nuns from Plum Village Monastery, France, plus musician-meditator friends from around the world.

In the first part of the episode, the guests discuss their musical journeys, from childhood to this point; the power of music as a portal to share the Dharma; music and Buddhist tradition; making music as a spiritual form; art as a Zen practice; and more.

In the second part, they share songs from the album and discuss their origins, meaning, creative process, and production stories. And we get to listen to the discussed songs too. 

Listen to the album and find out more about it here.


Co-produced by the Plum Village App:
https://plumvillage.app/  

And Global Optimism:
https://globaloptimism.com/

With support from the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation:
https://thichnhathanhfoundation.org/


List of resources

Interbeing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbeing  

Jack Peñate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Pe%C3%B1ate

Brother Phap Linh (Brother Spirit)
https://www.instagram.com/brotherspirit

Sister Chan Khong
https://plumvillage.org/about/sister-chan-khong 

‘Recommendation’
https://plumvillage.org/articles/recommendation

Album: A Cloud Never Dies
https://plumvillage.org/album-a-cloud-never-dies 

The Way Out Is In: ‘Regeneration and Musical Inspiration: The North American Tour (Episode #53)’
https://plumvillage.org/podcast/regeneration-and-musical-inspiration-the-north-american-tour-episode-53 

Pirates Blend
https://piratesblend.com/

‘The Four Dharma Seals of Plum Village’
https://plumvillage.org/articles/the-four-dharma-seals-of-plum-village

Aretha Franklin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aretha_Franklin

Billie Holiday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Holiday

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_%22Scratch%22_Perry

Narcissus and Goldmund
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_and_Goldmund

The Glass Bead Game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game

Hermann Hesse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse

Bhagavad Gita
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita


Quotes

“Music and Zen go together.”

“There’s art in making tea and there’s art in life, in the way that we live our days.”

“The highest music, the best kind of music, is breathing.”

“Everything could become practice. It just depends on our heart and our intention.

We feel like we can be very authentic practitioners and teachers of mindfulness and meditation and combine that with playing music, singing, creating. Because our teacher showed us how to do that, and how to be real in the doing of that, to make the music a meditation as well.”

“Music not as a performance, but as an invitation to touch the present moment.”

“When you know what your path is, you have to completely follow that, and be completely aligned with your intuition and your instinct about that.” 

“Harmony isn’t something that you’re always in, but it’s something you’re always striving for.”

“You deal with the desire for fame by finding a deeper desire, one that’s more important to you. And then you can handle the other one, and the desire for fame looks silly in comparison. That’s a practice that people can do together. And it’s a discipline. And it’s a way of life. And that’s what I love about it. But what I’m interested in is how we get aligned in our purpose and aspiration. And are there things that we can actually do as practices?”

“Music as an offering. We’re not doing this to be known, to make money, to be famous, to be successful, to do any of these things. We’re doing it to connect with the suffering that’s in the world, with the struggle that’s in us in relation to that suffering. The struggle of, ‘How do I help?’ When we see the strife, the pain, the killing, the destruction of humans – humans by humans and humans of ecosystems, of the beauty and diversity of the Earth – for me, it’s incredibly painful and there’s a feeling of, ‘How can I respond?’ How can I use what I have to try to help in some way, to alleviate some of the pain, to make things a little bit better for somebody, somewhere? And, as a musician, I do feel that music’s relevant to that somehow.” 

“I really feel like we can’t make the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible without music. Music is going to be part of it. Music is going to give us the courage to do it; the fearlessness, the vision. It’s going to help us to keep coming back to our vulnerability, to stay honest with ourselves when we get into pride.”

“You have to feel it to heal it. If we don’t feel our pain, then there’s no hope for us to embrace it, to understand it, to transform it, to look deeply into it. So it starts with feeling it. And music, I think, really can get past all of our psychological defenses, our armor, and our intellectual reasons and justifications and explanations and rationalizations; it can cut to the heart of the matter, which is the heart, and take you right there. And suddenly you find yourself feeling things that, maybe, without the music, it wouldn’t feel safe to feel.” 

“There was no difference, at a certain point, between composing and praying and crying and healing.”

00:00:00

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to the latest episode of the podcast series The Way Out Is In.

00:00:22

I’m Jo Confino, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems evolution.

00:00:28

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

00:00:34

And today, brother, we are going to be talking about music and the power of music to share the Dharma. And in particular we’re going to be talking about the release of the latest album by the Plum Village band called A Cloud Never Dies. And we have two very special guests Brother Phap Linh, Brother Spirit, we are welcoming back… Always very welcome. And also Jack Peñate, the producer of the album.

00:01:04

The way out is in.

00:01:17

Hello everyone. I’m Jo Confino.

00:01:18

And I’m Brother Phap Huu.

00:01:20

And today, as I said, we have two very special guests. We have Brother Spirit. Hello, brother.

00:01:25

Hi. Very happy to be back with you.

00:01:28

And Jack.

00:01:29

Hello.

00:01:30

Welcome back to Plum Village.

00:01:31

Thank you so much.

00:01:33

So, as I said, today we are going to be talking about the release of the album A Cloud Never Dies. But more interestingly looking at the origin of it, the creation of it, and also its purpose and the purpose of music as a portal for the Dharma. So Brother Phap Linh, I’m going to come to you first because you are a professional musician in the past. Music and monasteries, music and the Dharma is not automatically what trips off the tongue. Tell us a little bit about how those two connect.

00:02:13

So our teacher, Thay, Thich Nhat Hanh, was very clear, at least with me, when I was thinking about becoming a monk. One of the first things he said was, you know, if you become a monk you bring your cello with you. And he would always talk about how music and Zen go together. And in fact art and Zen go together. Many famous Zen masters in the past have been artists of one kind or another. And Thay himself was an artist as a calligrapher, as a poet. And even there’s art in making tea. You know, there’s art in life, in the way that we live our day. And, you know, he would even say things like the highest music, the best kind of music, is breathing. And so for him there was no boundary I think between… he didn’t really make a distinction between one kind of practice and another kind of practice. Everything could become practice. It just depends on our heart and our intention. And yet it is the case that in some Buddhist monastic traditions over the course of history and in different cultures it has been seen as inappropriate for monastics to play music, to sing songs, to play musical instruments, and so on. And it does pop up on our YouTube channel from time to time, you see in the comments somebody saying why are these monks playing music? They should be real monks and do sitting meditation or something. You know, people say things like that. And when we see that we kind of smile, because for us, we feel like we can still be very authentic practitioners and teachers of mindfulness and meditation and combine that with playing music, singing, creating. Because our teacher showed us how to do that and how to be real in the doing of that, to make the music a meditation as well. And that’s something really possible. And in fact, for me, it’s kind of the only way I want to do music. It’s the only kind of music that I want to make. Not music as a performance but music as an invitation to touch the present moment. You know, to really let go of our thinking and come into contact with the wonder of life again.

00:04:50

And brother, just for our listeners, many of them might have heard you give a Dharma talk or may have met you in Plum Village, but they don’t know your background. So just give us a sense of your background in music just so we can get a flavor of your past. And what it was like actually when you left that world and came to the monastery.

00:05:12

Sure. So I started playing cello I think when I was about 10, and piano as well, cello and piano. Which, as a classical musician, is quite late. A lot of serious classical musicians would start at the age of four or five. So I was already considered like…

00:05:29

Over the hill.

