The Way Out Is In / Renewing Buddhism – Live New Delhi Recording (Episode #108)

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Hello, dear friends, and welcome to this latest episode of the podcast The Way Out Is In.

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I am Jo Confino.

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And I am a Sister Tam Muoi.

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And this is a very special episode because we normally record these in Thich Nhat Hanh’s small, modest, Sitting Still Hut in Upper Hamlet, France. But today we are in New Delhi in front of a live audience and at the end of a 14-day pilgrimage with a group of 60 pilgrims going in the footsteps of the Buddha. And today we’re going to focus our attention on what it means to renew Buddhism.

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The way out is in.

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And we have a special guest today, who is Shantum Seth, who is a deep practitioner and a student of Thich Nhat Hanh, and he’s been leading pilgrimages for the last 30 years plus, and also is one of the founders of the Ahimsa Trust, which has the aim of bringing Buddhism and Plum Village lineage to India, and sort of rejuvenating the practice. So welcome, Shantum. But before we get into renewing Buddhism, I think let’s just spend a moment reflecting on our 14-day pilgrimage. So we have been spending 14 days, literally, in the footsteps of the Buddha, and following his path through life, and then into his transition into another realm. It’s been an extraordinary journey, and for me, personally, I’m really interested in the idea of proximity that sometimes we have to get very close to things in order to feel them and understand them. And so I’ve been engaged with Thich Nhat Hanh for about 20 years, nearly. And people talk about the life of the Buddha, but I’ve never really felt it. And we have the knowledge that the Buddha reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, and that’s just been a thought. And then there are many sutras which start off and the Buddha was in Jeta Grove. And that’s been a thought. But the pilgrimage has connected me to these places and to the life of the Buddha. And to the fact that all these events took place 2,600 years ago, but are still present today and alive today. And so Shantum, I want to thank you personally because it’s been a wonderful way to actually not just intellectually understand the life of the Buddha but to really connect and to bring the past into the present moment. And I think when we connect the past and the present moment then it changes our future. And Sister Tam Muoi, just give us a sense of what’s been your insights from this trip because we had a sharing circle last night for the participants at the end. And everyone, we’ve been on a physical journey, but also an emotional journey and a spiritual journey where people have had sort of deep insights, have recognized things they didn’t recognize before. And where we’ve traveled as a sangha and what came out most strongly was just the beautiful connections of what it means to travel with a group of like-minded people who deeply care for each other. So lots of people go on tours, on sort of tourist tours, and there’s just small talk, and people might not like each other, people might get on, but on this trip, it’s, as Shantum says, it’s a retreat on wheels, where actually the practice is part of the journey, the sitting meditations, the time spent sharing. What have you… What’s your insight from this journey?

