The Way Out Is In / In the Footsteps of the Buddha (5/6) | The River of Life (Episode #106) 

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Dear listeners, welcome to this fifth episode in our special series of the podcast The Way Out Is 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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So dear listeners, this is the 11th day of our 14-day pilgrimage. We’ve traveled from Vaishali to Kushinagar. It’s 6:30 am. I’ve woken up a bit like a grizzly bear with a sore head and I’m looking opposite at Brother Phap Huu and Sister Tam Muoi who look like lotus blossoms that have just opened up to the morning sunlight, fresh as can be. And Shantum, to my right. Shantum Seth, who is leading us on this pilgrimage, who has been doing this for 30 years and has been taking us on a journey, really, that to really understand the life of the Buddha and to really contextualize it and make it relevant to our lives today. So it’s particularly relevant today that we are in Kushinagar, which is the site where the Buddha transitioned.

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The way out is in.

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Hello, dear friends. I’m Jo Confino.

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And I’m Brother Phap Huu.

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So, Shantum, I just want to start with you just to give us, just to settle us into the historical context of this time, where the Buddha after, at the age of 80, been teaching for decades, knows that his time is coming. Just give us a sense of what was going on at that time, and what was the Buddha’s journey to this point?

00:02:32

Thank you, Jo. Good morning, Brother Phap Huu. Good morning, Sister Tam Muoi. Good morning, Ann, who’s helping us. Fortunately, we know quite a lot about the Buddha, even though he lived more than 2,600 years ago, especially because of a sutra called the Mahaparinirvaṇa Sutra, which so chronologically details the last journey from Rajgir via Vaishali to Kushinagar, where he passed away, and then the distribution of his relics. And in that, when we were last at Vaishali, he is not well, and he then leaves, goes further north. The people of Vaishali know that he’s going to die because the Buddha has announced that. And he then turns around, gives them his bowl, and moves on. And he stops at many, many different practice centers along the way. One is called Ambagama, like mango village. One is called Hathi Gaon, which is elephant village. And these are monasteries. These are… There’s one called Plum Village, Jamun Gaon. And he stops there and there are monks there. And he teaches them the Threefold Teachings of Sila, Samadhi, Prajna, precepts of mindfulness trainings, concentration, insight. And then he comes to a place called Bhavnagar. And there he changes his teaching a little bit and says that after I pass away, people will say that this is what the Buddha taught, this was what the Buddha taught. Please come together and compare what you’ve heard me say, and then you can codify both what is called the Vinaya, which are the precepts or the ethical conduct, and the sutras, which are the teachings. And that’s actually what happens later, after he passes away. And then he goes further north and enters what is the kingdom or the Republic of the Mallas. And they have two capitals, Pava and Kusinara. And in Pava, he eats at the home of a blacksmith called Chunda. And unfortunately the food is sort of not good, it’s poisonous, and already he’s not well, and this exacerbates his stomach issue. It’s called Sukara Maddava. We don’t know exactly what it means. Sukara means a pig, and maddava means flour, so it could be like a truffle or a mushroom. My teacher talked about it as a sandalwood mushroom. And then he walks on, quite weak, towards Kushinagar. And when he arrives here, where we are now, he arrives in a forest of sala trees. These are beautiful, strong, tall trees, and this whole forest of them. And he lies down in what is called the lion pose, on his right side, and tells Ananda, his attendant, please go to the town and tell the Malla people that the Buddha is going to transition this evening or tonight. Many, many people come. And at this point, there’s a lot of different nice stories which are worth reading about how he talks to Ananda, how somebody comes to him to say, who is enlightened? And he says, you can be enlightened if you follow the path of the Eightfold Path. And so the first teaching gives in Sarnath, the last teaching he gives here is on the Eightfold Path. And then he wants to watch the beautiful sunset. And here he is dying, but as you said, knowing he’s going to die and consciously dying. When I come to Kushinagar, I always think, how can I die consciously? And he’s telling Ananda, what a beautiful sunset. Isn’t nature so kind to me? The flowers are falling, the sala flowers, which have become red because when they ripen, they’re normally white and they come down like helicopters, seeds. And here’s this man who was about to die and saying, you know, and then he says, to the gathered community there, is there anything unclear about the teachings to overcome suffering and attain liberation? And there’s silence. And here’s the Buddha