00:05:32

Way over the hill. But I guess I was very, yeah, I was passionate about it. And I came home from school one day aged 11, so only a year later, I came home from school and told my parents that I was going to school in Edinburgh to this specialist music school that I’d somehow heard about. And they couldn’t believe it. They were like what? What is this school and how do you know? Where did that come from? That’s where I’m going. I’m going there. And so it was this tiny little school called the Saint Mary’s School of Music and it had about 50 students and it was by audition. And so it was kind of like a hothouse, place for people who wanted to be professional classical musicians. But I already knew even then that I didn’t want to be a performer. I wasn’t interested in being a performer, but I wanted to deepen in music. But I wasn’t looking to be a soloist. But I didn’t know what else I could do. But quite soon, so when I went there, I got into the school and I went there and I started my studies there. And after a couple of years I actually started composing. So I don’t know, I was 13 something, 13, 14. And I thought maybe this is a way for me to contribute where I don’t have to be the frontman, you know, I don’t have to be on stage. And I can, but I can create. And so that seemed like a way for me. But then, age 16, I was pulled, like the academic studies there were, I felt were… it was a bit limiting, because the focus was so much on music, like two thirds of the day was music, and then you had a little bit of time left for, you know, maths and physics and everything else. But I wanted to do more science so I went then back to a normal school and did my end of school exams in the UK, A Levels in the sciences and mathematics. Then I went to Cambridge to study mathematics, but I was too young because I finished school when I was 17. So Cambridge said go and do something else for a year and come back when you’re 18. So then I went to London and I went to the Royal College of Music to study there for a year with an amazing cello teacher and met lots of incredible musicians, many of whom I’m still friends with. And, you know, they’re all professional classical musicians now in different orchestras and stuff. And there I started composing a little bit. And then when I went to Cambridge, I actually stopped playing the cello because I had a physical problem, I had some chronic pain in my back. I couldn’t really play anymore and I started composing a bit more for theater. Basically anybody who needed any music for anything, I was like, I can do it. You know, so I would, I sort of more or less declared that I was a composer without really being a composer. But I thought if I say I am, then I’ll have to figure it out. I’ll have to, I’ll start by pretending and then eventually maybe hopefully figure out how to do it. By the time I graduated in maths, I was supposed to carry on and I had a place to come back and just sort of go in the direction of starting a PhD and, you know, going into research and that kind of thing. I thought I could do that. I was really interested in that. But then in the summer, before coming back, I suddenly had a, I suddenly realized that somehow music was calling me again. So I called my college in Cambridge and said, actually, you know what, I’m not coming back. I’m going to be a composer. And… Not that they cared, you know, I was telling everyone. No, they really didn’t care. They’re like, okay, fine. But then I called all my friends in London who were musicians, I said, commission me, you know, get me to write something. I want to write. And so they started asking me to write stuff. And then gradually over three or four years, I started making a living and doing bigger concerts. But all that time, from age 19, I was coming to Plum Village. And so I had a kind of foot in both worlds and I… There was really like a key moment when I did a big concert at, you know, several months of work. It was quite a high profile thing. I was really proud of it. And I was really happy with the piece I’d written. And then the audience response was really amazing. And I went up, you know, after the concert to take my bow. And there was a kind of rush, you know, like, this is it, you know, all these months of work on my own and finally, I can share this with the world. And they get it and the musicians appreciate it. And so I was happy. But at the same time, in the same moment, I could compare that happiness with the happiness that I could touch in meditation, which was happiness not dependent on anything. I didn’t need an audience clapping, or to be recognized, it’s just available for nothing, for free. And I felt like actually, the other thing is a drug, and I already want more. I’m already addicted, so I have to stop. And that was kind of the moment for me that I decided that I couldn’t continue down that path. Because it was a path where ego and self was constantly getting reinforced by the world and by me. You know, and it was kind of this, yeah, I could feel it happening and I could see where it went and I was like, I don’t, that’s not the way. I have to find another way. And so I feel like my monastic life in a way was this long, it’s like a Hail Mary pass into the future. It’s like, I know that I’m not abandoning music, but I also have to abandon it temporarily to find another way to do it. And I don’t know when that will be. And I don’t know when I’ll be able to catch that ball in the future. And yet, it was kind of like halfway through the album, and I remember saying this to Jack, and I suddenly felt like, oh, it’s now. I’m there, now I can open that floodgate again, I can write again in the way that I did before, but it’s completely different in terms of my relationship to it and the, yeah, the power of self and ego and how it can take over and I felt very different.

00:12:01

Okay, and let’s come back to that point because I think that will show up. But, Phap Huu, one of the things that you’re always looking for, and Plum Village is always looking for, is how to share the teachings of Thay. And you’re looking to open, as I say, new Dharma doors, new ways of expressing the teachings that are relevant to each generation. And so, we know that music is important. I was mentioning a bit earlier that I was listening to an interview with Nick Cave, the musician, the other day, and he said music is one of the last places in modern society where we can have a transcendent experience. So, for you, what is the purpose of a group of monastics in Plum Village creating music and then having it professionally produced by the wonderful Jack and then launching it into the world? What’s the purpose? What’s the aspiration behind that and how did that idea form in your mind?

00:13:08

I think the aspiration, I can speak for myself, seeing it as an offering of the heart to the world. As well as, it was a moment when we were celebrating our teacher’s life, like as monastics, now he has passed, he has transcended, he has returned back to the earth, he has transformed. And it was a moment for us to find our own voices. And I always remember our teacher never asking us to be like him. He doesn’t want us to be in his shadow and never there to move forward. He always told us to continue to renew Buddhism, make Buddhism a part of the spiritual culture that everybody can connect to. And in culture, we know that music is a huge foundation for connection, for feelings, for art. And when we say art here, in terms of Buddhism, looking at our suffering is an art, transforming our suffering is an art, identifying grief is an art, being with grief is an art. Then speaking words of love, melodies of aspiration is all an art. And I think, by coincidence, all of the conditions of the universe allowed me to be Thay’s student who was also in love with art, like Brother Spirit has shared. And he has composed also a lot of songs, especially in Vietnamese. So there are some songs that are sang around communities, Vietnamese communities that were put into music by him. And I have learned that in Thay’s darkest moments of grieving and suffering and feeling lost, he took refuge in melodies, in music. Like the songs that we sing in Plum Village when you gather for walking meditation, Breathing in, Breathing out, I take refuge, because these are like songs that speak about the wonders of life. So even within the suffering that we are facing internally as well as externally, our responsibility as a human being, especially as a spiritual practitioner, is still to be able to touch the wonders of life. And when I was on this journey of grieving, I feel that music gives me a lot of joy. Music allows me to also touch the sadness and the loss that is in me. And as a practitioner, it’s so important to feel. It’s so important to not neglect it or to try to bypass it, because we may even have this idea that as a Zen practitioner, we become solid as a rock, like we can’t be affected by whatever is happening. But that’s actually a very shallow view on meditation. We have this quote that we’ve been saying, like, we have to feel to heal. Like the healing comes from the healing. The healing comes from the feeling. So when we, everything starts with a cup of tea and a discussion in Plum Village. Like this is where like the brainstorming comes and there’s a group of us in the monastery and it’s a very big group that loves music. And we know we have the talent in our community to bring something very beautiful together and to offer it to the world. And we have done this throughout the 40 years, 43 years of Plum Village through every retreat, we always end with a session of music, music meditation or… or Plumcella where we do a lot of kind of music. And you will always hear like this music are people’s journey of transformation. So if the world is offering a lot of music about love and heartbreaks and money, wealth, sex, fame, pleasure, I think it’s our responsibility as part of this world, as monastics, as spiritual practitioners, we’re not in a different universe, but we’re also on this Earth and we also need kind of, we need nutritious food for our ears and our soul. And this is where like the aspirations, like let’s put together an album as an offering. And first of all, an offering to our teacher who everything that we’re going to be writing and composing, it comes from this wisdom that we have received, but then now directly in our own experience. And then let’s make that as an offering for ourselves, but also for those who need a kind of… Maybe some people to sit and meditate is very difficult. But if you pop your headphones on and you hear a kind of melody, it will allow you to go inwards. And I think that was part of the intention was helping people to go inwards, to be with themselves and accompanied by melodies and words.

00:19:23

Beautiful. Thank you. Jack, welcome back to Plum Village. What does it feel like to return?

00:19:30

It was desperately needed, desperately needed. I’ve been in Los Angeles, in London for the last however many months, so to come back here and feel, you know, the warmth and the love and the calm and the peace is an absolute joy. So I’m very happy to be here.

00:19:49

Great. So when you were… I mean, you’re a world-renowned sort of musician and also producer. And, you know, you could be doing a million things and I’m sure there are many things you turn down. When you got the call to say, oh, would you be interested in coming to some monastery in France and producing an album with a bunch of monastics? Or however that was described. What was your instant response that first came to your mind?

