The Way Out Is In / In the Footsteps of the Buddha (4/6) | Fourfold Sangha: The Living Community (Episode #105)

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Dear friends, welcome to this fourth episode of our special series In the Footsteps of the Buddha.

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I’m Jo Confino, a leadership coach and spiritual mentor.

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

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And, dear listeners, if this is the first time you’re joining our pilgrimage, we’re on a 14-day trip in the footsteps of the Buddha, following the journey of the Buddha and really understanding the teachings from their origination. What is the historical context of them and what makes them still so important today?

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The way out is in.

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Hello, I’m Jo Confino.

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And I am Brother Phap Huu.

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And we are in Vaishali in India. And today we are going to explore the latest leg of our journey, which was… We went to visit Vulture Peak, and now we’re in the ancient town of Vaishali. And this is where the Buddha did one of his most revolutionary acts, which was the ordaining of the first nuns. But before we start, we have a very special guest, we have Sister Tam Muoi, who is joining us on our pilgrimage. And sister, it would be wonderful if you can just introduce yourself to our listeners. So this is the first time we’ve had you on the podcast and I’m sure not the last.

00:02:08

I’m Sister Tam Muoi. Thay translated that as Sister Samadhi. That means Sister Concentration. I’m from the UK originally, but in fact I’ve spent most of my life in France because I came to live in France after my studies. And I’ve been ordained for 13 years and I’m really happy to be here in India.

00:02:35

So sister, you first came as a lay practitioner on this pilgrimage in 2008, and now we’re 2026, and as you say, you’re 13 years as a nun. What is it like to be back on this pilgrimage, and what is different about this trip?

00:02:55

Well, the 2008 trip was a legendary trip. I think we were 12 busses, one bus full of monastics, and of course, Thay. Thay was with us. That was the big difference, although today Thay’s in all of us, so he’s still here. And I think he’s always in India. At that time I was already an OI member. So, we were a core community of OI amongst all these hundreds of people who came. And it was really a legendary trip to be in India with Thay and to see the way that Thay engaged with India, the wonderful things, the extraordinary things like sitting on Vulture Peak but also the difficult things like the children who would come begging. How he engaged, it was just so inspiring. It was like being here with the Buddha. It was very extraordinary.

00:03:59

And how about this time, what feels different now that you’ve been a nun for 13 years? What’s the difference this time?

00:04:08

Big difference is now I’m a monastic. I feel like this is my home. And so visiting, particularly visiting old monasteries and also Nalanda, the university, I felt, as we were wandering around, I suppose back in 2008, it was a bit abstract for me. Oh, this is a ruin. This is an old monastery. Now when I wander around, I think, oh, this is Plum Village, all those years ago. And wouldn’t it be great to have Plum Village as big as this place? And just wandering around, I felt like this is my home. This is a monastery, and this is where we live. It’s very different.

00:04:54

Thank you, sister. So we have Shantum again with us, and Shantum is leading this journey and has been for more than 30 years leading these, as he calls them, retreats on wheels. So Shantum, we visited Nalanda University and then Vulture Peak. And it would be good if you can just give us a bit of historical context, because Nalanda University, for me, it was like… extraordinary that before Oxford and Cambridge, for instance, were even a glint in the eye, here was an extraordinary seat of learning with more than 1800 teachers and 10000 students. Tell us, tell our listeners a bit, what was Nalanda University and what makes it so special?