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There were so many beautiful things and many, many insights coming up throughout the 14 days. Just while you were speaking, I was thinking of one that was very touching in our closing circle, when many of those nearly 60 people on the tour, they were all invited to write a small poem, an insight poem. And many of those poems that they shared, as we sat in a circle in the Jeta Grove, it was very lovely because I think all the monkeys thought we were having some kind of monkey parliament. And so they all joined in and came and sat on the branches. They wanted to listen in, maybe like the devas at the time of the Buddha. And many those poems, the friend shared, we came on this pilgrimage as strangers. We didn’t know each other, from the 16 different countries, and in fact we made a sangha and that really is the magic of sangha. And it’s something that’s so important in our tradition. We know that the Buddha taught of the Three Jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, and in some traditions sangha is not so important but Thay, our teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, it was such an important part for him to practice as a community, and certainly, we feel in Plum Village, in our monastery, back in France, that in this present-day time, community is so important. It is of huge importance in the present day when so many people are suffering from loneliness, alienation, dysfunctional families, families split across the globe, where we don’t get to see our family members. And maybe those family relationships have broken down. So to have, as Thay used to say, a second chance, to come together as a sangha, as a group who practice together, where we have deep connection. And when we have an opportunity to have deep connection, to have safety, that is where the healing can start. And so it was very beautiful to see that happening in a kind of a miniaturized way, over two weeks, among 60 people traveling on the pilgrimage, it was also happening, making a sangha. I think something else that really touched me deeply about the pilgrimage was when we went to Nalanda, Nalanda is this extraordinary university. I think it’s the oldest university, one of the oldest. And it was there before Oxford and Cambridge, I mean, I remember that. And we went to that site. And it’s funny because I had the great privilege to be on this pilgrimage as a lay friend in 2008 with Thay. And I remember walking around that site thinking, well, there’s a lot of bricks here and trying to imagine what it was like. But coming this time, as a monastic, I felt, oh, this is my home. This is a monastery. This is where monastic brothers and sisters would I mean, many of them. What is it, 10,000? My goodness. And 1,000 teachers, all living in Nalanda. And I just felt so at home there, a real homey feeling. So that was very nourishing. And also, I think something, I mean I don’t want to talk too long because there are so many wonderful things from this pilgrimage. I think the highlights for me were Detta Grove. It’s such a beautiful space. It’s like a park now. But so many of our sutras, as Jo mentioned, we start the sutra, thus have I heard one day the Buddha spoke in Jeta Grove. And of course you think, oh well, Jeta Grove. But there we were sitting in Jeta Grove. Oh my goodness, this will never be the same again. And to be all of us sitting there, particularly when we’re in a circle, when we were meditating, when we were transmitting the five mindfulness trainings, which the Buddha also transmitted those five precepts there 2,600 years ago. This is an unbroken line of teacher and student for 2,600 years. And we are all part of it. It’s extraordinary. So that was very, very touching.

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Thank you, sister. And Shantum, you have been leading these journeys for 30 plus years at the invitation of Thay or a direct order from Thay, saying… You know, Thay would always give us orders, which we then had to follow, and one of yours was to bring these pilgrimages and allow people to come to India to really touch the life of the Buddha and to connect to it. So, in your experience over these 30 plus years, why is it important for people? And what are the general learnings people have when they come here and they take these journeys?