00:20:28

The instant response was, it’s not really my choice. You know, I had to do it purely because, you know, I’ve been following my own path and it’s been very open. And for the last definitely seven years of my life, I’ve actively pursued not knowing what’s going to happen and what projects will arise. And luckily it’s been something which has put me in scenarios and places that I could never have guessed. I’d made an EP that’s yet to see the light of day and hopefully will with a young lad from Gambia called Usman who had traveled from Gambia on his own at 16. And my friend was in Sicily living with young lads for two years, and he said during that, do you want to come out and bring a studio? And I was just going to like teach how to make beats. It wasn’t going to be anything too deep. And day one, we wrote this piece of music about him leaving home and leaving his family and we made this album. So it was definitely a record which again, I’d never imagined I’d make. But the feeling from making something with a true purpose, you knew that this wasn’t about, yeah, as we talked about, fame, money, success, it was literally about telling a story and one that needs to be heard, in my opinion. And I got the call because of that, because I’d played it to the label who were kind enough to fund this project. And they’re called Pirates Blend and they called me because they had heard it in my house. I played it to them, they said, you know, what are we making? And so they knew that I was used to being put in scenarios which weren’t a new signing to a major label who needs a hit, please. I’m very much been working in other ways. And so this for me, when it turned up, it was like, of course, that will be done then. There wasn’t a question really in my mind. I knew it was out of my hands as most of the things I do seem to be now. So yeah, it was a very easy decision. I traveled and came and met with the monastics. I think it was more for them to meet me, which was important, of course. And for them to know I wouldn’t turn up with a bag of ego and trying to commandeer what’s happening here. And we met and we talked. I remember we all sat together for a good few hours. And then during the end of that day, I started to hear some of the songs. Especially the Vietnamese songs I heard were just so beautiful and, you know, transportative. And again, for me, I’m not a scholar in Thay, you know, but I knew who he was, of course. And I’d heard of Plum Village. But at that point, I realized that was actually probably to my benefit. There was enough reverence to know what I was getting into, but not so much that I wouldn’t be able to get in there and try and make an album, which was really what my purpose was, was to help make and finish a record in a short time. We had three weeks.

00:24:19

Three weeks.

00:24:20

Three weeks to do it. It’s not that long, you know, with new people. So I realized actually, in a way, it was good that I came in without that weight of the power of Thay and his legacy. I knew it. I could feel it. It was there. It was in the room. But I wasn’t yet so deep in that I would be blindsided at any point, which, you know, now I’m able to openly engage more. But there was definitely a period where I thought I need to kind of make sure I don’t stare too deeply into the light, you know, because we actually have got a job here to do. And that’s my role really was to see in that more systematic way and write lists and communicate the songs that we felt would, you know, hopefully tell the story as widely and as beautifully as possible. So, yeah, it was a very easy decision.

00:25:20

Thanks, Jack. And just, again, many of our listeners will not know you.

00:25:26

No, too right.

00:25:27

So just give us…

00:25:29

Lucky them.

00:25:29

Me too. Tell me more about you.

00:25:33

So just give us a little bit of background because you were a well-known singer. You were hanging out with Adele and Amy Winehouse and living that life.

00:25:45

Yeah, for sure.

00:25:47

And as you said, you’re now sort of… You’ve been, you know, creating albums in Los Angeles. So you’re living that sort of life, aren’t you, of in the heart of the music industry. So but just give us a flavor of who are you? On the surface level. You don’t have to go right into the heart.

00:26:10

Welcome to the Way Out Is In…

00:26:11

I’ll keep on asking the same question until you answer it fully.

00:26:14

Absolutely no. Who am I? I suppose first and foremost, I’d say a songwriter. That was always, that was the thing that, you know, truly engaged me at a young age. I was writing songs at nine, you know…

00:26:29

Way ahead of Phap Linh.

00:26:31

Yeah, I know, I know. Exactly…

00:26:33

I’m still trying to catch up.

00:26:36

But, you know, I’m a songwriter, really. I think that’s really where it all starts for me. I think producers are, it’s an interesting route, you know, and I definitely also question whether I am one, if I’m honest. But I’m going to keep it that way always. I think, you know, I was very early on, it’s quite a kind of cliche, but, you know, I remember hearing Aretha Franklin when I was like seven or something. And just not sure what that feeling was, you know. It was so overwhelming and so beautiful. And there’s actually a lot of gospel, for some reason, Billie Holiday. It was like, those female singers really did something at a young age. And that’s when I started thinking about music, you know, and actively thinking about his purpose, you know. So my way in was kind of that, it was much more, you know, about a feeling created by word and sound and melody. I was obsessed with melody and still am. And then really, from that, I became a solo artist when I was young. Made records myself, which I still do. And watched as my work, when I was younger, really took off. And that was an incredible experience. But equally quite, as the cliche seems to be, it was kind of corrosive at times and overbearing and overpowering. And for a young person to be given money and fame is an odd thing, you know. And so I dealt with it, I think, the best I could, you know. And then I stepped away when I was probably 27 or 28. I just could see what I was about to solidify. And I was really frightened about that. Yeah, absolutely. So right at the height, I was like, yeah, I’m good. And kind of went away for 10 years and kind of got very lost and had a great time doing that. And was, you know, living what I thought was a monastic life at one point, which is ridiculous. It was kind of, you know, Bhagavad Gita and kind of Bob Marley and thinking I was, you know, higher than everyone else and other things as well. But, you know, I went through, you know, a process there. And then around six, seven years ago, I think it just really something, I don’t know what happened, I think I got kind of smashed completely, you know. And then realized that, I suppose, the process of making music was going to be how I could also rejoin my spirit. And, you know, somewhat heal again, the healing process was going to be through making music as it always was from a child. You know, for me, I hate that phrase, but it was my safe space. You know, it was, but it was that place that I could actually, you know, feel things come together and do it in a way that was magical. Because you don’t know what you’re going to be making when you wake up in the morning or what chord structure that day is going to be, you know, inspiring. So, yeah, that was really in the last year, last seven years, I’ve just been really of service, you know. I think I realized that if I put myself in that position, I actually wouldn’t have to actively try. It would just appear. And peculiarly it has and it carries, it seems to be carrying on that way. I don’t really, haven’t really got a plan at all, if I’m honest. I just know that, you know, I love making music and whatever way that transpires and appears is good enough for me. And yeah, I’ve seen the other side and I think you can work in that way and be successful in the other way and retain a semblance of happiness, but it’s very difficult. Whereas this way, I think there is a definite path towards a semblance of happiness, yeah.

00:30:59

Beautiful, thank you. And as you start off by saying, you’ve spent several months in Los Angeles and also in London. And I imagine that’s a bit of a hothouse and there’s pressure and money and demands and all the rest. And then, of course, you spent three weeks in Plum Village. So before we get onto the, back to the actual music, what was your experience of being here for three weeks and what has maybe stuck with you? What did you take away with you that you also coming back sort of feel it keenly again?

00:31:39

I think the experience overriding was really being within a collective purpose and feeling like it was deep, you know, it was a deep purpose that everyone has here. And that’s very difficult to find in London or most Western cities. It’s really difficult. You get moments of that for sure. And that’s why I love making music because I do, I get that with a small group when we’re making an album, you know, it is that feeling. It’s absolutely that feeling. But then you step out and it’s hard to find that on the street or at the restaurant or the cinema or, you know, you’re looking actively. But I think that it’s permeating everything here and everyone. And that purpose is, you know, literally in the trees as you walk through the forest, you can feel it. It’s in the lake. Like I can feel it in the lake. That’s really the thing that I’d never experienced before. You know, I’ve never lived anywhere where there’s a monastic world unfolding. I’ve only ever dipped in and on my travels, seen places. But this was, I think, yeah, the overriding feeling afterwards was a realization there’s a home here, a genuine home and one lacking in judgment or no judgment. And also fearless, you know, I think the fearlessness of the monastics to make this decision is so inspiring. I thought, there’s one part of me that I thought, maybe I won’t come home. You know, maybe I see this is the way. You know, I read like Goldmund and Narcissus and like all these amazing books about monks, and Glass Bead Game. And I was obsessed with Hermann Hesse growing up. So I was like, maybe I’ve just been like, the path has been directed to Plum Village and this is it.

00:33:42

It would be a shame to lose your hair though. I mean, we’ll try and remember to take a photo, but Jack has very lovely, lush, long hair. And I think that, oh no, you can’t.

00:33:54

But he did have a dream last night about that.

00:33:56

Yeah, I dreamt I actually shaved the front half off like a monastic.

00:34:00

I want to see this. This could be a new look.

00:34:04

It might be. But you know, I think what I also gleaned from it coming home was that I’ve been shown that my path was, you kind of validated it because of your dedication. And that when you know what your path is, you have to completely follow that, you know, and being completely aligned with your intuition and your instinct about that, you know. And I think before I came to Plum Village, I was still kind of trying to work out what that was. And, you know, I was just talking about it today, I think for me it is, and it’s again, it’s kind of cliche stuff, but like it is making music for me. That is my spiritual path. That’s it. Like it doesn’t need to, I don’t need to define anything else because it is a form of spirituality. It’s a form of connecting to the universal and the present and all of it, all the things I’m searching for. And making this project with the monastics who are, that’s their lives, you know, it confirms something that I’ve been looking for for so long. So it’s a huge change. And then returning, again, it’s like being home. And I slept 12 hours last night.

00:35:25

When was the last time you did that?

00:35:26

Probably 1984, when I was born.