00:05:48

So, even though the Buddha visited the site where Nalanda is today and in fact gave the Brahmajala Sutra which said, if somebody appraises the Buddha or somebody disparages the Buddha, stay equanimous, it’s one of the first sutras in the sutra books. But it’s more important, I feel, as a place to really honor our ancestors, our ancestral teachers. And you’re right, it started around the fifth century, though the original temple built was built on the relics of Shariputra, the foremost intellectual monk within the Buddhist community. And I have a feeling that the reason they chose that site is because Shariputra had lived there and then died there. And as the temple grew and the monastery grew, it grew into this phenomenal space where we had, it was basically an international postgraduate university in a sort of way. People from Indonesia, Korea, China, the sort of known world at that time. And we would look at it like the sort the development of Mahayana Buddhism especially. So the base would have been a person like Nagarjuna from the second century who may or may not have taught there himself, maybe not, he was from South India, but based on his teachings on what we understand as emptiness or shunyata, the understanding that there is no such thing as which has intrinsic existence and the development of interbeing. Other teachers like Vasubandhu then added the understanding of consciousness onto emptiness. Others like Dignaga added the understand of logic to that. And so these developments took place over five, seven hundred years. And out of that came, we called them the Nalanda Masters, but also people like Padmasambhava, who then went to Tibet and became Guru Rinpoche, was a teacher there. People went to Indonesia. So the whole development of Buddhism as it went out of India also emanated from Nalanda. And of course, our own tradition, which we call the Yogachara school, the manifestation-only school, developed from there. And the famous Chinese chronicler, Xuanzang, came in the 7th century, became a student and then teacher there, and then took 637 or 657 texts back to China, to Xi’an, translated them, and that became the base of how that strain of Buddhism came to Vietnam, to Thay, to Thich Nhat Hanh, and how me, as a student of Thich Nhat Hanh, in a way brought it back, well, I can’t say I brought it back to India, but at least I’m a student now of that Nalanda tradition, but through teacher who got it through China and Vietnam. And then, of course, he also taught in the West. So, I feel we owe a great debt to our ancestral teachers in Nalanda. And, of cause, to Shariputra and the other great teacher, Mahamoggallana, who were two young men who made a vow that they would follow a spiritual path. And whenever they found a teacher, they would go together and follow that teacher. And when they found the Buddha, they said that is the one they were looking for.

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So we’ve done Nalanda University and then we went to Vulture Peak. Brother Phap Huu, so why was Vulture Peak important to the Buddha and to Thay and what was your experience? Because it’s very easy just to use the words in the footsteps of the Buddha, but actually, you know, the places like Vulture Peak, we were literally in the footsteps of the Buddha. There’s not a hundred pathways up, there’s a pathway up the mountain. And we walk that pathway. And so it’d be lovely just to sort of get that sense of what it really felt like for you, again, coming this extra time to be walking on the path of the Buddha. Here you are, a monastic, 2600 years later, walking those same footsteps to these same places. Where these great teachings arose. Just what does that feel like for you?

00:10:16

For me, it felt like the merging of the past and the present. What I’ve understood is that Vulture Peak was one of the Buddha’s favorite places to see the sunset, and he would take time to be up there to just witness the miracle. And in the stories of the Buddha and in sutras, it speaks of the Vulture Peak, and for our teacher Thay, I know very concretely he loved the Vultures Peak. He chose that place to ordain his first monastic students in the West, which were all three women: Sister True Emptiness, Sister True Virtue, and Sister Chan Vị. And the three of them were ordained there, their heads shaven there, and Thay chose to do it in India as also that gratitude to the land, to the ancestors that are there. And being with Thay, he is someone who has always, not through poetry and not through just the mind of intellect, but to bring in these insights into reality, to make it concrete. We’re going to go to a historical place, and Thay is going to ordain his first students in the West, in India. And that is also to ask for the strength of the Buddhas and the sanghas from the past to witness his determination, his aspiration for creating a new order of monastics. I remember in 2008, we spent an afternoon there, as well as we spent a whole day there. So Thay told Shantum, not asked Shantum, told Shantum, that we’re going to spend a whole day with 12 busses on Vulture Peak. We’re going come before the sunrise, and we’re gonna leave after the sun has set. And It was my first time getting to do kind of like a camping trip with Thay, in a way, and I just remember his excitement. His excitement of letting his students enjoy the richness of this mountain. And we were up there with over 200 of us, 280-ish of us. We brought a hammock for Thay, I brought a lot of tea, because this is his most favorite way of celebrating. And the organizing team organized food to be delivered, and it was Dawali, and it would be very difficult to get food, so the organizing team with Shantum had to ask for our friends who are Muslim to deliver the food, because they’re not celebrating that holiday. So there was a lot of behind-the-scenes going on, but I think it was very worth it, because we spent the day there, as the Buddha and his students would spend the day there. And with 280 people, there was no toilet up there. So Thay told everyone, this is it. We’re gonna do it just like how the way Buddha and his students were. And I feel it’s important to be in discomfort, too, like in our privileged world with running water, toilets always available, and just to really come back to nature and to see that we need to find a spot, we have to be aware. Can people see us? There’s a lot of mindfulness in action right there and right then. And then after we have, especially go number two, to be respectful, to then take leaves and to cover it. So for me, that was very special. And I was on guard whenever Thay needed to use the restroom. I would stand there to make sure no one’s peeking, if for whatever reason they’re peeking. And Thay was always very discreet and he would motion to me and I know, okay, we need to go, to return back to nature. And what was also very special was we held a ordination for the order of interbeing. And there was only one gentleman that received that, but it was very beautiful because whenever we hold this ceremony, we’re in the Mahayana tradition, and in the Vietnamese tradition, our day-to-day robe is brown, but when we do the ceremony, we would put on our sanghati, which is of orange, yellow, golden, all mixed together, and that is the lineage, the heritage of the Buddha’s robe. And all of the monastics, we were sitting with Thay in our order of ordination at Vulture Peak. And I really felt like this is the Buddha Sangha. And the most powerful moment is sitting in silence. Thay gave us a lot of free time to be together, to sing, to have conversations. Thay would sit on the hammock. And from time to time, he would tell me, he’s like, this is how the Buddha enjoyed it, my student. Just, this it it. This is how simple life could be and how profound it could be. And at the end, collectively, we would just sit in silence and to watch the sunset. And Thay said, this is the same sun that the Buddha saw. This is the the same sky that the Buddha saw. The sounds of the birds, the monkeys, these are the descendants from different generations and even some of the trees. So we are not just experiencing, but we are also expanding our mind to bring the Buddha’s community into our present moment. And for me, particularly this time, it’s my favorite sunset I’ve ever witnessed, and what was profound was I haven’t been missing Thay on this trip, but when the sun arrived right at the mountain and it was coming down, this well of emotion manifested and I just missed him so much because I knew like he loved, this is his television, the only television that he would watch and he would enjoy so deeply and so I just felt his presence so real and the sun, the mountain and I just, I saw Thay, then I saw like the Buddha coming together, entering into the sangha that was, we were all on that peak, on the Vulture Peak. And I had goose bumps even, and I just naturally joined my palms. In our tradition, when we join our palms, it’s not just a devotional act, but it is the coming together of body and mind and spirit. And it’s helpful to have a formal practice in that moment to hold everything. And I felt I needed to hold that experience. And just vows just came forward. It was the first time I experienced vows and feelings, not in words. It was just feelings of gratitude, feelings of determination, feelings of commitment were just so present. And that was profound and renewing.