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You’re right, Thay requested me, I wouldn’t say ordered me, suggested to me at the end of his first journey in 1988 that he said, you seem to enjoy this, something which is the path of practice that the Buddha suggested himself in the Mahaparnirvana Sutta. And why do you do this every year and invite people to take you, invite people to go with you? So, and he just finished his book, Old Path White Clouds, on the life story of the Buddha, and he wanted to offer this book back to the Buddha in the sort of the form of the Bodhi tree. So that’s what he did. And then later he came again and he did the Hindi translation and then he offered that to the Bodhi tree. So he was always coming really partly to pay his sense of gratitude to the Buddha. But I think what happened when I started doing these journeys, I’d been to these places as a child, I had been brought up in Patna, so my parents had taken me to these sites as a kid and I’d been sort of brought up thinking of Buddha a little bit like a god. And I think what happened to me in the first journey already was that I really came home to me that the Buddha was a human being. That is very, very important to me. And so I think meeting the Buddha as a human being and going to the places where he was allowed me to touch that these teachings are relevant to me and my life. And I’m sort of a, I would say, agnostic, non-theistic type of person, and I also have a skeptical mind. So I felt this sort of understanding that there’s somebody, a human being, who’s done this, so he’s given a sort of transmission to me. But I didn’t realize the power of the pilgrimage until a few years later, so I started doing these journeys. And then I started finding that people were really getting a transformative type of experience. Something quite deep was happening. And I realized that this sort of curation of a retreat on wheels, as you mentioned, was important. And then the formation of the sangha, not traveling as a group of individuals, but really traveling as an organism. And then when 15 of us travel together, you start seeing with 15 pairs of eyes, 15 pairs of ears, you have a different type of experience. And so you really benefit from each other. So I started seeing this sort of transformative effect people were having. And going to the actual place where the Buddha sat, say for example, Vulture Peak, where he said, oh, let’s go and watch the sunset. Now we go and sit and watch sunset of Vulture Peak. And he’s realized that you can see the sunset with Buddha eyes. We have our flesh eyes, but we can also see with a different type of eye. And that sort of slow transformations are taking place in each one of us. And then meeting the people he met. We know the stories about the Buddha’s life, whether it’s the great merchant and donor and Anathapindika with the Sujata who give the keer, the rice and milk pudding. But when you go there, like this time, you meet Sujata, she’s still the 13 year old girl in the village and we eat keer in the village. And realize that this sort of telescoping of time bring it into the present is very important because the Buddha was only the Buddha in the present moment. We think of him as this historical character. So that’s important. But what he said was that the Dharma, the teaching, is what I offer you as a continuation, and that teaching is continued for 2600 years ago. Thankfully to the lineage of teachers, including who came to Nalanda, this whole lineage of teachers, we have to be really, really grateful to them. And I think when we sit at the place where he sat, in the cave, you realize you’re breathing with the Buddha, you’re meeting the friends, and then those sort of sights that the Buddha saw, the old person, the sick person, the dead person, and the monk, we see them now. They were wake-up calls to him. They sometimes aren’t for us, we just… But, you know, it does bring up those sort existential questions, you know. And like on this pilgrimage, you know, we had Brother Phap Huu’s father pass away. You know, it brings up to us what is the loss of a loved one? What is death? And I think for me, curating these journeys in that way is to allow people to come up with those sort of deep questions. And I call this a path of awakening. But that’s just lots of cause and conditions. We sit under the Bodhi tree and that’s not up to me, but we try and provide the conditions that people can have little moments of insight, awakening and that allows them to touch a deeper sense of what our own reality is as human beings. Why I do these journeys is because I really feel, I see the transformation. And this is not just a tour, it’s something which is an inner journey at the same time as an outer journey. So we go to these outer spaces into this, what I think of as a sacred geography, where the Buddha was born, died, gave his first teachings, awakened, and then other places where he spent 24 Rain Retreats in Shravasti, and other places, Vaishali were the first nuns were ordained, Kapilavastu where he spend his childhood. But the transformation that takes place, and friends who come is very palpable. And I get letters 20 years later, 30 years later, or 10 years later saying, something happened on the journey and I can see now the effect of it. In many cases, like we said in the closing circle, you could already see it now. So I think this journey continues. And for me, it’s a great benefit. I’m sort of lazy sometimes, I say, I’m gonna do it. But I realized that I give a date and people come and I benefit so much. So I always say, I start by saying, I’m so grateful you’ve come. And I really feel a sense of gratitude that people are coming on these journeys and they’re transforming me too. They’re helping me in my path.

00:17:13

Thank you, Shantum. And you bring up that idea in Buddhism about ripening. So I had this sense on the journey that the real benefit of the journey will not be on the the journey, but will be after the journey. That sometimes it takes time for things to sink in and our store consciousness to work through it and to reach deeper understandings. So I love that idea that these things can, like the teachings, they go in but they can deepen and deepen and ripen and a lot of that takes place below our conscious level. It’s like, it’s that journey is now in my system and will work its way through my system. And sister, one of the things about the journey, especially at Jeta Grove and Bodh Gaya, is seeing all these lineages of Buddhism coming together. So especially at Bodh Gaya, you go in and there are all these different chants. There’s the Tibetans, and then there’s the Koreans, and there’s the Vietnamese, and Plum Village, and all these groups coming together with their pink robes, and their brown robes, and their saffron robes and their mustard-colored robes. Which doesn’t really happen very much in the world. And I just wonder what it was like for you to experience that, where, where… You know, one of the things about the Buddha was he was very appreciative of that and foresaw that there would be different streams of Buddhism and that actually one of the benefits of that is not that there’s one teaching only in one form and you either like it or you don’t like it, but actually within Buddhism there’s so many different streams that actually whatever is comfortable you can find a refuge. So what was it like to experience that all that? Different energies and different colors and textures of Buddhism in one place?