out of compassion saying, don’t say your teacher was here and you didn’t ask the questions if you had any doubt. Is there anything unclear about the teachings to overcome suffering and attain liberation? And again, there’s silences. That means normally that teachings are well understood. And Ananda said, see, everything is well understood. And Buddha said, you’re saying that out of faith. And the Buddha said a third time, he said, if you’re embarrassed, ask a friend to ask. Is there anything unclear about the teachings to overcome suffering and attain liberation? And again, there’s silence. That means the teachings are well understood and they’re not just monks there, they’re lay people there too. Then he closes his eyes and then he opens them once again and says something which translates to all conditioned reality is subject to decay, strive on diligently, essentially meaning that everything is impermanent, keep up the practice. And then he closes eyes and then moves into what we call the Mahaparnirvana, the great passing. And of course, the reaction of the different people in different ways, somebody beats the ground and tears the hair. Somebody gets very sad, and somebody just sits in meditation and contemplates the Buddha’s teachings on no birth and no death. And for the next, and one of the things he also tells the, when Ananda asks him, what should we do with your body? And he says, it’s not your bother. As monks, your bother is to practice. It is up to the lay people to handle it. And so it takes about seven days and then he’s taken to the pyre, to the funeral pyre. Another great teacher of the time, Mahakasyapa, is coming up. He’s heard that there are 500… He’s heard that the Buddha is going to be passing away so he’s coming up with 500 monks. He arrives, he tells the people of the Malla, please wait till I come. He bears his right shoulder, goes around the pyre three times and lights the pyres. At the end, it’s interesting how the relics of the Buddha, when the fire cools down, different kingdoms send their emissaries to get the relics. And there’s gonna be a war over the relicts of the poor Buddha. And I can imagine the poor brother, if he was looking down wherever he was, thinking… anyway. So, there was a Brahmin donor who says, let’s divide them into eight parts and then they should go into different directions. And one of the things the Buddha said is that on the relics you could put a stupa, which is a sort of mound, an earthen mound, and people could go there. And then he also says that you could go on pilgrimage to the places associated with my life, where I gave my first teachings, where was born, where passed away, and where I was awakened. And that starts the tradition of pilgrimage, which is what we are doing now. So 2,600 years, we’ve been following this path. And so it’s not something just starting. It’s something the Buddha himself says in the sutra. And somebody asked yesterday, why did he come here? And my feeling, and I’ve discussed it with Thay, Thich Nhat Hanh, and we thought that he was actually headed back to where he spent his childhood. And when I look at Thay’s life, I always think If I have to wonder, what is Thay doing? And I think, you know, what did the Buddha do? And then, ah, and when I think that, why did Thay go back to Vietnam? He was ill, it was not easy for him to go, you know, and he went back to Vietnam because I could see how the Buddha was heading back to Kapilavastu, which is where we’re going today. So for me, if the great teaching on no birth and no death is what the Buddha’s teaching was, and as we develop that, we will realize that there were many people asking that question even till today. And that is the great teaching of the Buddha. And I remember once Thay telling me, I used to wear a turban and he would say, the question of birth and death is as urgent as your turban is on fire.

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Thank you, Shantum. It’s interesting that you mention about the Buddha saying, is everything clear and complete? Because I occasionally ask my two sons. I say, I don’t know when I’m going to pass, so I’m not as advanced as the Buddha, clearly. But I say to them, is there anything you want to ask me that is not clear? So if I were to die tomorrow, is there anything that you want to know about your life, my life, my ancestors life, that you would have wanted to ask, but hadn’t? So it’s just very interesting that that sense of when we transition, we do want our lives to complete in some way. So Brother Phap Huu, just taking that on, that sense of completing a life. So it would be great to see what your feeling was coming to this place where the Buddha rested his head. And what that felt like, and of course it’s impossible to see this without also understanding the life of Thich Nhat Hanh. And what I am understanding on this journey is that when you look at the Buddha’s life and Thich Nhat Hanh’s life, you see so many places where their lives almost cross over and where you see them taking a very similar path. So, just a stop, because within what Shantum said, there’s a lot in which we will unpack as we go along. But just give us first impressions of what it was like to be here. I know you’ve been here once before, but what did it feel like this time?