00:19:29

Thank you, brother. And it’s so interesting that, and you talk about words, and when we move out of the intellect into the visceral experience of things, how different that is that you can talk… And that’s why we’re doing this podcast, because we want to bring a sort of flavor of this journey, and also to recognize that to fully experience it, you have to be present. And I had this experience on top of Vulture Peak when I took a photo, and we should actually use it on the promotion for this episode, but I took picture of you sitting there from behind, just as the sun was setting. And I couldn’t really differentiate you from the mountain. And it was this really beautiful moment because in the practice, there’s often like sitting like a mountain, feeling this stability and feeling this sort of groundedness. And at that moment when I took that photograph, I felt that you were a mountain. And it was a really beautiful sort of moment to say, actually, I’m not thinking about what it feels like to be a mountain, but I’m experiencing you as a mountain which was wonderful. Also, I think it’s the first time in a hundred plus episodes that we’ve had mindfulness in defecation. So that’s good too. We’ve got that one out of the way. Number two is done. So, Vulture Peak, and then we went from Vulture Peak the next day to Vaishali. And Shantum, this is, you know, we’ve talked a few times, but it’s worth keep reminding ourselves that the Buddha was an extraordinary revolutionary of his time. And then Thich Nhat Hanh, Thay, was a revolutionary in his time, and what was incredible about this moment in Vaishali was that the Buddha ordained his first nuns. And it would be really good, Shantum, if you can just give us a sort of a sense of this was not normal, this was no ordinary, this was an act that actually revolutionized Buddhism. Can you give us the sense of what was going on at that moment? And also it’s true that the Buddha was careful about this. He didn’t say, yes, let’s do it. It was a momentous decision because it would create a lot of opposition, because at that time it was extremely patriarchal. Women could not be monastics. They were very much secondary citizens and the Buddha very skillfully brought them into the fold.