00:35:33

You know, it’s interesting, Jack, because the, you know, the first what’s known as the Dharma Seal of Plum Village is I have arrived, I am home. And I would say that, I mean, this was true of my experience, but so many other people who come to Plum Village have that same feeling that they can just be themselves. They can let go of the defenses, take off the armor. And it’s like, it’s like entering a healing pool where you just feel I can be naked here and safe.

00:35:59

Absolutely.

00:35:59

It’s such a powerful and beautiful feeling.

00:36:02

Truly.

00:36:03

So let’s get to the album. So I don’t think this is rocket science, but I think to produce an album, you need a recording studio. And, you know, I know Plum Village well, and there ain’t no recording studio here. There’s some open barns, there’s some small stone houses, but nothing that even begins to resemble a recording studio. And of course, the monastics, as monastics, we’re not going to leave for three weeks to go to some fancy place in London or Los Angeles. So how did you create a recording studio? Let’s just… Phap Huu, how did that process…? Because, you know, because everything you’ve done is through a mindful lens. So what was that process of, great idea to do an album, but what next?

00:36:55

Yeah, so a part of it was creating the studio. And Jack actually came on, he called it, he came here for just three days before.

00:37:08

On the recce.

00:37:11

And like a recon mission. Just to really scout the place and check if, you know, the monastics and Jack, if we vibe and if we can really create together, because harmony is such an important element that we knew was going to be key for this project. And while Jack was here, we were also looking at every hamlet even. We went to not only Upper Hamlet, we went to New Hamlet, we went to Lower Hamlet. We even went to where our teacher stayed just to look at the potential of where we can turn a home into a recording space. And it ended up in the foot of the hill residence, which is called Son Ha. And it’s in a building that our teacher gave the name of the building, it’s called Toadskin Hut. So outside it’s like all rocky, it’s not very beautiful, but on the inside it’s very cozy, it’s very warm and there’s this energy of togetherness. And knowing that our teacher, that was his go-to place every morning when he was living with the brothers during the Rains Retreat, he would do walking meditation down, make a fire, and that’s where he created his art, his calligraphies. So it was like, in a way it felt like Thay was telling us, this is where you’re going to record, this is where you’re going to create. And we had a generous donation of resources to buy equipment, which now it belongs to the monastery for future projects, not just music album, but chanting albums and so on. So suddenly we knew there was a location and that’s very important to have a destination to arrive to. And then setting up, I wasn’t a part of it because I was coming back from out of France, but Jack brought part of his studio to Plum Village. He drove like, I don’t know, five guitars with like bass, electric guitars. And suddenly it was like the world was coming to Plum Village. And it was very beautiful because our teacher always said that anything of the world can become a Dharma instrument. So slowly, but very surely that the studio became a kind of meditation space also. And part of the process was to create togetherness as a band. And the band is not only monastics, but it has also lay artists and lay musicians. But I think the first thing that Brother Spirit, Jack, and Brother Thien Y did was to do a circle, a ceremony in a way to start the project. And I feel this is very important to shift the gear of this is now going to be our place of real intention that we’re going to create together that is beyond the self. And I’ll leave that to Brother Spirit to share about that because I felt that was a very important thread through this three weeks.

00:40:35

And brother, the heart of Thay’s teachings is about the breath, about breathing. How does breathing and music and how do those sort of slot together and how important is it in the creation of the music to have the breath within that in a sort of mindful way?

00:40:58

I think it’s everything. Breath by breath, note by note, lyrics, word by word. I feel like if anything, I can feel the rhythm of my breathing much deeper while in session together as a band. And the breath, it is not just a melody, but it is like the companion. And I felt even for myself, like there are moments in the journey of, I guess, like maybe touching ego in myself or touching even inferior complex, because like you heard these friends, they started, you know, at 10 and I started in the shower. I was like singing in the shower and I’m sure many of us are. Right? And we all had a dream of becoming a superstar, like, you know, seeing something on television and, you know, trying to be that. And to be very honest, like I have no, no education in music beside going to school and learning the recorder. Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

00:42:05

Hey, that’s something we’ve got in common.

00:42:08

And then suddenly…

00:42:09

Who needs to use musicians when you can actually play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?

00:42:13

And then suddenly you’re in a room full of musicians, artists, writers, and yeah, you’re going to meet your inferior complex. You’re going to meet like this, this feeling of like, am I worthy to be here? Like, what do I have to offer? I should just go and meditate. Like, you know, like really like all these voices come up and these are the moments when you got to return to your breathing. You got to return to your breath. You got to return to the present moment. It’s not about, it’s not about the self. It’s not about if I had that education or not. It’s like, what can I offer in this, in this space, even if I’m not a musician? And there was one friend who was a musician, but when he was not in service, in melody, he was just in service of tea, for example. So everybody had a role and it was, it became an organism that was so beautiful because there were moments we had leaders and then there were moments we just acted as we’re caring for ourselves, like creating coffee, making tea, cleaning up the space. And all of this was mindfulness, because if we’re not mindfully together, we’re going to be definitely bumping heads. We’ll be like charging at each other. Why wasn’t my idea, you know, received and put into the album? And it could have been, yeah, a real battle.

00:43:55

Well, actually, now that you mentioned the coffee, brother, I think I had the most important part in the creation of this album because Phap Linh stole my coffee grinder.

00:44:05

That is so true.

00:44:08

So actually, I’d forgotten that I’m also, dear listeners, also, they didn’t credit me. You won’t see my name anywhere, but actually without my coffee grinder, they would have been a mess.

00:44:21

Nothing would have happened.

00:44:24

Brother Phap Linh, you talked earlier and Phap Huu is offering for you to answer this about ego and about pressure and about, I would imagine when you’re producing music, you might have a very clear idea of the way you want it to be. You might have heard it in your head, this is it. And then obviously, within a community structure, that hierarchy isn’t quite so obvious. You’re not the composer, this is the way you’ve done it. Other people might say, well, actually, I want it done this way. And that can be quite a difficult relationship.

00:45:01

No, no, no, it’s easy. Everyone else is wrong.

00:45:07

But how being in the context of a monastery and monastics and sort of lay practitioners who know the practice, how did that work? And what are the, because I assume you must have had some difficulties during the recording. It wasn’t like, oh, we’re all at peace, we’re all in harmony all the time. Harmony isn’t something that you’re always in, but it’s something you’re always striving for. So give us a flavor of what was going on and how did you work with that?