00:12:32

I was very moved yesterday with the whole community visiting the stupa where it is built, where the Buddha lay down. And just being in that place, the only thing to activate is mindfulness. And I really took time just to walk slowly in the stupa where there is a very long statue of the Buddha laying down on the right side. And I walk so slowly because I remember Thay always saying one of his greatest joy is just being able to walk. And near my teacher’s passing was also his inability to walk on his own in the last seven years after the stroke. And a lot of us, we take for granted our well-being, our health. We all have fevers, cough, so on and so forth, but the majority of our body being able to stand up, being able to run, being able to hug, being to cook, being be able to eat, we forget how wondrous these actions are in our daily life. So yesterday, arriving to the historical site with the whole community, we walked in silence. And then where the statue was, I just… like how Thay would ask what the Buddha would do, I would ask what Thay would do. And I just felt Thay is such a master in his walking meditation that that was the appropriate way to be in order to honor this wonderful lineage of mindfulness, concentration and insight. And just coming back to what Shantum just shared with us, it’s my first time understanding that the Buddha asked the whole community three times because that has become the way we make decisions in the community in very formal settings. It’s called a Sanghakarman Procedure. Dear bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, if you agree, please remain silent. If you do not agree, please speak up. And we breathe. Bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, if you agree, please remain silent. If you do not agree, please speak up. Bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, if you agree, please remain silent. If you do not agree, please speak up. And when the silence continues, the facilitator would say, the bhikkhus and bhikkhunis have remained silent, therefore we know the proposal has been accepted. So it’s so beautiful just to connect all of this historical fact. And 2026, in Plum Village, we still practice this. This is our way of conducting a decision, a very large and big decision such as monastics being ordained, big purchases of new monasteries, because it brings the harmony and it makes sure that everybody could have a voice if they do not agree. But we do it even more so we have many more meetings before we come to that one point. But it’s just wonderful just to hear the Buddha’s insight and the Buddha’s love for community in that moment. And reflecting back on Thay’s journey, I don’t think Thay knew that in 2014 he would have such a huge stroke. But there was a collective ancestral land movement that allowed him to start to really prepare us. Because that year, if you remember, the June retreat, the theme was what happens when I die? As well as every six to eight days, I would see Thay. And in May, right before the June retreat, in one of the evenings, I came to his hermitage and we were preparing things. And before we start anything, we always have a cup of tea. That is our culture. Before business, enjoy a cup of tea first. And as we were drinking the cup of the tea, Thay just looked at me and he told he had this dream. In his dream as he was asleep, he was going everywhere to look for a pen and a piece of paper because he wanted to tell his students a message. And when he finally found the pen, he woke up. And he didn’t go back to sleep. He went right to his desk and he just started writing a letter to all of us. It is not rare that he writes a letter to us every year, about two or three, and it’s penned by his handwriting. He never types anything. And then we would photocopy it and send to every monastic. And it is his way of communicating his love for us, like, I see you. Thank you for being my student. Thank you for being part of this community. I know it’s tough. We have so many retreatants. You must feel exhausted. But do you know the transformation that you’re able to offer? So these are like vitamins that we are receiving from the master. So he’s a very skillful, attentive teacher and he always has his finger on the pulse of the community, when to inject love and understanding and care in a very practical way. But when he told me this, he looked at me and he said, I’ve already written three and a half pages. Normally a letter is like one and a half pages or one page or just a few paragraphs sometimes. And he was trying to tell me that there’s so much he’s going to be expressing to us. And then I see him again in a few days and he goes, Phap Huu, 14 pages. And then the next few days, Phap Huu, 25 pages. And I’m like, Thay, are you writing a book? And it’s just this excitement. It’s just like this flow of words of his journey in life to us. And later on, this became his will to the monastic community. And each and every library in the monasteries, we have it. He made it very strict that it’s only for monastics to be read. We have been discussing at one point, maybe we will share it to the world, because it’s his love and understanding of Buddhism. And in the first paragraph, he teaches us about renewing Buddhism. He said that he felt so lucky recognizing that he was born into the tradition of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha because of the spirit of Buddhism, which is openness. And because of openness, he was able to create Plum Village and the teachings of Plum Village. And he also says, well, if I was born with a Christian background, I also would have tried to renew Christianity. But that would have been a much more difficult journey. And I can just feel his, I can see his smile and his smirk a little bit, as in we have to also honor what we have as a heritage. And he goes very in-depth about his suffering. And then he writes about the potentials of suffering and how he was able to come through it and have deeper understanding. So this was his preparation without knowing that he was preparing. And in those years coming towards the end of his life, post stroke, I can share with everyone that Thay really practiced the present moment, because in the present you’re also practicing impermanence. Because there’s only one moment to live and to touch life, and that is the very here and now. And his masterful way of just being in the here and now. It is, it’s so ordinary, but when you’re around him, you feel this extraordinary energy of just being with everyone. He’s able to look at everyone with attention, with care. And when he speaks, people always say, Thay, I feel like you’re speaking to me, but he’s just speaking to everyone. But he has this ability to relate as well as to transmit a teaching that I also believe will continue to be applicable 2,600 years later. And we’re very fortunate that in his era we have these machines, we have this mics, and that we were able to record over 3,000 of his teaching. And it will be available for many of us in the coming month. So this is something that I was able to just touch and experience and invite up yesterday and just to be with also the miracle of life. So when we contemplate the going, we also have to bring up the being so that there’s a balance and we don’t drown into death and the impermanence of us and our loved ones, which could be heavy sometimes. And the meditator is an artist, so when we contemplate that, we also have to then see the insight from that, which is we are here, we are home in the here and now. And someone in our sharing yesterday said that the trip is coming to an end, so right away we’re thinking about what I’m gonna do when I go home. What’s the next part of my journey? And so we’re so programmed in this way, like what’s next, what’s next? But then this person then reminded themself that, but I am here, in India, with the whole community. So it’s so important to keep coming back to the present moment, the Buddha said. Dwelling happily in the present moment is the insight of meditation. And dwelling happily in the present moment doesn’t mean that suffering doesn’t exist anymore. Doesn’t mean that our anger, our frustration are not there. But no matter what the situation is, whether it is loss, grief, frustration, chaos, as a practitioner, we have to have the ability to dwell in the very here and now, and allow ourself to see that wonder, because that wonder is the light that shines through the darkness, the fogs, the chaos.