00:19:13

As we walked mindfully onto the site of Bodh Gaya, I was walking next to Thay Phap Huu. And he said to me, oh, this is the United Nations of Buddhism. That was such a wonderful way of summing it up. And it makes me think of a story that Thay used to tell, exactly along the lines you were saying, is that there’s not one way to practice. And often friends would ask Thay, oh, but I try and do the walking meditation. I find that difficult, but I love the sitting. And so Thay would say, well, then sit. Do the practice that you enjoy. It’s so important to touch joy in whatever practice we do. It shouldn’t be hard work and creating more battles on your cushion. And so Thay would give a beautiful analogy of, he would say that all the different lineages that we have he said it’s like many different restaurants. You can go to the Chinese restaurant, you can go to the Indian restaurant, you can go to the French restaurant. We all get hungry. We need to eat. And we can choose which is the type of food that we like the best. It’s important to be nourished. And so in Bodh Gaya, while there were a lot of different foods on offering, and people find the lineage that they’re comfortable with, that they feel nourished by, that suits them. And something that really struck me that I enjoyed a lot… It’s a very noisy place, Bodh Gaya. So that has its own challenge because as I’m sure many of you really appreciate, when we sit and meditate, you imagine sitting under the Bodhi tree. It’s going to be completely silent and so wonderful. No, not at all. It’s gonna be loudspeakers, many different languages, different kinds of chant. So the way I practiced with that was just contemplating as I did sit under the Bodhi tree and my ears were assailed with sounds of all different kinds, I was thinking there is not a single word being pronounced here that isn’t a word of love and compassion and joy and understanding. There is not single word of anger or criticism or judgment. This is all loving speech and loving chanting. And it gives the most beautiful, it’s like a bath of loving sound. It’s a very compassionate place to be. And of course, there’s a lot of jostling, people finding their space, wanting their space. But it’s all done in a very loving, loving way. And it’s a beautiful atmosphere to be sitting there. We had the luck to find a very beautiful spot to sit. Because, in fact, there’s not just one Bodhi tree, there are, I think, a few Bodhi trees there. And the Bodhi tree that Thay liked to sit under was one that’s a little bit away from the center, and it has a lawn all the way around it, and it’s quite quiet. And so we had the chance to all go and sit under the Bodhi tree, just maybe 40 meters from where the Buddha was supposed to have sat. And we could sit and meditate and listen to a talk and to really be present there under that Bodhi tree.

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Thank you, sister. And of course, Jeta Grove was exactly the opposite. And one of the things people experience when they come to Plum Village, France, is that as soon as they walk onto the ground, that they have an experience of peace and calm, and also a sense of coming home. And there’s this deep understanding that this has been cultivated over 40 years through this continuous stream of practice. And that it’s like it’s seeped into the ground, it’s seeped into the building, seeped into the trees themselves. And at Jeta Grove was very similar. There was a feeling of tranquilness and it really helped me to understand that the practice doesn’t just disappear into the ether, that it sort of builds and deepens and that Jeta Grove, while there wasn’t practice there for many many centuries, but it’s now this continuous people going and praying there and sort of venerating the practice and practicing in this place like we did there, builds an energy. And Shantum, am I making that up? Is there a sense that you experience in some of these places that where people continue to practice this day that the practice seeps in and deepens?