00:45:38

I think what’s really great with how things came about for us is that we, in a sense, as we were going along discovering that we had ways of handling these things. We actually have practices that can be applied in these types of situations. So actually, the first one was in this setting up at the studio, which is just a room, we realized that, yeah, a ceremony, like a kind of blessing would be important to set the intention and to create a kind of safety. And in a way, it’s like an antidote to exactly some of those things you’re talking about, like the competition, comparison, ego, inferiority, superiority, hierarchy, all of these things. We could already kind of set the tone by being clear about how we wanted to do things and how we didn’t want to do things. So some of it is kind of pre, you know, things that you can advance and then there are like in the moment ways to address situations. But it’s so cool because we have, in our community, we have the chanting book, we have chanting from the heart. And in that book, you can find all these different ceremonies for different types of event and different kinds of things. So I just went to the book. I looked up in the index, I was like, okay, ceremony to bless a new house. So I thought, okay, I think we can adapt this. We can use this ceremony to bless a new studio. And so we sort of took bits and pieces of it. We offered incense. We burned some sage. We sat in a circle. We kind of took a dandelion and sprinkled the four corners of the room with water. We did the invocation to purify the water. Because I remember Thay had done that for a new center in Italy, for a meditation center in Italy, and he blessed everyone with this dandelion. And it was just so beautiful and so simple. I was like, okay, we can do that too. So in our little circle of four, just four of us initially, and Jack and David and Thien Y and myself. And then a very important part of that was to sit down and say, okay, each of us just share what is our dream? What’s our highest wish for this album? And also what are our fears and what are our concerns? And I feel like that was very protective. Because A, already we discovered we were so aligned. We had such a deep sense of why we wanted to do it and why we didn’t want to do it, which I think Jack spoke so beautifully to just now. And Thay Phap Huu as well, this sense of music as an offering. We’re not doing this to be known, to make money, to be famous, to be successful, to do any of these things. We’re doing it to connect with the suffering that’s in the world, with the struggle that’s in us in relation to that suffering. The struggle of how do I help? When we see the strife, the pain, the killing, the destruction of humans, humans by humans and humans of ecosystems of the world, of just the beauty and diversity of the earth, for me it’s incredibly painful and there’s a feeling of how can I respond? How can I use what I have to contribute to that, to try to help in some way to alleviate some of the pain, to make things a little bit better for somebody somewhere? And for me as a musician, I do feel that music’s relevant to that somehow. And I know it might sound a bit dreamy, but for me it’s not. I really feel like we can’t make the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible without music. Music is going to be part of it. Music is going to give us the courage to do it, the fearlessness, the vision. It’s going to help us to keep coming back to our vulnerability, to keep honest, to stay honest with ourselves when we get into pride. There’s music that can just cut through that. I don’t think any of us really knew if we could do it or how we could do it, but we all knew that that’s what we wanted to do, which is to make music with the hope that it might help somehow, just that. And it’s more like a prayer than anything else. It’s just a wish and a prayer with the sense that music can sometimes help. And it’s exactly what I hope we were saying before, this sense of you have to feel it to heal it. If we don’t feel our pain, then there’s no hope for us to embrace it, to understand it, to transform it, to look deeply into it. So it starts with feeling it. And music, I think, really can get past all of our psychological defenses and our armor and our kind of intellectual reasons and justifications and explanations and rationalizations, and it can just cut to the heart of the matter, which is the heart, and just take you right there. And suddenly you find yourself feeling things that maybe without the music, it wouldn’t feel safe to feel. Because those feelings, when we think about the genocides that are going on, when we think about the injustice and inequality that’s going on, it’s so overwhelming that we’re a little bit afraid to go there. It’s like if I open that box up, would I be able to handle the grief, the despair, the overwhelm? But with music, I feel like we can go there and be held. And it’s like you can go in and through. And it can take you on this journey. So you touch into the pain, but you don’t drown in it. And you can be lifted up and out and into already some transformation. So that was a real sense. We know we want to do that. And that was protective, because once we’re clear that we’re all about that, we’re not about the other thing, then we can also… That’s like a touchstone. And we had to remind each other of that. There was a point, I think, maybe halfway through the project, when we are all working with ego. We’ve all got big egos in a way. And it’s like at a certain point, we had to just like notice that, become aware of it. And we had to kind of look at each other and be like, hmm, do we need to do that again? We need to do the ceremony thing again. And we need to sit down and we need to share again. And we need to burn some sage again and talk about our intentions again and kind of just touch back into why we’re really doing it. Because when you have a clear intention, then you can drop the other stuff. It’s not that the other wishes and desires and fantasies aren’t there. They’re there. But you just need to find a stronger one. Right? So it’s not like I don’t deal with desire by trying to remove it. And I’ve really learned this from Thay. It’s like you deal with the desire for fame by finding a deeper desire, one that’s more important to you. And then you can handle the other one. And it looks silly in comparison. So you’re like, oh, yeah, come on. I don’t want to do that. That’s a practice that people can do together. And it’s a discipline. And it’s a way of life. And that’s what I love about it, that it’s not, you know, because we can all kind of be dreamy about this stuff. But what I’m interested in is, yeah, but how do we get aligned, you know, in our purpose and aspiration? And are there things that we can actually do as practices? And there are.

00:53:46

And just one thing, Brother Phap Linh. So I saw you during that process. And I don’t think I’ve seen you so happy, so engaged so fully in what you were creating in such a joyful way, in such a deep way. How did you stop yourself from being carried away on that tsunami? Because the practice is that, you know, to manage your suffering, but also, I suppose, at the other end to manage your joy and because it can easily take you off into another place that’s not very grounded. And so how did you manage this sort of transcendent element, which you seem to be in that sort of zone, and also stay grounded in a way that was in balance?

00:54:37

Well, I’m not sure that I did.

00:54:40

I didn’t want to say anything… I was just giving you the chance to answer it.

00:54:44

Yeah, sorry. Sorry, governor. Guilty as charged.

00:54:48

You saw that in my question.

00:54:50

No, I just got completely taken by it.

00:54:52

He was deep in it.

00:54:53

Yeah, and I let it take me, you know, to the point where, you know, there was no difference at a certain point between composing and praying and crying and healing. You know, I would be woken up at 4am by the music and I would go to Thay’s hut and I’d be like sobbing on the floor and then writing the next line. But it was beautiful. I mean, I just felt like I didn’t want to resist any of that. I wanted to let it happen. And I think, you know, but there are also checks and balances and sort of guard rails because we are living in a community and we have each other and so we do kind of balance each other out. And I think because it can become a very strong energy or kind of overwhelming energy or like a big, I don’t know, maybe I can get like overbearing or something like that. And I have my brothers and sisters also to tease me, you know, and make fun of me and, you know, kind of just deflate a little bit that balloon when it gets too big and that’s beautiful. So to do that and not be alone is an incredible privilege because before I was more or less alone. I mean, I was living with my partner, but mainly she was just kind of bearing it, you know, and she had to bear the brunt of that a lot. Like I really, you know, it’s partly why we ordained, you know, because I just felt like it wasn’t fair for that process to burn the people around me and especially the person I cherished the most in the world, you know, to see that I was causing her suffering because I was letting that thing consume me and consume her and consume everything around me. And there is a sense that in our culture, it’s a little bit allowed, you know, it’s like the mad genius, you know, that archetype, not that I’m a genius, but it’s just that the archetype is there, that as long as the result is good, as long as the art is good, you’re allowed to do whatever you want. You’re allowed to get away with being a really like toxic human being sometimes and everything’s forgiven because the result is incredible and it’s like, okay, that’s what they had to do. But I wanted to find another way. I wanted to say that can we still touch into the depths of creativity, but without destroying the people around us and destroying ourselves, you know? So it’s still, you know, it’s work in progress, but it was a beautiful discovery to feel like I can do that and still be accepted and embraced by my brothers and sisters. And yeah, it’s different because, you know, we are living in a community that, you know, there’s no drugs, there’s no alcohol, there’s none of the other things that sometimes go with that process. So there’s actually a lot of protection in place and you can always come back to your breathing, you know, and you can always come back and do a meditation and you just go back into the meditation hall and you’re immediately embraced by that powerful collective energy of the community and you just calm down, you know, and come back to Earth.

00:58:19

I think also that we had limited time. The time was playing such a pivotal role in the whole process was also why I feel that at times of, you know, great expression and passion and we needed that, that was important. And it wasn’t like I was there being like, come on, Phap Linh, no sleep. I didn’t need him, I didn’t need to say any of it.

00:58:46

Sometimes…

00:58:47

I didn’t egg you on, that was…

00:58:48

Well, no, I don’t know, okay, so sometimes it wasn’t like you’re not allowed to sleep, but it was like, brother, we need another string arrangement. I’ll be like, all right, Jack, got it.

00:58:58

Yeah, but we knew we had three weeks.

00:59:00

Yeah, we knew we had three weeks.

00:59:01

Well, you know, and as you said, there was such a beautiful warmth and somewhere to return to. It’s difficult to do that when, you know, someone’s going to, you know, an artist is about to go back out to the club or the street or wherever they’re going after you’ve done that kind of process. You worry about that, but to come down in Plum Village after that, I was like, this is the perfect spot to, you know, truly express your, you know, the inner creative self, which is what I feel you were, you know, one of many. There were so many of us. We were all there together, feeling that, that unification and elation. And that’s touching in my mind and my spirit, that’s touching God, you know, that is it. That is the feeling. But you can’t stay there, yeah, you have to come back and wash your dishes. You know, and change your sheets and all those things that this place is inevitably going to bring you back to you.

01:00:06

And Jack, how did you work with the monastics differently if at all from a normal sort of partnership or way of work? I mean was there something about how you worked in the creation of the music that was different from how you normally did? Was anything you pay particular attention or had a particular sensitivity to in terms of the way you intervened and worked with them or in how the work music was actually created?