00:25:08

Thank you, brother. Sister Tam Muoi, I just want to come to you to talk about… So Phap Huu has talked about the present moment and recognizing the movement of time. So the Buddha had three months knowing he was going to die and he had obviously been preparing the community for that. And there’s something, a very strong, and Shantum was saying, he handed his bowl, his alms bowl back to his community, recognizing that this is my one possession which I hand back. And I know that in anyone’s life, when we’re reaching the end of our lives, we want to declutter. We want to put our affairs in order. We want to make sure to the best of our abilities that we leave life clean, that we don’t leave arguments, resentments, suffering behind for the next generation to have to deal with. So it’d be quite lovely actually for you just to talk a bit about that. You know, here was the Buddha preparing for his death. Thay spent a lot of time preparing for his passing. And, you know, it was a godsend in a sense that everyone knew he’d had his stroke and that his life was now limited. And that forced the community to take charge, in a sense, and say, actually, we’re now responsible. We can’t rely on Thay. The Buddha had three months, and so the community had those three months to recognize that the Buddha was passing, and now the responsibility was passed down, and Shantum talked about, are my teachings complete? Because if they are, then it’s for you to practice. So just give us a sense of your experience of the Buddha’s last months and then mingle it with, you know, Thay is preparing. Cause in a sense we all want, you know, sometimes our life ends unexpectedly and shockingly, but if we have the choice and we know our life is coming to an end, how we want to complete that.