00:25:26

So I feel we can create a space of awakening or a Plum Village anywhere in the world. But when we come to places like the sites associated with the Buddha, it reminds us, and also there’s a collective intentionality and energy that is created in these places and we sort of step into that vortex. And pretty much like what you were saying in Plum Village, you create an energy and you walk into that space immediately, your steps become lighter, your breath becomes more visceral, your sight becomes more awake, you start seeing the clouds. So I think, and you become more mindful of every ant hole. So I think these places create that energy, that vortex of energy, but we don’t always have to go just to these places, but sometimes you have to the Bodhi tree to then realize that the oak tree or the jamun tree or whatever tree you have at your home can be also your Bodhi tree. I think the other thing which is so important, which we forget sometimes, is that India is the great teacher. On these journeys, I really feel India is the teacher and we’re seeing India through a Buddhist lens. Part of my role, I guess, is partly not just a teacher of the Dharma and the Buddha’s life, but also being a cultural interpreter to India. Because the first times people come, they’re like, you know, all these judgmental mind comes up and things. So I just, I ask people to be, you know, not be reactive, but then we have discussions about these things. And for me, the first few days is very much about building the community, then after that to try and see India beyond the trash and the poverty, but to touch also the wisdom and the beauty of this country, not to ignore it, but to see the causes and conditions that bring these sort of conditionalities. So I feel that when we can really face ourselves in the relationship with what we are seeing, hearing, feeling in India, and then we have a community to share that with and also to understand ourselves, that is very important. I think The Buddha helped us in that. He just told us, look within. Suffering is where we start. And it’s your own suffering you have to handle. And also look at the suffering in the world. It’s not separate. Other people’s suffering is your suffering. Other people’s happiness is your happiness. And that’s where we started. And then, to know that all these things are interconnected. There’s nothing which exists independently. So we have a co-responsibility of how we tread through India, how we come as pilgrims to a place, how we walk this earth. And it’s, you can just see somebody walking and he or she can be your teacher. And just the way they walk, I’ve seen the monastics walking and people just stopping on the street as you’re on the pilgrimage, they just stop and start looking. And bow. And so I feel that these sort of experiences are so important for us that we can see our mind, how it works, rather than just being sort of caught in this. And so I tell people, for example, for begging, I say, you know, when a beggar comes to you, don’t give. First of all, you don’t exactly understand the conditions of it. There is need, but see what’s coming up for you. Is it compassion? Is it guilt? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? Whatever. And then let’s look at that. And then we process all that stuff in the next few days. So these sort of, that’s why I say India’s a great teacher because she’s confronting you all the time. That’s why we call ourselves Mother India, I guess. But we also challenge every preconception you have and so people say, well, we have a classic thing that everything you say about India, the exact opposite is also true. So not everything is a bit like a koan. And I always say it’s dangerous coming to India because you’re gonna go back different. But if you’re open to that, but you try and see it with a context of wanting to be, looking at your life more raw. And I think that’s what I feel is part of this journey for all of us. And then we can do it as a community, it’s much better.

00:30:08

Thank you, Shantum. And we wanted to talk this morning about the renewal of Buddhism. And so one of the things that surprised me or probably shocked me was how few Buddhists there are in India. Because, in a sense, this here, in India, is where the teaching started. And you can see it flourishing to this day in places like Tibet and Bhutan and France and Sri Lanka and China and Japan, they’re all these traditions that are flourishing and are deeply embedded within those societies and have a place. And you said the other day that in the census, I think in 1951, there were only 180,000 people who said they were Buddhists out of a population then of 360 million. And that in their last census, which was in India, in 2011, Buddhist amounted to 1.3% of the population and so to me that was unexpected because there was no at Bodh Gaya or Jeta Grove, there’s no Indian lineage showing up with their own sort of robes and practice and so I just wonder what happened, just briefly what happened that meant that in the very birthplace of Buddhism, it’s sort of, in a sense, diminished. And it’s, I think, important to know that before we talk about the renewal, because sometimes we need to understand why something, the cause and conditions with which something diminishes before we can start to see how it can regenerate.