00:22:18

I’d like to just pick up a little bit from what Brother Phap Huu was saying about Vulture Peak and Thay, because when we went to 1988, Thay spent five days there. When I was organizing it, people said, nobody spends even a night there, they go from Bodh Gaya and come back. And Thay wanted to spend there. Then when we spoke there, he said, this is where my Buddha eyes opened. And I feel for our whole sangha, that’s a sacred mountain, and when the Buddha offered one of the teachings, which is called the Flower Sermon, where he just picked up a flower, and Mahakasyapa got awakened in silence, he was considered the first Zen master, so that whole tradition of Zen starts there. And then we have the Heart Sutra, which we chant regularly, which was supposed to have been given there. So, this tradition is very, very important and the mountain is an important aspect for many, many things, not just the teachings, but also as a witness of non-cooperation with the nastiness of politics that was happening in the country at the time. But it’s important to remember that the Buddha was always contextual. And on the last journey, when he leaves from Vulture Peak to come to Vaishali, the king’s minister approaches him and says that the king wants to invade Vaishali. And that’s a republic. And how can we do it? And the king says, Buddha has never lied, so listen carefully. And so in that process, the Buddha says seven things, which are about the Republic of Vaishali, the first republic in the world. And very briefly, the seven arm, that do people meet and discuss things regularly? And they say they do. Are the decisions in harmony? And they say, yes, the decisions are made in consensus. Do they respect the laws? And yes, they respect their traditional laws and each time the Buddha says, oh, these people are very strong, they cannot be defeated. And do they listen to their elders and say, they care for their aged and they respect their elders. And do the people not oppress the power, the powerless and the poor? And they said, no, they take care of people and they protect women. And do they listen and act according to the advice of monastics? And again, it’s said that they do and they respect monastics very much. And then the minister goes off. But what the Buddha does is he takes those principles of the republic and then ask Ananda, Ananda his attendant, please call the monks, I want to share something. And he develops what is called the principle of non-regression, which is given to the monastics, which is still used now. And he says the monks should meet every fortnight on the new moon and full moon, there should be concord and harmony in the meetings, so every decision should be made with asking everyone if everyone agrees, a consensual model. They should live according to the precepts, they should listen to the elders in terms of the monastics who have been ordained before them, not just by physical age. And they should lead a simple life. Monks should be quiet and calm, and they live in mindfulness. So it’s interesting how he took that governing model of a republic and then brought it into the sangha. And this can be also done for corporations, for any workplace and even for your home. So I think to secularize or bring it into a more everyday context, the Buddha was using an everyday context to bring it to the monastics, but then also bringing from the monastics to us. And the monastical tradition is the oldest continual organization, if you can call it that, in the world, because it has inbuilt into it systems of building harmony and conflict resolution, etc. But I bring this up because actually this was done just before he comes to Vaishali. He walks from the Vulture Peak to Vaishali for his last rain retreat. But Vaishali actually is incredibly important to us because the first nuns were ordained there. In fact, when Thay came in 1987, he said we should start a center here. And I came and lived there for some weeks trying to find land and, you know, it didn’t happen at that time. He was keen on a Plum Village then. We’d had a Plum Village in Vaishali. Now we have a Plum Village in Dehradun, but it’s still India. So, the context of the time, and India has always been patriarchal in its modeling, and a woman’s role is often linked to a man, whether it’s a wife of a husband, the mother of a son, the daughter of a father, and the identity of a woman has been always a sort of connected one to a men. His father died, his mother now had no connection. Her two sons had both become monks. She’d always been interested in these teachings, but at this point she says to the Buddha, I’d like to be a nun. And the Buddha refuses three times. And then he comes down to Vaishali. This is in Kapilavastu, his father’s died. So this is where he spent his childhood, in the north. And she then shaves her hair, comes down with, what we said, 500 women from the Shakya tribe, which is her tribe, and the tribe she’s married into. And comes down and Ananda, the attendant, sees this group of women and he recognizes them, says, you know, they have sort of torn feet and dusty, their clothes are dusty. And says, what are you doing, Queen Prajapati? She was the queen. And she said, I’ve come to get ordained. And the Ananda is very, very skillful because he knows that she’s been refused three times, but the queen is determined. She’s basically the Buddha’s mom, I mean, foster mother, you can imagine coping with that kid when he was a kid. So she doesn’t go directly again. So Ananda goes then to the Buddha and says, do you think women can be awakened, can attain arhatship? And there are four stages of that in the text. And he says, yes, they can. And then he says well, you know, why are you refusing your mother? He is called a mother because his own mother died within eight days of his birth. So she became, she was actually the sister of his birth mother, so she brought him up. She said, why are you refusing your mother? And she’d also given him milk. She said, she gave you mother’s milk. Give her the Dharma milk. Now, you know, that’s pretty strong persuasion, so the Buddha thinks about it and I think partly even the first refusal is partly that because society is so strong. He knows, as you said, that there’s going to be come back and there’s gonna be, you know, women leaving their husbands from abusive relationships but also from the aspiration awakening. There’s both. I mean… It’s not that everyone’s coming straight for awakening, but there’s also this reason that we want to leave the homes and they’re the mainstays of homes. There’s going to be a lot of criticism. But he takes a daring step and says, yes, according to some texts, it says that he gives them eight rules, which would sort of, in a way, be skillful to say to the society that yes, but, and yes. So we have different versions by those who put in those eight rules are put in later or not. But in essence, Queen Prajapati says, yes, the doorway is now open to us, we walk in, and that’s how the lineage of nuns developed. And I really feel that it is not just a revolutionary act, but an act of recognition of us as human beings. The Buddha was recognizing everyone as a human being, there was no gender discrimination, you know, this is that. And I think that today there’s been a struggle in many traditions of Buddhism to renew the order of nuns, and we’ve regressed in some way, not in the Plum Village tradition. The Plum Village tradition, I feel is really a revolutionary tradition, and maybe Sister Tam Muoi will be able to develop on that, on how it is to be a nun in our community, because I really feel that I’ve seen how many, many traditions still have women as a sort of second grade and as Brother Phap Huu said, the first three, three most senior people in our tradition are nuns. And in many traditions, a nun is not supposed to be even a teacher monk, but here our senior most teachers are nun. So I feel that the Plum Village tradition has really moved. I feel India, to bring the Buddha Dharma back to India, it is very, very important to renew the tradition of nuns and our tradition is very well situated for that because in many of the Theravada traditions, the nuns are not there or lesser than. So I think if you want to renew the Buddha Dharma in India, we need the nun’s order and we need our nuns to come and live here so they can inspire young women in India. Like we saw yesterday at Vaishali, we saw hundreds of women at the site in Vaishali, articulate, eager, really inquisitive young women from a school called Notre Dame Academy in Patna. And they just would be eager, and even one or two of them might take this path of following what I feel is the greatest wisdom culture of India and a doorway for women to be liberated.