00:27:23

I feel we’re so lucky to have received teachings which are appropriate from Thay, from the Buddha as well, but Thay would always ask this question, how can this teaching be made appropriate for now, for our life now? Throughout his whole lifetime, Thay would be teaching us not in a way to give us a lot of abstract concepts and things to learn off by heart, as he had to do when he was a young monk, but always with this question, how is this relevant to my life right now? And maybe I can make this very personal, because I was practicing quite a while as a lay friend, and my own parents were becoming elderly. And thanks to Thay’s teachings, I really spent time to start saying goodbye to my own parents when they were about 85, knowing that every time I saw them, this could be the last time. So with that same feeling of, is there anything else I need to say? Thay would often remind us, we don’t know when our loved ones, or when we ourselves suddenly are no longer gonna be there, so don’t take the people in your life for granted. I was very lucky because my parents, my mother lived to 100, and my dad to 96. And so, in fact, I spent about 15 years saying goodbye to my parents. And so when it came to the time when they passed and I was there when my father passed, I felt everything had been said. And I also remember a senior monk saying that it’s so painful when someone passes if you haven’t said those things. But if you’ve said the things you want to say and you’ve listened and received what the other person wants to say, then when someone does pass, when they transition, there is completion. And I felt that with Thay as well for my own relationship with Thay, in my monastic life, I’d only been ordained for two years, I was a young novice, and normally as a novice you don’t get to move around very much, you stay home, and you’re going through this apprenticeship, this learning, and Thay made a list of monastics he wanted to send to Blue Cliff Monastery in the States, and someone was telling me about this list, and I was only half listening, thinking well, I’m not on that list because I’m a young novice, this is for my elder brothers and sisters. And then they were going through the list and they said, and you’re on that list. I said, what? That cannot be true. And I was on the list, and I was very happy to be on the list. I thought, well, if Thay feels this is good for me to go to the States, that’s great. And I so enjoyed being in Blue Cliff Monastery in upstate New York. And part of that experience that I really welcomed was here was a chance to be in a monastery where Thay wasn’t present. So how does a monastery run itself without Thay being there? They are already independent to a certain extent because I saw in Plum Village to what extent that of course we all rely on Thay if there’s difficult decisions we would go to Thay. His presence was so palpable in Plum Village. But here in Blue Cliff, well, we have to grow up and step up and, yeah, to really take the reins ourselves. So I’d already had that experience, which I found very helpful. And then when I came back to, I think it was during that time that had his stroke and so just through the communications we had with the brothers and sisters, we could see how difficult that was, how difficult for the monastics, well, for everybody, that Thay was no longer speaking and teaching through his voice. But I did feel that being in Blue Cliff, we were on a different journey of we were having to step up already. So that was a good apprenticeship. Then when I went back to Plum Village and Thay was, oh no, when I was in the States actually, Thay had showed that he wanted to come to the States. I think he felt that this was a good place where there’s cutting edge medicine and of course the brothers and sisters and our lay friends, they really supported this, that if there was any chance of Thay getting his voice back, getting the capacity of his body to walk, it would be in some of the great hospitals and with the great medical practitioners. So we got to see him because I was in the States. We got to visit him. But it seemed that after a while, and I could really understand that, I saw that with my parents. When people get old, they get tired, and it was necessary for Thay to exercise a lot, to try this, to try that. And we could see that Thay just wanted to live his last time, he didn’t know how long, peacefully. And didn’t want to have to do all this painful physical exercise, he just wanted to be content and to live his last days in contentment surrounded by the community. So he went back to Plum Village. And so we had time with Thay at that time, just being present for him and him being present for us. And yeah, this was already, the mourning process was already activated. We were already saying goodbye, all of us in our own way. Thay was still there, but we could no longer connect through our voice anymore. So this was all part of the process of the mourning process. But Thay had prepared us for this. And whereas many lay friends were saying, so who’s going to replace Thay? We already knew how to reply, because for years, Thay in his Dharma talks would be putting out that question. So you’re all asking, who will I give the transmission to? And he said, it’s the sangha. You are all going to be continuing me. You already are. Don’t wait for me to die, because you’re already continuing me by the way you walk, by the way you practice, for our lay friends, by the way you show up at the sanga, by practicing the five mindfulness trainings, by coming back to your breathing. You are already my continuation. Don’t wait for me to die. So we’ve been receiving that transmission for many years.