01:00:41

I think the first thing I realized was that the act itself for some monastics understandably was… could bring some sense of fear or maybe as we talked about a stepping over the line of what is expected of a monastic so I had to be very diligent that I didn’t treat this as just some normal recording well let’s just try loads of things let’s do whatever we want. Like, no, this is sacred ground and it’s with literally, you know, getting the diggers out and seeing what arises and what treasures can come from it but being very diligent it wasn’t that was sensitive really sensitive to that. And so when we… I remember us starting just making music together really loosely. And so my idea the plan was the first week was going to just be open expression sharing songs, sharing expectations, sharing moments together where we created together in the room. And we all connected in that deep spiritual way that improvisation brings anyone. That’s why bands love being a band because that feeling is so beautiful and that connecting force, you know, when that arises. So the beginning really was about that, how do we bring creativity in the room but do it with subtlety, do it with love, and hopefully that can bring everyone together, that was really the main goal for me. Because normally if you’re working with a band or you’re working with an artist or they already have years maybe behind them of that kind of work. And I know you toured together so you had that for sure, but now we’re going to be opening this up to pure creativity, what arises on the day. So it was the first thing. And then I remember once we’ve done that it was making sure really that everyone’s voice is heard. Huge. That was on my mind every morning and I’d write lists for myself of like who’s being heard out of the sisters and the brothers, and are we telling the story from multiple angles so as everyone’s feeling that something that they cherish within the community is being at one point heard. You know, so then we were listening to everyone’s songs again, making sure that no, yeah, no stone was unturned. It really was really pivotal to me that… And I think, you know, the other approach, I kept on thinking about was like how can this also feel new, how can this bring energy to the group? How can we show a future in it? And push and kind of be daring. Once we earn that trust how far can we now take this? You know, and I think we did that in some of the music we made was very future led and felt exciting and kind of frightening at times. But again, that was after like 10 days once we built that trust. And then obviously there were moments where we had to maybe let go of certain songs that people resonated with but it felt like maybe they weren’t part of that story and that’s always a difficult situation in my position. As a producer, you know, it’s not always your job but you do seem to, you know, need to bring a construction of an album, you know, and see that construction and then help an artist or group, you know, find then the music that fits within that blueprint. And so inevitably there are times where music maybe doesn’t fit but it’s loved still. So there are moments of having to let music go which was difficult and painful but just being sensitive to that again and still again making sure everyone was heard. But, yeah, there was lots. I could talk for hours about that.

01:05:07

Well, you know, it’s wonderful because actually in each of these, in all this discussion, are the core teachings of Thay and Buddhism about what it is to let go and what it is to deeply listen, what it is to be sensitive, what it is to have loving speech, what it is to feel like a community. So it feels like within the album was, I mean, you couldn’t, you can’t separate the practice from the album. And so we’re going to actually start discussing the individual songs in a moment but before we do, Phap Huu I just want to ask you one thing. So the release of the album was on Thay’s continuation day, on his birthday of October the 11th. And I’m just wondering for you personally, you were Thay’s attendant for many many years. How did it feel for you personally to be offering this album two years after Thay’s passing, on his birthday. How meaningful was that for you?

01:06:09

I would say I was so excited for it to finally be into the world. It’s like we’ve been holding this album for a year. And when I think about Thay I think about a very beautiful moment I shared with him in Thailand. Thay was there in 2013. It was his last trip there actually before he had the stroke in 2014. And it was a monastic retreat and we were ending the monastic retreat with our way to celebrate the coming together as a being. So we did many songs but it was very well contained in the performance because we had a lot of venerables from Vietnam. And they are from the traditional temples and they are from a more reserved tradition in a way. And one of the other brothers said Phap Huu, you got to go up there and rap. And I said, oh heck, no, like dude, I’m gonna get destroyed if I go up there. And he said no, no, Thay’s back there, he wants you to do it. It was a mission. It became I gotta do this. This was, I had no choice. Like when Jack got the call, I got the call, like, you’re going to introduce a new generation of monastics. And we did Price Tag by Jessie J and B.o.B. and B.o.B. has a rap verse. And that was like the first song that really became like, oh my God, like we’re going to do hip hop in the community now. And I just remember that moment, because Thay usually doesn’t stay for performances. But he stayed for that. He wanted to see me up there. And it became like the talk of years of like that moment of a monk rapping in front of all the venerables and all the monastic community in Asia. And it was a moment where I felt like there’s many steps for us to finally arrive at, all the conditions to come together to to bring really music in a beautiful and meaningful way into an offering that was authentic and was us. We were doing a lot of covers or we were changing words in some songs to dharmafy it, to make it like…

01:08:40

Actually with rap.

01:08:41

Yeah. Plum approved, in a way. And so when we were sitting in the big hall here, having that release of the album and listening together with over a thousand people joining us around the world, it really felt like, I really felt like Thay was smiling. That was really the feeling.

01:09:26

So there’s nothing like the proof being in the pudding. So let us pick a few songs and gives everyone a chance to listen to the song. And then maybe we can sort of discuss the origin and the meaning so that we get the sort of… I know some people… when I go and see an art show, I really like to hear a talk around it or to understand the context. Some people like just to see an artwork and make their own sense of it. But I think there’s something so rich from actually hearing from the artists themselves about what was really going on for them, what was the meaning. So let us do that and let’s pick a first song. So why don’t we choose the song, which is actually the name of the album. Why don’t we start with A Cloud Never Dies. So A Cloud Never Dies. So let’s listen to it and then we’ll come back.

01:11:24

[MUSIC]

01:13:35

So Brother Phap Huu, tell us about this song.

01:13:39

Well, this track is very special because, like Jack was saying, we did a week of jamming session. And the instrumental, the melody behind the spoken words were the first thing that we recorded together. That was really like the first melody out of nothing that was put together. And Brother Phap Linh didn’t even know that it was being recorded. So Jack was a very skillful producer. He literally recorded everything.

01:14:07

Zen master Jack.

01:14:11

Yeah, really, like it completely messed with all my expectations of what we were even doing in the whole project. Because as a classical musician, you know, perfectionism is a huge thing. And it’s like, for me, I really had this idea that whatever we record, it has to be completely polished and perfect. And we have to know exactly where every note is landing and just have complete control of every aspect of it. So this was literally the very first day that we had set up the microphones. And I thought that David, the sound engineer, was just testing the position of the mics. And he was just like, yeah, just play something, you know. So I started noodling on the piano thinking that we were just doing sound check or they were doing something else, setting up the computer. So I kind of just went into my zone and I just kept playing. And then at a certain point, I stopped and I turned around and they were both like looking at me with this kind of like listening face. And then Jack was like, okay, get your cello, brother. Get your cello. Here, put on these headphones. And then they reset the mic and they’re like, okay. And then they played back to me what I just played on the piano. Because I was like, what? You recorded that? But that was a mess. It was all full of mistakes. And they were like, no, no. Jack was just like, no, brother, just record another track.

01:15:32

Be quiet.

01:15:36

You’re not a Dharma teacher here.

01:15:37

You don’t know what you’re doing. Just play the cello. All right, just listen and play. So then I just improvised the cello over the piano. And I still had the feeling like, yeah, but come on, we’re not going to use that. That was a first take. Let’s do it again. I can do it better. And Jack was like, no, that’s it. That’s the first track. Got it. And I was like, what? And I fought him. I kept fighting for months. I was like, no, let me do it again. I want to, I can improve. Anyway. So that was, it was an amazing thing, because I felt like Jack was also giving us so much trust. And just creating so much freedom and giving us the confidence of his experience. And his kind of, yeah, his wisdom. And in just a way of working that was completely new to me. And because I didn’t know that I was being recorded, I was free. If I’d known that he had pressed record, I would have frozen up completely. So it was, yeah, it was very skillful. And then so the amazing thing was this track is the alpha and the omega of the project. It was the very first thing we recorded. And it was the very last thing that we recorded. So I let Brother Phap Huu tell that story.

01:16:54

Yeah. So as we were creating the album, so we actually recorded almost like 19 tracks, I would say. And a lot of it is in the parking lot, so people have never heard it. Heard a lot of what we recorded. But I remember it was like, I don’t know, day 13 or something, and I just remember because Jack kept saying like, take your time with this album. If we need a year, it will be a year. Let’s not force it. Let’s be organic, you know.

01:17:23

I was completely lying.

01:17:24

And he was completely lying because Jack had a mission.

01:17:28

I was like, I can’t tell him what the mission is yet. We need all the stuff before he can say what the mission is.

01:17:33

But for us, I mean, we were operating at a space of present moment and whatever we have, let’s just give it.

01:17:41

And we believed him.

01:17:42

And we really believed him. I believed him. But what I was very confident about…

01:17:46

These monastics, you can twist them around…

01:17:49

So gullible.