00:32:32

Thank you, Shantum, and you suggested I ask Sister Tam Muoi the question of, sister, 2600 years ago the Buddha ordained the first nuns, first female monastics, and you are in 2026, the continuation of that stream. And so, visiting Vaishali yesterday, if the Buddha had not taken these actions, who knows, maybe it would still be very patriarchal, there would be no female monastics. What did it feel like for you to be present there and also just feeling that continuation of time from the past into the present? How does that feel for you, to be allowed to, within the Plum Village tradition, to be seen as equal to the monks and to break that patriarchal system?

00:33:35

The first thing that comes to mind is that if the Buddha hadn’t ordained women, I wouldn’t be in this tradition anyway. I wouldn’t t even be here, whether it’s a lay friend or a monastic. I wouldn’t be interested if this was a tradition just for men. When I was in Vaishali yesterday, I was very, very humbled because I gave a little sharing. And I really had that imposter syndrome, who am I to be speaking in this historic place where so many of the female ancestors, this is where they were allowed to join. My heart right now just feels so full that because of what happened back then, because of the Buddha’s deep understanding, his daring, because as Shantum was saying, to take that decision, he knew he was going to bring so much conflict and there was already some jealousy and backstabbing going on because of the popularity of, yeah, this new tradition. And the Buddha was attracting so many monks, all these young men leaving home was causing some difficulty. And yet, he decided to also take this huge decision to ordain women. And I thought, wow, I want to follow this person. It’s so inspiring. And then Thay as a continuation, our tradition, I feel proud to be part of this tradition that is so empowering for women. And as Shantum mentioned, just as we arrived at the site of Vaishali, it was so lovely because we arrived in this very sacred site, this sort of large, open archeological site, and it was filled with all these young women chattering and alive and vibrant young women. And I thought, this is so appropriate. They were coming from a girls’ school. And yeah, I just thought the female energy is already present here, which was very beautiful. And it also made me think of in Plum Village, in Lower Hamlet, where I’m based, when I first ordained, we had many sisters who perhaps were trained in more traditional temples. And they tended to be, well these were our Vietnamese sisters, they were quite quiet and maybe many didn’t speak such good English and very humble and perhaps feeling that they should defer to their brothers. But now we have so many Gen Z sisters and they speak out, they speak wonderful English, we communicate all together, they step up. And I’m just so proud of our international female sangha, our nuns. And it makes me think as well of when, shortly after I was fully ordained to become a bhikshuni and therefore allowed to join those meetings of our bhikshuni council, and this is where all the decisions for Lower Hamlets are going to be taken. Before, when you’re a novice, you don’t yet come to those meetings. Which is fine, because already when you’re a novice you’re getting used to the change of becoming a nun, which certainly for a Western young woman is quite a conversion that needs to be done. But then when you get to go to that bhikshuni meeting, that is where we’re going to decide everything that happens in our hamlet. And I was fully expecting that all I’ll be told just listen, don’t say anything for the first two years, I’m gonna have to really keep my mouth shut and listen. But Sister Chan Duc, our elder sister, she said to us, when you go to that meeting, she said, I never want to hear that when you leave that meeting you didn’t speak out what you wanted to speak. She said, from your first meeting, you can speak out and say what you need to say, contribute, participate. And I was so amazed. I felt so empowered. I thought, wow, this is amazing. And then she said, and if you feel that what you’ve contributed is not heard, that your idea, it’s not possible to put that in place yet, she said don’t stop there. It means that you haven’t been skillful enough. So the next time, you can reflect on it and think of ways to present this more skillfully, to look at your idea, to be more skillful, and come back again. And I thought, oh my goodness, I feel so empowered that we all have the right to speak out. Yeah, I felt a lot of gratitude to my elders for this.