00:31:58

So the census in 2011 was 0.8 percent, but you’re right, the country of its birth, Buddhism had disappeared and actually there’s been a renewal which we can talk about, but it’s one of the sort of mysteries of history, what happened? Nobody has a completely clear idea and there’s not just one cause, of course. I would say they’re both internal causes to Buddhism and also external causes. I think internally we became more and more cut off from lay people. The Buddha always said, be like fish amongst the water to the monks, so we were always in touch with lay people, throw our arms around, we knew the suffering of lay people and so we were actually helping in that sense. But we were also getting a lot of patronage from kings, from merchants, and especially royal families. And when the patronage changed, then a lot of the economic base of monasteries were cut. And we also became quite corrupted in a way. There was so much wealth coming into monasteries at one point. And also a sense of entitlement. When we were at Nalanda, there were monks going around and being carried up and sitting in chairs and getting jobs in any court they wanted. And also going more and more metaphysical. And of course, some of the greatest teachings came from Nalanda, so that was another, it’s not just that there was the compost, there was also the wisdom of the lotus coming out of that compost, which is, we have some of greatest teachings, wisdom, culture teachings from Nalanda. That’s just an example. I think externally, I think the main issue was a sort of conflict with Brahmanism, which had a much more hierarchical structure of caste and things like that, rather than the Buddha Dharma which had a much greater sense of equality. And this clash is always there. I mean, even soon after the Ashoka’s time, there was a guy called Pushyamitra Shunga who had a real antipathy towards Buddhism. In fact, it’s said that he even offered coins for each monk’s head. So it wasn’t just at the end. But by the time Xuanzang comes at the eighth and seventh, eighth century, he’s already seen the decline. And by the eighth century especially with Shankaracharya who adopted a number of Buddhist practices into the revival of Brahmanism, I think Buddhism took a deep dive. And it is a sort of adoption partly. And then we actually made the Buddha into an avatar of Vishnu, which is a little later. So, this sort of traditions of ahimsa, of non-harming, of a non-dual system of awakening, these were sort of adopted into some sort of Advaita Vedanta types of teachings. I mean the core of this problem with the Brahminical system, because the Jains didn’t disappear, for example, they were still supported by merchants, but the Buddha Dharma is very clear that there’s nothing like a soul, like an atma. It is anathma, so there was the idea that there’s no intrinsic existence in any entity. That cut to the very base of Brahmanism and also didn’t support too much of the ritualism and things like this. So I think the last straw, as it were, was when the Islamic invasions came in the later part of the 11th, 12th century and many of them came from the North West and they were iconoclasts. And they’d been seeing images of the Buddha because the whole of that area, what we see is Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, all that area was all Buddhist. So then they actually did destroy some of the statues and some of these institutions. But by that time it was just, there was some Buddhism left in the east side, where we see as Nalanda today, and Odantapuri and other places which is in the east. So I was saying that, when the way we say Buddhism died, diminished, but it still existed, it continued, without the name Buddhism. I mean, you look at the secularization of education, if you look at things like diet, the effect of vegetarianism from Jains and Buddhists. You look at trade, which is happening. The merchants were some of the main supporters of Buddhism. You look at the oldest temples, all the rock-cut edicts in India, they’re all Buddhist. So we might say Buddhism died, but it continues in our culture in a sort of ambient type of way. But we have to learn also from our mistakes as people who are interested in the Buddha Dharma that we don’t lose contact, become too rarefied, and also become rather corrupted.

00:37:03

Thank you, Shantum. That’s a perfect segue into Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching because sister, I mean the thing about Thay was… exactly meets the antidote to what Shantum described as what went wrong. So Thay has made sure that the teachings are very available to people. He hasn’t put it in devotional chanting, it’s in very deep, profound but very simple teachings that are relevant to people’s lives. He has made absolutely sure that the sangha is clean, by which, I mean, there’s no special treatments for rich people, that people do not come in their wonderful garments to show off. People come normally by the end of their retreat, they’re in sort of stained, dirty clothes. It’s very, very down to earth. My wife, Paz, has always said that, you know, you can see the teacher in the sangha and you can the sangha in the teacher. So the people who come to Plum Village are from all walks of life, but in some ways are very down-to-earth, very compassionate. They’re not trying to… there’s no hierarchy. And also, there’s no… You know, actually I remember once when Thay was coming to England and there’s a popular paper in England called The Daily Mirror. And they wanted to do an article on Thay coming and doing his teachings and retreats in England. And they got in touch with Plum Village and asked for a whole range of pictures of Thay with celebrities. And basically when you searched through the archive, you couldn’t find a single one. And so they just canned the article. And for me, I thought that was brilliant, because this was such a classic case, the newspaper wanted not an article on the teachings, but actually on the celebrity culture. And Thay never lived by that. And also, Thay also talked very much about renewal of Buddhism. You know, his whole history in Vietnam was to be, not to buy into things just because they were, but to say actually Buddhism needs to be regenerated and rejuvenated and re-understood and reimagined for every generation. And that if the teachings aren’t brought up to date and made relevant to the current generation, then Buddhism will diminish. So in a sense, this is a perfect sort of opposite of what happened in India, is Thay’s absolute determination to make sure it’s down to earth, it’s simple, it’s available, it’s relevant and there’s true equality. So can you just talk a bit about how you see that and why it’s so important?