00:35:22

Beautifully spoken sister, thank you. And it’s interesting because as soon as we talk about the death of our parents, so the Buddha was like a father, Thay was like a father, they’re our own parents, that it brings up so much emotion and a sense of how important it is to know that your path continues, that it’s not that your parents die and that’s the end of it, but that they live on through you. And also it brings up any regrets. So I have a small regret, which is that when my father was dying of cancer, I was very young, I was 24, and I was not really present for the fact that he was dying. And I remember once I went to visit him and he was lying in bed, and I was a journalist, and there was a paper there on the bed and I picked it up and started reading it. And my father said something like, you know, haven’t you got anything interesting to say to me? And it’s so interesting how moments of not being present, because we talk about always about being present, but when we have moments of being present how that can stay with us for a long time. And I still feel that moment of why wasn’t I more present for my father? What was it about me that was unable to recognize that his passing was coming and to really feel into that and be present for that? And then with my mother, years later, I made sure I didn’t make that same mistake. And as you said, I had many years to be present with her, to get to know her, for us to understand each other so that when she passed, it felt, as you say, clear and complete. Brother Phap Huu, let’s talk a little bit about continuation. Because… It’s true that in the sort of Western culture, we think, we tend to think of our individual lives in isolation and in Eastern cultures, there’s very much an understanding of ancestors and continuation into the future that we are one stream of consciousness. And I always loved the fact that Thich Nhat Hanh would say when he met someone, he said, I never meet an individual. I meet the entire lineage of that person stretching back to the beginning of time, because if there’d been an interruption, then you wouldn’t exist. But just as, you know, maybe make it personal. You know, you are a continuation of Thay and the Buddha. So you have this responsibility in this sense that the Buddha and Thay are in you, and you take that forward. And also, what’s it like having your mother on this trip? So, your mother looks in very fine health, but we never know what’s gonna happen in the future. So, what is it like being on this tour with your mum?

00:38:34

It’s a gift, it’s a wonderful gift to be able to travel to both of our root teachers, the Buddha’s home. And it’s also a deep practice because I’ve left home when I was 13 years old, so being a son to one person changed. I was a son now to a whole community. Which is very different and I had a lot of independence and as an aspirant, which is like an intern to becoming a monk, like you have to show the community that you’re very capable of taking care of yourself, you’re very responsible for yourself, you’re responsible for your emotions, you are very responsible for your wholehearted service to your learning, to your opening up to the community. So that has really become my foundation, meaning like I don’t rely on anyone else but oneself in the context of the river of the community. So when mom joined this trip, I wasn’t a son to her in the first few days. I was more of the leader of the monastic group. I was a facilitator to my sharing group, I was giving teachings and doing this podcast and that was very, very natural. What wasn’t natural was being a son. And I recognized that I wasn’t spending time with my mom like tenderly, just as a son, because no matter who we become in this world, we will always be children to our parents. I think they will always see us as that little five-year-old or seven-year-old in their true hearts. And when we’re with them, they are automatically our parents, it is that interbeing of reality there. So I actually had to practice to be a son. I had to practice to not be a monk around my mom. And that just means the very simplest things, pulling the luggage, making sure the jackets are there. Mom, can I open this bottle of water for you? Because it’s hard for her to open the bottle of water. So I was with my mother. I go back to just fundamental, how can I support you? Because you supported me for so long through my childhood. And it’s a way of generosity, of love to give back. And yesterday, in the afternoon, the whole community, we went to the place of the cremation of the Buddha, but I asked not to go. But I wanted to make sure my mom would get on the bus. So there was this really funny feeling I had because I took my mom to the bus and I stood there and I watched her go on the bus and I was just standing there and I’m like, bye, mom, I’ll see you back later. And I still remember all the years she took me to school. I remember the feeling of also leaving my mom, going onto the bus, or entering into the school. So these very intimate feelings as a human being, like we all just carry them, and they’ve been blocked away for a long time. And then when the right conditions arise, it comes up, and then you are given an opportunity. How do you are with this feeling? And how do you also give back? So I have been able to… with conscious awareness, like just lovely tending to her. And it’s so simple. Sometimes my mind makes it more difficult and I’ve been sharing rooms with her for the last few evenings. And just in one night, mom was a little bit cold and mom was like, oh, mom’s a little cold. Do you think there’s extra blanket? And I said, yeah, I saw some in the closet. And there was like three, and it’s like, mom, which one do you want? Heavy, medium, or light? And she’s like the medium one, the medium one. And it’s so simple, and I just took the blanket and I put it over her body so that she can just rest. And just these very simple moments for me is gonna be the things I will also carry from this pilgrimage. I’m meeting my mom in this journey. I am meeting my mom as a son. I am also allowing my mother to be my mother. And that means we have to surrender. I think a lot of us, as we grow up, we don’t sometimes allow our parents to be our parents anymore. And it’s maybe their greatest happiness is just to care for us from the very little things. You know, like my mother asking me, are you gonna come to dinner? Yes, mom, I’m going to come, don’t worry. And that means, are you going to eat? Like you haven’t been eating, I know you got to do things, like take care of your health, you know. Or we can just react, oh, mom I’m a grown up, don’t ask me these questions. But I’ve been learning to let my mother be my mother. And let me be a child. And it’s so humbling. And sometimes I have to come back to giving that permission. It’s so funny, when we were a child, the only embrace we would want is that embrace of our mother than our father. And now we have the tendency to push them away. So this trip has been also this journey of permission, a lot of permissions for things to arise, for things be, and for the unknown to also come.