00:39:07

And sister, what is it, you know, as Shantum said, there are still some lineages where women are not allowed to be ordained. So it’s almost a stupid question because I know the answer already, but what difference does it make to have Plum Village where you have the monks’ residence, you have two nunneries and you bring together this interbeing of the masculine, the feminine, men, women? What difference does it make to have this tradition sort of intermingling and no separation?

00:39:47

I think as probably all the listeners can imagine, it’s so important to have the masculine energy and the female energy. Whenever there are organizations where it’s all male or all female, it is not so great. We’re so complimentary. And of course, our brothers, they have the whole spectrum, a very male energy, and very female energy. There’s a place for everyone. And it’s the same with our sisters. We have sisters that have very strong masculine energy and sisters who have very strong female energy and everything in between. There is a space for everyone and all of those different manifestations of energy contribute to our sangha and it makes it a very healthy place.

00:41:10

Thank you. So, Brother Phap Huu, sort of, Shantum has talked about the Buddha as sort of taking, taking this decision to ordain nuns, knowing that it would be a lot of blowback, that there would be, that it would cause concern and upset within the community. And Thich Nhat Hanh also, as we keep saying, was a revolutionary in the way he allowed nuns to be not just ordained but to be equal because there’s one thing to be ordained but there’s another to be treated on a par with the monks. So can you just give us a sense of what was it about Thay that recognized that actually whatever the consequences that this was his path that he was going to follow regardless.