01:17:50

What I was very confident about, though, that this album is an offering to our teacher. No doubt about it. Like, this is the first one. And I was confident that the title of it is A Cloud Never Dies. And a lot of people ask me, like, why isn’t there rap? And some people are like, oh, I thought you’d be rapping. Well, at day 13, we looked at each other from everything that we’ve put together, we’re like, I think we got an album. It’s starting to, like, it was peaking like that, you know, from a bud coming out of the earth, like, we can see it now. And for me, at least, and with the togetherness of everyone, we felt that this album was so tender. And it was so… It was soft and gentle that I felt like we all said spoken word is going to be what is… what’s going to make this album bring in all the elements that we have been creating together. So at the end of the album, we hear the voice of Sister Chan Khong, Sister True Emptiness, which is one of our eldest sisters in our community. And Jack was like, we should open with your voice. And so I’ve been doodling also, like some rap lines, like who knows where it will fit, you know. And Jack, because we’ve also done some open mics. I’ve been speaking over melodies. And he was like, whatever you did that day, let’s try to give you that space for you to speak. And when I was writing everything down, like part of it was like, how can I share the story of a journey of non-fear, of a cloud? And I was very… I’m still very impacted by this teaching that I heard from Thay, which was our original desire and our original fear comes from the moment of birth. That’s when we were separated from our mother. That’s when we, as an individual, felt that we are on our own. And then our whole journey is realizing that we’re not on our own, we’re a whole continuation. So I started just to write things down, seeing myself in my mother’s womb and then coming out into life and then feeling the breath and then feeling the separation. And I know every one of us, we go through this sometimes daily, sometimes weekly, sometimes, you know, in moments when we just, we meet this loneliness inside of us. But when we touch the ultimate dimension, which is like, but we’re not alone, all of these conditions that have come together for us to be here, then suddenly we have no fear because we’re not separated, we’re not a separation, we are a continuation. So that became very clear for me, like this is the message of A Cloud Never Dies. We did, I think like just two takes, just two takes. The first take was a longer version and everyone said, let’s shorten it, less is more here. And Jack is a very skillful, like, encourager. Encourager? And he was just telling me like, just to be myself, just to feel like you’re speaking to you, to someone you love, to whomever needs to hear this message. And when we did it, I was also definitely not myself in that moment. I was, I entered into like a space of interbeing and I had the text, but some of it, I just riffed it a little bit, which then became the first track. And it was a deep moment and it was the last track we recorded for the album.

01:21:52

Beautiful. So let’s move on to the second track. So let’s now listen to Don’t Wait.

01:23:08

So Jack, do you want to talk about this song? What does it hold for you?

01:29:45

So I started getting sent some demos a few months before coming to Plum Village. And I got sent part of a song by Brother Phap Linh, which was Don’t Wait. And again, it had this natural fluidity and kind of freedom to it. And I remember, I think I called you and said, that song is unbelievable. Like, I’m completely in love with it. I can’t stop listening. I’m pretty sure you were like, well, no, but that’s not it.

01:30:26

No change there.

01:30:28

I was definitely, yeah, I was fighting you on that one as well. It’s just a sketch and it’s a draft and it’s not good enough and it’s not finished. And you were like, no, brother, this is it.

01:30:43

So we knew, I think we both knew that that was going to be on the record. It felt like a song where we could really tell the Dharma, but also had this, again, fragility, this quietness to it and this hope and power, you know, understated power, which I think, you know, we tried to let the whole album resonate with, and that felt like a centerpiece for us. But again, it was one of those pieces we knew we wanted to record, but it just never seemed to happen, did it? We tried, I think, a couple of times and it never really felt right. And I’ve learned over the years that you can’t force those moments. You have to wait for them however painful it is and however nervous you might get that you haven’t got that thing, you know, you need for an album. And again, it was the last third, wasn’t it?

01:31:46

Pretty much. We were into the last week, definitely.

01:31:49

It was the last week and we hadn’t got it. We didn’t quite know what it was going to be yet. And we just started playing, didn’t we, along. And I had this idea of it feeling like a kind of, dare I say, like a dub song, like kind of, you know, almost Lee Scratch Perry thing, you know, and that energy, that kind of like rolling energy of Jamaican music, which I was lucky enough to grow up on playing and listening to and playing a lot. And it was such a kind of peculiar marriage of worlds. But it seemed to fit. And then we had this feeling and Thien Y, the drummer, great drummer of the band, just like jumped on that idea and loved that music too, as did I. And then all of a sudden we had this world created that we’d never expected. And as soon as we got that, I think we all just…

01:32:49

It just fell into place.

01:32:50

It was like, okay, we now know where it goes to. We know the energy that it builds towards because it just was living alone. It was a piano and a vocal and we knew it wasn’t just that, it had to be more. And then we had another one of those nights where we lay on the ground at what, like three in the morning, something like that, three or four, and just listen to you. And we all, some people fell asleep. Do you remember that? A little bit of snoring going on. It definitely wasn’t me either. But we were like some brothers lying on the floor, some lay friends, and we were all lying there and just listening to you, just intently listening to you. And then I remember there was just a take, wasn’t there, where it all just came together. And again, I think there was a lot of emotion in the room and the whole room just lit up and just felt so beautiful. So we built it around that take and then went into a live take. But really, I think, again, it’s not just about how the song was recorded. I think really the sentiment was always the powerful element, the don’t wait. I mean, that’s really the answer to it all, isn’t it?

01:34:14

Yeah, so Brother Phap Linh, tell us about how this, I mean, the meaning of it for you, how it came about, what it tells us?

01:34:24

So it happened, so it came, I mean, the first part of the song came to me not as a song, in a sense, it was a feeling. I wasn’t trying to write a song. I mean, I was on a solo retreat, I was actually supposed to be writing a book. I wasn’t really writing the book. But I was meditating a lot and I was in some kind of space of, yeah, awareness of suffering and trying to be with it. And then something just came and it was in the form of a melody and I had a few words. And it was just the first two lines, you know, don’t, you don’t need to wait. You don’t need to wait anymore because love’s already here. And every time I tried to say, and I would turn on my phone and like try to record it as a voice memo. And I didn’t have a piano, so I was like strumming the chords on my cello is all I had. I’m trying to record it in the phone. And every time I got to that line, love’s already here, I would just sob. I couldn’t even record it because it was just the feeling was so strong, the truth of it, that I didn’t have to be anything different, that I didn’t have to solve anything or change anything to be loved, to be loved, to be love and be loved and love myself and accept myself. And just, it’s not even really that though. It’s, I don’t know, it’s more primal than that. It’s just this feeling that even with all of the pain and confusion in the world, it’s okay. It’s okay right now. And it was so clear somehow in that melody and those words. And it was just every time I would sing, it would just hit me and I would just be like, I have all these voice memos of me just kind of getting to that line.

01:36:14

That’s the second album.

01:36:17

And I could never get past that line because I would just sob. So it took, I don’t know, it was like a year or more and that’s all I had. I just had this little stub of a song. And then I was on another kind of, you know, I’d asked permission from the brothers to take a bit more time to work on the book again. And I was actually driving to an appointment somewhere. And suddenly the whole second half of the song just dropped into my consciousness. And I had to bring the car over to the side of the road and just park in the grass and mud. And I got my phone out and I managed to kind of yell the second half of the song into the phone. But I didn’t, it was so strange because it didn’t seem to connect. But I knew that it was the second half of the song. But I didn’t know how it was the second half of the song, but I knew that it was. So anyway, so then eventually, I don’t know, more months passed. And I got back to Plum Village and I had some time and I sat at the piano. And I managed to sort of piece all the bits together. And again, like yell it into my phone, kind of hammering the chords out on the piano. And then the thing with Jack came about. Because at that time the project wasn’t happening. It was only later. And I thought I’d already sent everything that I thought was a song that could be recorded on the album. I had already sent. And Jack kept texting me back and he was like, have you got anything else? And I’d be like, no, no, everything else is a draft. And I don’t know, I’ve got some things, but they’re not finished. And he’s like, no, brother, have you got anything else? Send me something else. So eventually he had to force me to send it to him because I just thought it wasn’t good enough. And then when I sent him that, suddenly I got this message back. And he was just like, brother, this is it. This is the song. We’re going to record this song. And I was like, what? But it’s a mess. It’s all over the place. And I had this big block around it because I didn’t want to sing it. Because I thought, I’m not a singer. I don’t know how to sing. I almost don’t, I had this idea that I don’t like the sound of my voice. I can’t sing. I sing out of tune. I’m not trained. So I finally accepted, if we’re going to do it, okay, we can do it. But somebody else has to sing it. So I even went to the point of inviting Zach. So Zach Foley is a dear friend practitioner, long time practitioner in our community in the US. And we flew him over from the US basically to sing that song. Because I didn’t want to sing it. So I was like, I need Zach. He’s a professional singer. He can do it. He’s got to come over and do it. And he and I have just a real bond of brotherhood and trust. And I just love and trust him as a musician. And so I was really confident that he would be able to do it. But Jack kept saying, no, brother, you’re going to do it. You’re going to sing. You have to sing it. And I kept resisting. And I think that’s also partly why we…

01:39:09

Sounds like your relationship.