00:40:03

Thay, when he was a young monk, he ordained at 16 years old, as a young monk, really his deepest aspiration was to renew Buddhism. So, in fact, he was turning towards exactly many of the things that Shantam talked about, the corruption which happens, unfortunately, over a certain amount of years. The fossilization of the dogmatism that can take place in organized religions. And so Thay living in a war torn country where there was so much suffering, already he’d suffered from the colonialism of the French and so the kind of guerrilla warfare going on, the terrorism, he’d grown up in that situation. And then the war with America, there was so much suffering. But he could see that Buddhism wasn’t helping. It wasn’t turning towards that suffering. And he had the chance to read and to study about ancient dynasties of Buddhism in Vietnam, where, in fact, Buddhism had had a real impact on the culture, on the people. And he dreamed that this could happen again. So there were many causes and conditions that enabled this to happen, one of them being that he was made a refugee in the West. And so similar to the Dalai Lama, I mean the spread of Buddhism from the Dalai Lama is because he was a refugee and not allowed to stay in Tibet. Same thing with Thay. If Thay had been able to practice in Vietnam, maybe, well, I wouldn’t be sitting here today, and many of us. But Thay was made a refugee because of the war. He was accused by the South of being a communist and accused by the North of being a CIA spy, and so he found himself in a very desperate situation, without a sangha, of losing all his sangha, his supporters, the people that he practiced with. He had to recreate his sangha. But he did this with people from the West. And Thay being such a skillful, curious, intelligent practitioner, he wanted to understand what is our suffering? And he spent a lot of those early years with the anti-war demonstrators in America, and also many of the people in Europe as well. Quakers, for example, who were activating, they were activists against the war in Vietnam, and also anti-nuclear activists. And these became his new sangha. And so he made himself a very good base for a sangha. And he had this deep desire to not go in the direction of corruption because he’d seen how this was really diminishing Buddhism in Vietnam. So he was very inspired to walk this path of simplicity. For example, in Vietnam, when there are ceremonies, the Buddhists, particularly those higher in the hierarchy, will be required to wear embroidered robes, and lots of gold, and all this kind of thing. Thay always refused. We will wear a simple brown robe, and this brown robe, the same color as the peasants in Vietnam, so that we stay in connection with the poorest people in the land, similar to Gandhi in India, I guess. And I remember even once in Vietnam for a very, when he was allowed back, 40 years after being a refugee. And he was performing some very beautiful ceremonies in memory of all the dead of the Vietnam War. And the Buddhists there were really begging Thay to put on the tantric robes, these huge, heavy, golden robes. And Thay was saying, no. He just didn’t want to. But I think in the end for one ceremony he agreed, because he saw how important that was for the people. And so he wore it for one ceremony and then off. I think that was the only time he has worn something other than a simple brown robe to really reflect the simplicity and our connection with the farming people.

00:45:52

Thank you, sister. And anything else about Thay in terms of renewal? So how is he, how do you see that in the current state? So Thay passed four years ago and Thay’s legacy was not to have another leader of Plum Village but to have a sangha, in other words that you make decisions through consensus. And, you know, Thay was the great Zen master. And, in a sense, before that, before he passed, if there were questions or issues that came up, people would come to Thay for the answers. And then, of course, Thay’s passing means you all, as monastics, had to, in sense, suddenly grow up and suddenly realize actually you need to find the answers yourselves. So I’m just wondering how you see renewal post-Thay because there’s always this pull sometimes to… people say, oh, this is what Thay would do. Or this is Thay’s teaching. No, Thay didn’t say this. Thay said that. Thay will do this. Thay wouldn’t do that. So I’m just wondering how you see renewal now without Thay. How do you personally maybe see how the teachings can be relevant to this generation, which is very different from one generation ago. We’ve got increasing dependence on social media. We’ve got AI. As you said, we’ve got people who are feeling alienated in, you know, the sense of loneliness. Plus we have this background of the polycrisis with climate change, with desperate loss of biodiversity, with more polarization, with the spectrum of war coming back, with this othering. Ten years ago, you know, if we had said that the world looks like it is now, people would say, absolutely no way that’s going to be. So how do you see the teachings being relevant now to this generation and what you see coming into our consciousness? Sorry, that’s a really easy question. Maybe it’s too easy for you.