00:45:33

Thank you so much, brother. Shantum, I want to just, you know, a lot of people, the teaching comes to the end of the Buddha’s life and then sort of it stops. And I’d like to talk about what happened in the years after the Buddha’s death, because I noticed in Plum Village, there was an underlying fear, not necessarily amongst the monastics, but I know definitely within the lay practitioners about, you now, once the great Zen master has gone, you know, will it all fall apart? Will people still come to Plum Village? Will the teachings continue? And rather extraordinarily in my eyes at that time, although it makes sense now, the numbers of people coming to Plum Village started rising quite dramatically. And then the summer retreat, which is when the family retreats, you know, when in the last few years when they go up online, and it’s a bit like, you know, the Glastonbury Music Festival in the UK, where they get sold out in half an hour. And we see that the monastic body is healthy, that there are still many sort of young men and women who want to come and join the monastic order. That it’s very vibrant. And I’m just wondering, and it was fascinating to see that. You know, the Zen master’s gone, what happens? So can you just tell us a bit about what happened when the Buddha did pass? You know, suddenly, even though you have three months notice, it’s still a complete shock. And I think that was true when Thay passed. You know, everyone knew that his passing was coming, but it still doesn’t prepare us for the moment where that happens and the outpouring of emotion. And as you described, you know, the one person might be pulling their hair out, one person may be sitting there peacefully. What happened?