01:39:11

You know, it’s like fighting him on everything. And we couldn’t, that’s why it didn’t come together as well for a long time. Because I was just like, no, no, Zach has to do it. I can’t do it. But, you know, Jack was very insistent. And so finally it got to this 3am session and Jack, I think, yeah, you just had this ability. And you have this ability to create safety and trust where finally I could just be at the piano and sing and not be afraid, you know. And for me, it’s terrifying. Because as a musician, I’m all about training. It’s like, if you haven’t trained it, you’re not allowed to do it. You know, to do something that I have no, like zero training in, singing and songwriting, actually. You know, I mean, writing a symphony for orchestra is one thing. But writing a song is a totally different thing. And I had no idea how to do it. Writing lyrics? I don’t know how to do any of those things. But that’s the beauty of it. It’s actually that not knowing is the way. It’s like, I have to not know, actually, in order for something new to happen, for something unknown to emerge. I have to not know. And I think that’s why I really connect so deeply with Jack. And like his whole ethos and his approach is just creating the safety and the courage to not know. To really not know. And to risk not knowing. And to keep risking it. And to keep going to the edge of that. And allowing that to, whatever that is, to emerge from that space. So yeah, I just have huge gratitude. And then like in the second half of the song, the way the bass part came in and the drums and just the whole vibe and the beat. Because I was also stuck with that. I didn’t know how to finish it. I knew that it had to grow and build, but I didn’t know how. And so that’s the beauty of the collaboration as well. Because as a classical composer, I would… It’s like the whole culture is you have to be the author. You have to write every single detail yourself. And you are in command and control of every aspect of it. And then everybody executes what you have written. Your vision. But this is totally different. So you come with a sketch. It’s kind of unfinished. It’s kind of raw. Somebody gives you the confidence and trust to go with it because they understand and they feel your vision even though it’s incomplete and rough. And then out of that, Jack comes in with his musicianship. Brother Thien Y comes in with his musicianship. Zach did sing the second half of the song. So he comes in in the second half with this glorious, smooth, joyous, warm and loving tone. And then something so much more emerges out of the collaboration and sharing and togetherness. So that’s for me. Yeah, just such a privilege to get to learn, to do music in a completely new way for me.

01:42:20

Beautiful. So let’s listen to the next song, which is Recommendation.

01:42:27

[SONG]

01:46:10

So, Brother Phap Huu, tell us what is it that would help our listeners to more deeply understand this?

01:46:19

Well, when the first time I heard that being played back, I cried. Because we hear Sister Chan Khong’s voice and how authentic she is in reading a poem that is so powerful that our teacher wrote so many years ago about how to face the beast in humans. And it’s still so relevant to today. It’s still a very deep practice that man, human, is not our enemy. It is the ignorance. It is the hatred. And the message of it is like, even if we get hated, we get stepped on, our smile of compassion is still worthy. And when you hear it being read in such an authentic, I would say a bodhisattva, someone who has given their whole life to the service of bringing love to suffering. And that is, I can say, my sister, my Dharma elder sister, Sister Chan Khong. It’s just so tender and so raw. She was also allowed to enter into such a raw place. And when we were doing this album, of course, Sister Chan Khong is such a wonderful voice. She’s a performer, an amazing performer. And she has been accompanying our teacher since her youth as an activist, a peace activist. And she would accompany Thay to the US, to France, North America, Europe, all around the world. And Thay would be giving a speech about the suffering of the war. And Sister Chan Khong would come up and sing a song, a melody in Vietnamese. The melody touches people’s hearts, even though they may not understand the words. And she continued this even as a nun. Wherever we would go with our teacher, he would give a talk, a public talk for like maybe 4000, 2000, however many people, even 100 people. He would always invite Sister Chan Khong up to end the session with a song. So it was so sure that we will have a day to record Sister Chan Khong. Brother Spirit, Jack, Brother Thien Y, and others were in the room and just… Like Brother Thien Y always shares, like, I can’t believe I just jammed with Sister Chan Khong. And I think we have a recording of her for six hours. But what we chose was just a few minutes. And hopefully maybe one day this becomes a long project in itself because we were able to record her speaking poetry, sharing stories around poems that our teacher would write and that she would sing. And then just melody that she would sing. But as the process of letting go is really important for this album, to have an arc, to have a story and the feeling of it. But we knew we needed her voice in it because of the nature of impermanence. Our elder sister is elderly now. And to have a moment to share a joyful project, which she was so excited about. And I think part of it was just seeing and feeling her energy was, it felt like worth it. Like this, even if an album doesn’t come out, this is worth it. It was just like, you can say music connected the generations that were in this space together. And the multicultural that was represented in that space and the different of understanding of our teacher. There are those who are in the room who have never met Thay in their lifetime. But she was with him for so many years. So it was just this, the music brought all of us together. And it was so beautiful because we really like it was the microphone and her. And everyone else, we were just supporting. And there’s a very sweet moment of Brother Spirit teaching her one of his song that he wrote, Oneness, which also didn’t make the album. But it was in that moment, I just learned you can just see the heart of a learner, which is one of the characteristic of Zen that she was just so eager to learn the song. And it was so cute watching her learn it. And it was just like, this is it. This is life, you know, but you don’t know. And I think like this really the spirit of this album was almost like the unknown and being able to end with Sister Chan Khong. And at the end, in the track, if you really just let the silence continue, then you start to hear the church bell, which was accidentally recorded in one of our recordings… That church bell is our neighbor, the church is a neighbor to the temple, the monastery. And that church bell that was ringing was accidentally recorded.

01:51:45

That was in the first recording, actually the piano part of Cloud Never Dies.

01:51:51

Yes. And the recording of the church bell. And then a way to end in a lot of our tradition is listen to the sound of the bells and hear the church bell instead of monastery bell. But here I think melody transcends religion and beliefs and hear what we’re offering is tenderness and truth in a way. So it felt, when we were looking for it for also a moment, which part of Sister Chan Khong were we going to use? It was an ocean because we have six hours. And I think you found it, Jack.

01:52:27

It was random.

01:52:28

Random.

01:52:29

Totally random.

01:52:31

He just clicked it. We all listened and we’re like, this is it. That was it.

01:52:36

In flow.

01:52:37

Yeah, that’s the plan. Difficult to do that.

01:52:43

It’s the plan, but you can’t plan for it.

01:52:46

But the other thing about that track is that the poem that Sister Chan Khong read has been set to music by Christian monks back in the 60s. So when Thay was doing his peace work in the US, he visited a Christian monastery and the monks there were really moved by his poem. So they set it to music. And it’s a song that’s really popular in our community called Alone Again. But somehow, Sister Chan Khong wanted to sing it in Vietnamese. And then we just asked her randomly just to say, oh, could you just read it, read the poem in English so we have the translation in case? And because we were all like… the scene, I just wish we could have videoed it, capture it, because there were so many people in the room. And we were just everywhere, just like all around, sitting around on the floor, just packed into every crevice. There were just brothers and sisters and lay people. And everyone was just like in this reverent silence, just listening to Sister Chan Khong, like sitting at the knees of your grandmother, you know? And she’s sharing all of her whole heart, her whole being, like all of her years of activism and service are just in every… And her love and her connection with Thay, you can hear it in every tremor of her voice. But as she started to read the poem, I started like picking out the melody of the song, on the piano. But it was kind of this terrifying moment of like, I’m not even sure if I remember it or if I know the chords. And, you know, and then like somebody’s on the guitar and Thien Y is like finding the beat on the drums. And it all just happened by magic and nothing went wrong because it’s just once. It’s like you don’t get to do that again. And we got it, but we didn’t even know that we had it until Jack did his magic.

01:54:37

No, no magic at all. It’s completely random. I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.

01:54:46

So just before we finish, Jack, when we were just starting, just before we started recording, we were thinking of tracks to play. And you were very keen to play the track by the Vietnamese sister, which in English is called Dear Thay. And I’m going to let Phap Linh pronounce it in Vietnamese, or Phap Huu…

01:55:08

Thay Oi.

01:55:09

Yeah, thank you. That avoided me a bit of embarrassment.

01:55:12

By Sister Tu Hieu.

01:55:14

Thank you. That’s something else, I wouldn’t have been able to say. Jack, let’s just listen to that.

01:56:07

[Song in Vietnamese]

02:01:29

So Jack, why was it important for you to want to pick this song?

02:01:37

The first time I visited Plum Village, we had, I think I mentioned earlier, had a meeting, talked about intentions. And then we went down to the foot of the hill where the lake is. And very naturally, the monastics started singing and playing songs. And it was really beautiful when I got to, at last, really understand how pivotal music was to the monastery and really feel it. You know, you can listen to a recording, but there’s nothing like being sat hearing someone. And after about half an hour, it must have been this song started being played. And I just remember that it was one of those moments