00:42:06

Thay’s greatest companion and helper is a woman, Sister Chan Khong, Sister True Emptiness. And I think for all the causes and conditions, she was his first student on the path of the manifestation of Plum Village. Without her, I really believe that we wouldn’t have the teacher we had, which is Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. And without her, we wouldn’t have Plum Village. She was as essential as Thay was. So for all of those who we know that this is our tradition, I always give gratitude to Sister Chan Khong. When Thay passed away and transitioned, the first person I called was Sister Chan Khong, because the grief that I’m feeling, I don’t think could be compared to the grief that Sister Chan Khong is holding in that moment. So Thay, as a very smart man, he knows that the harmony of energies is so important to success as well as to creation and a living organism. You need all the elements. You can’t cut off one because that’s discrimination. And Thay continues to keep pushing boundaries in the context of Buddhism, of traditions. In a very traditional monastery and temples, the nuns can’t teach the monks. Even today, 2026. If in some of the institutes in Vietnam, in China, still the nuns are on one side, the monks are on the other side. The nuns have to wear another color, the monks have to have another color. Thay unifies all in brown. And then when we come up to chant, Thay is very open. In the beginning, it was nuns on one side, monks on one side, and it was actually Brother Spirit, said, actually, for the harmony of the voices, it’s better if the brothers are at the back and the sisters are at front. And it’s just a blend and it’s helping with the notes and so on. And Thay’s very open, he’s like, yes, let’s do it. And Thay’s openness to also listen to his students is very crucial in knowing the teacher who is Thay. And Thay, he’s always keen to know the suffering of our times. So of course, listen to his nun students. He always wants to allow them to have agency for their life. And in a lot of texts, depending on traditions, it’s always the nuns have to take refuge in the monks. The monks are the elder brother because that order was there before them. And unfortunately, with this, in the old ways, that belief that men is better is still seeped into the culture. And I experienced it in our community also, from different traditions coming to us, that come and join us, as well as when we come to Vietnam or we come another temple that still carries that lineage. And I’m always practicing not to judge and just to embrace, but I can’t hold myself from judging to be very honest. And it just makes my vow even deeper to make sure that in Plum Village, we don’t revert back, but we keep pushing forward. Like, Plum Village has also many eras, like the older generation, who came first and were the first, like Thay’s first students. And the sangha was very young and raw. The kind of formal practices that we have today weren’t there. And it was beautiful, too, because there wasn’t brothers and sisters hamlet yet. So in some seasons, all the monastic would go to Upper Hamlet because we’re offering the summer retreat. So the nuns and monks, we live together. And then some seasons we switch back and forth, but because the monastic aspiration is to live a celibate life and to live a life that we cut off, we transform our sexual energy, our attachment with one another. And we’re all young in this order. Like one of Thay’s merit is that he attracts such young men and women to join this path. And a lot of traditions that are in the West get jealous of Thay, even the churches. When we were in Ireland and we were staying at a monastery, and the elder priests and monks were like, how did you do this, Thay? Why are they so young? All of our orders were on retirement, we’re about to die, and there’s no continuation. And that was Thay’s pride also, that he was able to bring in fresh blood to the body. And as the community started to grow, Thay knew that we have to separate in order to keep our aspiration alive. The monastics from time to time, causes and conditions, do fall in love with one another. And it’s not because of appearance, it’s because of the shared aspiration. Sometimes when you see somebody that you’re so aligned with and you just feel so whole in a way. You know, living the holy life, we have the very humanistic elements in all of us. And we learn to love everyone, not as an individual, like, our practice is not to make that person ours. Thay always reminds us that all of you belong to the Three Jewels. Don’t put that person in your pocket. It doesn’t belong to you. It always belongs to the three jewels. And as a community, Thay ingrained in us respect, that the monks have to respect sisters, and the sisters respect the brothers. But Thay has, it’s just like him reminding us to come back to our breath. Thay keeps reminding the monastic order to remember that we are one and we coexist together to make the living sangha powerful and a place of refuge. I’m just like Sister Tam Muoi, if our community is discriminating and loses that path, I would leave too. I would start a Plum Village 2.0. I’ll call it something else, but I don’t game like this. I wouldn’t because it would erode my aspiration. And I think for me, I still keep that at the forefront and I’m still going to do my best in my lifetime, my lifespan to keep pushing boundaries. And like still today, and I, you know, in this podcast, just to sow the seed, you know, like in formal lunch, for example, because Thay was our teacher, so he always had the bell. But I imagine when we’re in the sisters’ hamlet, the sisters invite the bell, but already, like, in Plum Village, we have already done so much, like a lot of ceremonies, the sisters hold it. In the tradition, the sisters have to invite the monks to come to do it. And the sisters don’t get to be at the high table. It’s not a table, but at the higher position. But in Plum Village, the sisters, when we do incense offering, it’s a brother and a sister. When we touch the earth, we always have representation of the two different elements. So this is important, and I know this is very important for us, young generation, to see that this continues to move forward and push forward. In Deer Park even now, in some sessions, instead of two lines, we make a U. So for those who are non-binary, we can still feel as part of it. And in the past Plum Village, we always say, men on one side, women on one side, now we just say, sit wherever you like. We’re continuing to explore and to push and to be as open as we can. And it’s very educational, too. And we have to understand that a lot of our siblings also don’t come from backgrounds and an upbringing that is more transparent, like I had the chance to be in, and they have to be educated, and we want to take time to