00:47:40

So in a way, I like to say that like Thay, Buddha prepared the community, but obviously, historically, it happened the other way. And Ananda, his attendant, has said, you know, whether you’ve announced you’re passing away, but who will take care of the community? Who will look after the community. And the Buddha says, I’ve never taught with a clenched fist, I have offered all the teachings for you to be calm, peaceful, transform your emotions, and be liberated. And so keep the Dharma as your island and be a light unto yourself, Atta Dipa Bhava, that is what he says, and dipa can mean light or island, and keep the Dharma as your island. So he’s very clear that the Dharma is his continuation. The teachings and practice are his continuation. And he also says, at a certain point when a particular king, King Prasenajit says, when I see the sangha, I see the Buddha, he says, remember that, because the sangha is also the continuation of the Buddha. And so, for me, I feel the Buddha was very clear, I am not making a particular lineage in the sense of what do you call it, like a Dharma heir in one person. My Dharma heir is the Dharma, is the teachings, is the practice, and the continuation is the sangha. And my continuation is also how the sangha practices. Do we really practice or not? And there’s no guarantee how it’s going to go. You know, people like The Buddha, or Thay, or many great masters, had just offered the best they could. And then they leave it to cause and conditions. And in the Buddha’s case, the community carried on. They had the first Buddhist council. 500 of them came together and followed what the Buddha instructions were. And people like Ananda, who was the digital recorder of the Buddha teachings, said, thus have I heard when this situation happened at this place, and this is what the Buddhist said. And everyone listened. And those who didn’t agree said they didn’t agreed, those who agreed. And then they said, OK, this is what the Buddha said. And the same with the precepts, because in the beginning, there were no precepts, like Sister Tam Muoi had mentioned last time. But as circumstances grew, a precept came about, a sort of ethical rule. And that also happened there. So really, there was the formula of setting how the community should live, and also the teachings and the Dharma of how we should practice. And that continues even to today. But the Buddha himself said, oh, maybe this will only last a thousand years, but he was proved wrong. So, great. He didn’t know that it will flourish. And then you have people like Emperor Ashoka, who then held the third Buddhist council, you know, in 253, that’s nearly 200 plus years after the Buddha passed away, then re-invigorated it. Sent his own daughter and son to Sri Lanka, sent monks and teachers all the way east and west up to a place like Greece and Egypt, and also to the east, to places like Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, across the world to share the Dharma. I don’t know if the Buddha would have thought that. He didn’t have maybe a concept of the world being so wide at that time. Maybe he did. And I think… But Emperor Ashoka was a continuation. After he killed 100,000 people, 150,000 made them homeless. There was a river of blood. And then this great king becomes from Ashoka the Terrible, becomes Ashoka the Dharma, the compassionate one. And instead of doing conquests tours, he does Dharma pilgrimages to all the sites. And that’s why when you go to these sites, you’re so grateful because actually Ashoka put pillars and saying, okay, the Buddha was born here and then he reduced the people of that, an eighth of their tax because he was born here. And so we revisit these places, not only because of the Buddha, but because of Ashoka. And then that carries on into place like Nalanda University where we were, where the teachings then develop. You get people like Nagarjuna, who then develop the teachings on sunyata, on emptiness. You get the people like Vasubandhu who then bring in the teachings on consciousness. And, you know, each time bringing it relevant to the time. And that is what Thay’s great art was of really bringing the Dharma relevant to our time. And also developing new practices. You know, when we were talking about the passing away of our loved ones or how do we live our life, Thay taught us hugging meditation. You know every time I leave home, I go on pilgrimage, I go through Bihar, UP, I travel a lot. I don’t know if I’m gonna come back. What’s gonna happen next? And each time I do hugging meditation with my wife, with my daughters, if they allow it now because they get a little teenagey, but they do it sometimes now. But otherwise, I always try and breathe at least three times with them. And the first breath is just to be present. The second breath is to know the other is present. And the third breath is know that we are present in this moment together. And that is very precious because then you don’t know what’s going to happen next. But we know that that is a precious moment and that is a beautiful moment. So to try and create those in our lives as much as we can. And I think the Buddha was very clear that he did his best, now it’s up to the Sangha. And what he said, the Buddha said, was that he talked about a four-fold community. And now, in this time, we talk about a multi-folded community. And in some countries, the sanghas just became the monks. In some countries the sangha just became the monks and nuns. But in our community, it is the multi-fold community, including children. For years, I went to Plum Village for the summer retreat. I didn’t like the winter. It was too cold for me, and I was also doing my pilgrimages at the time. But the summer treat for me was Plum Village. And those are family retreats where we had babies, young children from the age of six or eight, we would do programs with them, youth, teenagers. And it was a complete intergenerational community and international people. Like on this pilgrimage, we have 16, people in 16 countries, we probably have people in Plum Village in 40 countries or 50 countries. And the Buddha is not just spreading in terms of time, but is also spread geographically around this Earth. And now I often joke with friends, I don’t joke, I just say the best export from India has been the Buddha Dharma. It’s captured the Eastern market, and now it’s capturing the Western market. And, you know, of course, we lost it in our own country, but anyway, that’s another matter, we’ll reclaim it, probably from California, but I hope it has its own Indian ethos, roots, and we realize our own heritage. So the Buddha exists at a very, very ambient level, also in a country like India, in the way we live our lives and feel the interconnectedness of everything, with nature, with other people.