00:48:01

And quite long, with many points. So one thing I wanted to pick up on is that for many years before Thay had his stroke and lost the ability to speak, he was already getting on, getting older. And friends would ask, so what is going to happen? They hardly dared to say, but Thay, you will pass away. How will Plum Village continue? How will our tradition continue? And Thay was very happy to answer that question, because people, of course, there would be the not-so-hidden agenda of who are you passing on to. And Thay would say, it’s the sangha that is my continuation. And don’t wait for me to pass away, to transition, to become the continuation, my continuation, because you’re already continuing me right now. So don’t wait for that time. It’s already happening. So as practitioners, as monastics, we were already ready for that. We knew we were going in that direction. It was very helpful because, of course, it was the burning question for many people. And we knew how to answer. And we know how to practice with that, that it is the sangha that continues. And this is exactly what the Buddha said as well. The Buddha was also asked, as he was nearing his transition, Who will you transmit as your teachings to be the leader of the community? And the Buddha said, be as a light unto yourself. Be as an island unto yourself. And there were even teachings about don’t believe something just because it’s a teacher that says it, that it’s written in a scripture, that it has come from centuries-old tradition. Try it. And see how you feel yourself. So for our generation, I think this is one of the reasons why Buddhism is very attractive to people in the West particularly, to young people, kind of post-industrial generation, is this is a very scientific way of looking at things. Try it and see. If it’s helpful for you, practice. If it’s not, try something else. And Thay would always teach in that way. Thay is a very revolutionary teacher. Because of this aspiration to make Buddhism relevant, to make it appropriate, he had seen the damage done by dogmatism, by fossilization. And so he was always thinking of new ways that we could make Buddhism appropriate. For example, our precepts, this is the behavioral code for all the monastics and also for the lay friends, it is rewritten every five or 10 years to update it, which is quite extraordinary, that he had the courage to do that. Because, of course, he faced criticism from many countries that are very traditional. And the monastics, they follow the same precepts as us, but Thay wanted to renew them. He didn’t want us to continue repeating precepts about what to do with your master’s spittoon, for example, because, well, what’s a spitton? It’s just no longer relevant. But he did want to include precept about the Internet, because that’s extremely relevant, and that is important. And so they were updated in that way. And in fact, we’re just about to start updating them again to do that. For example, the precepts, the five precepts for our lay practitioners, the third precept is about sexual responsibility, about that our sexual behavior should be responsible to take care of our commitments and other people’s commitments. And that has recently been updated because it is about the subject of our sexual life, our sexual energy, to make a commitment not to discriminate against any gender identity. And to, I can’t think of the exact words now, but basically, it’s about being inclusive to the whole spectrum of gender identity, and Thay was also extremely motivated that there should be equality between the monks and the nuns within the monastic community. And that we should, all of us, should receive teachings from the best teachers. And so one of our, in fact, our senior teacher, Sister Chan Duc, she is a British woman and she teaches the whole community, the monks included, and gives classes, because it’s recognized that she is our senior teacher, and she holds enormous wisdom, erudition, and can speak Pali and Sanskrit. And she is carrying on the eruditions that our teacher Thay had. But then other of our monastics, they carry on different aspects. And it’s extremely important for Plum Village, that we stay a very inclusive community for those who may be not able to afford to come to the retreats. Then we have a subsidy program. We really favor young people. We favor people from the BIPOC community, recognizing it’s sometimes more difficult to have an income to afford the retreat. And, of course, to all gender identity to the LGBTQ plus community and many other marginalized communities. Thay recognized that in all marginalized communities, there is so much suffering. And we want to continue that tradition of the Buddha, which is the only thing that we teach about, is suffering and the ceasing of suffering, the healing of suffering.