share, because our Dharma has to be, you know touching the present moment and touching the present moment, suffering. And this is, this is the teacher’s legacy that he has left behind for us. One of the biggest regret, I would say, one of the biggest regret of Thay’s stroke was, first of all, he has so much more to give to the world. He has so much more. I… He was telling me about the projects he wanted to push forward to bring mindfulness into leadership, into businesses, compassionate leaders who changed the world. So he just finished the happy teachers, the education, and he was ready to really put energy into corporations because it has such an influence. It’s his way of systems change. And he was working on a new revision of the Pratimokṣa, which is the monastic law. Right now, the precepts are in balance. The monks have 250, the sisters have 348. So it’s more than the monks. And that was also prescribed in the Nun’s Order. But with the, in my perception, everyone can have their own interpretation, it’s always in the fear of what society will project so the nuns have to have more rules than the monks. I don’t vibe with that. We’re equal, we all have sexual energy, we all have doubt, we all have anger, we all have frustration, we all have unskillfulness. So Thay was telling me he wants to make the monks and the nuns’ precepts equal. 100 each period. And unfortunately this stroke happened. And… It could have only been him in this era, because he’s so well respected. And they can’t argue with Thay, because Thay is so strong. When we already renew the pratimokṣa that we are reciting today, which is very modern. It talks about the internet, it talks about driving a car, like the old pratimokṣa talked about wearing shoes, about leather or not. And Thay was like, hey, that’s like, that belongs in the museum now, we can respect it every time we do this ordination, but we have to bring the present moment into our times. And already when we renewed that in 2003, there was already a lot of pushback from the traditionals. They said, who is Thich Nhat Hanh to revise the pratimokṣa? And it’s such a humanistic pattern, even during the Buddha’s time. Because when the Buddha was dying, was entering into nirvana, that’s a more skillful way of saying it, Ananda asked the Buddha, who do we take refuge in when you transition? And the Buddha said, the precepts are your teachers. And when time comes, keep renewing the preceps to make it relevant. And in the first gathering, the first magha gathering of his students to reform and to realign all of us because the Buddha is not here anymore, Ananda reports this, and Kassapa, the elder, asks, which precept did the Buddha said for us to change? And Ananda said, he didn’t mention any. So then Kassapa said, if he didn’t, then let’s just stick with this. And that became period. And thousands of years later, it still had that power because the Buddha didn’t tell us which one to change so we don’t change them. And of course, some of the wise of ancestral teachers did evolve them and change them, but each renewal was like hundreds of years later, and Thay was a little bit embarrassed of the tradition about that. He said, look at school, look at the education. Every few years, they renew the textbooks. We have to have that spirit. And even today, when I speak about it, I have mentioned it like about four times in our community because I’m like, I want to sow the seed, I want us to be courageous to be Thay’s continuation. Because in the pushback in 2003, especially in Vietnam, because we are Mahayana and our roots are to Vietnam, they’re like, who is Plum Village and who is Thay to change this? And Thay’s response is, we are the Buddha student and we carry his legacy forward. And I pray, I continue to make vows that we continue to be as courageous as Thay, and we’re still very young and we have to be a little bit more patient to grow our virtual body as a sangha, to have that courage and that harmony, to renew, to allow all of us to feel seen and equal. I think it is important to feel equal. Because the suffering and the habit of the world, it seeps into the way of being. And we have to recite it in a way. We have to say, no, sister, you’re a human being. You have all of the potential to be a Buddha. And it needs to be recited, it needs be encouraged again and again and again. And one of Thay’s most revolutionary in the monastic order is he created this ceremony that the monks would prostrate to the nuns on the first day of the lunar calendar. In no other tradition in Buddhism today that does that. The monks and nuns in the Plum Village tradition, we would come together without our ceremonial robes. We just wear our simple brown robes together. It’s my favorite ceremony because it really makes us feel as one family and it breaks the hierarchy system. And Thay intentionally makes the monk practice first. So all of our sisters would sit and would allow the monks to see them as them, to see us as equal. And there’s a very beautiful text that Thay has written, and it starts off as, when I look at you, I see the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in you. Some of you are of the age to be my mother. Some of your are of age to my daughter. Some of are of the age to be my sister. But nevertheless, we are all students of the Buddha. That’s like, we’re equal. And I see in you the deepest aspiration and I pray and I vow day in and day out to protect that aspiration. And that’s the commitment so that I don’t fall in love with you. So that I can protect that highest vow that you’ve made. And that beauty is the beauty of the three jewels. And then the monks would prostrate to the nuns three times. And then after that, the monks will sit down and the nuns would recite the invocation of Samantabhadra in the brothers. And then they would prostrates to the monks. For me, that’s like the renewal of our visa every year. It’s like, the family renewal. We have to commit to this. And in 2005, Thay’s first trip back to Vietnam, we had the Lunar New Year in Vietnam, and because of Thay’s presence, all of the high venerables were with Thay. And we did the ceremony for the first time in Vietnam and Thay stood up, because Thay stood up, all the high venerables and all the monks stood up. And maybe the first in a long time in Vietnamese Buddhism did the monk community prostrate to the nuns. And I’ll never forget that moment because I saw the tears of the high venerable nuns of how moved they were to be seen, to be respected. I feel that’s a right, that’s a human right for us all to be seen, all to be love, all to be respected for the commitment that we’ve made in this life. And Thay knew what he was doing. He did it from a place of trying to break that separation. And on the way back, walking back to his room, he was very happy. He was very that he was able to do this.