The Way Out Is In / Roots and Renewal (Episode #91)

00:00:00

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

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

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And I’m Brother Phap Huu, a Zen Buddhist monk, a student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition. And before we begin today’s episode, I’d like to share something very special. On September 12th, Jo and I will be recording a live episode of The Way Out Is In in London, and we’ll be joined by author and poet Ocean Vuong, who is a dear friend of mine and an admirer of our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition. The evening will be a deep reflection on how we can cultivate joy and togetherness in the midst of hardship, something we all need. You can find details and tickets at plumvillage.uk/livepodcast. And we truly hope to see you there.

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And a few days before that, on August the 26th, Brother Phap Huu and I will be releasing our second book which is called Calm in the Storm, Zen Ways to Cultivate Stability in an Anxious World. It’s a companion for these uncertain times and we hope that it supports you and helps you to find a safe harbor in your own lives. You can pre-order it now and it will be available at the live event in London. We hope to see you there. So, brother, today we are going to be talking about the Plum Village tradition and deeply understanding where it comes from and how Thay has brought it back into a live, living, breathing practice.

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And joining us, we have our dear friend, dear sister, Nho, who is a spiritual soulmate of mine and friend of mine. And we ordained together when I was 14 and she was 15. Nho was a nun in our tradition for 17 years and after that, ventured into the world and part of that, she became a scholar and did a lot of research in Buddhism and particularly Vietnamese Buddhism and the past of the conditions of how Vietnam was living and how it was affected by the wars but also by the culture of Buddhism.

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The way out is in.

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Hello, dear friends, I am Jo Confino.

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And I’m Brother Phap Huu.

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And brother, one of the reasons I’m attracted to Plum Village and these teachings is because it allows me to put my life in the context of my ancestors. And this is a very powerful tradition in the East, in the sense that actually I’m not just arrived as a freshly made human being, but actually I am the product of all my history. And I used to remember Thay saying that when he met an individual, he never saw that person by themselves alone. He saw the entire lineage of what had brought that person to this present moment. And yet, I blithely talk about the Plum Village tradition and have no idea what the Plum Village tradition is. And I suspect that many of our listeners who appreciate and practice in Thay’s tradition also don’t really understand, where has this tradition come from? What makes it different? What makes is unique? So, Nho, it’s a joy to welcome you because you are studying a PhD on this very matter. And I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for people to just sit and say, you know, where does this tradition come from? But I’d like to start by asking you about how come you made the decision to follow this, to actually delve deeply into this?

00:04:41

So this project began when Brother Phap Huu and I were attending Thay at the Hermitage. This was a bit before his stroke and we were there and we were his attendants and we would have these very intimate conversations in between our practices and in between sessions that we were holding together. And over tea one day, Thay had asked me what I was doing at the university, what I was studying. At that time, I had just finished studying actually a degree in cognitive neuroscience. And because I sort of didn’t know how to do university, I accidentally finished that degree too fast. And so I had to tack on another degree program. And it was sort of a natural… My advisors at the time said, you know, you’re kind of a Buddhist nun, so it might make sense for you to study religion. And I had never studied religion in that formal way, because I was like, why? I’m a Buddhist none, I’m just sort of living it, right? And so I told him, I started studying a little bit of religion in this formal academic environment. And then he starts telling me a little bit about his experience at Columbia, at Princeton, his studies in the States. And he said, you know, one thing that Thay never got to finish was his theses on Vietnamese Buddhism. And he said, you know, […] is child. He said, Vietnam and Vietnamese Buddhism has so many beautiful things to offer and so many beautiful things to celebrate and so many beautiful things share. But we haven’t had a chance to really write about it in such a way that brings pride and brings, not pride in like the haughty sense, but pride is like actually see, look at your tradition and see the beauty within your tradition and really acknowledge it and appreciate that. And then he said, will you do that for me? Will you, will you write that thesis for me? And of course at that time I was like, yeah, sure. But I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, honestly, I just made a promise. I just said, yeah, of course. Like I was, you know, like I could go and make him a bowl of instant noodles, right? And so it like thrusted me down into this whole journey, in fact.

00:07:09

And before we get into sort of what you’ve discovered, how has it supported and enriched your life to delve into it?

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You know… It has been such a beautiful journey, in fact. I have learned so much more about who I am as a person, where I come from, and actually, because of the invitation to go and study Vietnamese Buddhism, and in that, it means I have to study Vietnamese history and Vietnamese culture. I am so deeply in love with my Vietnamese-ness in a way that I could have not tapped into had it not been for this invitation from Thay. And I say this honestly as, you know, I’m a hyphenated Vietnamese, right? I am a child of refugees. I have been fed a particular story. And in fact, actually, when I ordained, Thay had asked me over tea, he said, Nho, are you Vietnamese or are you American? And at that time, I was like, American, right? I said it with my whole chest. And he goes, ah, so you’re telling me that when I ask someone to imagine someone American, they’re gonna see your face? And I was, like, whoa. And I so… but I was a kid at that times, so I was like, how dare you, right? And I said, fine, I’m Vietnamese, like very reluctantly. Because at that, I didn’t have the language to even talk about or think about how I was wrestling with identity, right? I just was fed a very particular narrative as a hyphenated Vietnamese growing up in the States about who I was as a person. And so I said, fine, I’m Vietnamese. Just sort of like, you know, I felt cornered. And he goes, oh, but you don’t really read and write Vietnamese, so I’m not sure if you could, and Thay knows me very well, I’m by nature a very lazy person, but I will do things out of spite. Right? I will… And I was like, oh, are you saying I don’t read and write Vietnamese? Hold your horses, because I’m about to come at you. And I went home and I studied, you know, I was paying attention to what the brothers and sisters were singing in Vietnamese, the poems that we were reciting. I started listening to their music and I started translating. I started and like just engrossing myself in the Vietnamese language and learning how to read and write in Vietnamese. So I can just go back to Thay and be like, come at me, test me, I’ll show you how Vietnamese I am, right? And we would have these conversations often about Vietnamese-ness and Thay had such a profound love for Vietnam, such a profound love for Vietnam. And he would share that with, he would try to share that and instill that in me. But I was still very resistant because, again, I was fed a very particular narrative when I was growing up in the States, right? I mean, you know, people in, I remember in elementary school, they would say, you are the winner, we are the… you know, you being here, you’re the winner here, right? And so there was a sort of, a bit of shame of like the hyphenated part in me, because I just wanted to be an American. You know, I wanted to seen in a particular… But there was something about it that I knew that it was so unattainable, and yet I still was chasing after that, right? With Thay, he would tell these stories about Vietnam, and he would try to instill this appreciation and love for Vietnam. At that time, I didn’t understand what he was doing, but I humored it, right? I humored it. And he would say things like, you know, you and me, we’re like a bamboo with a thousand vertebrates. The winds will push us to France, to the States, but our roots are in Vietnam. That’s where we are, that’s who we are. And I was like, yeah, but those roots exiled you, didn’t they? Right? And I, you know, I had responses all the time for him. But then as I started growing, you know, Thay just plants seeds. And, you know, as I say, let go, let God, right? And as I start growing up and as I starting maturing a little bit more in my thinking, in the end, especially from this journey, I started understanding actually what Thay was coming from, and actually how liberating it was for me to tap into this part of me that I subconsciously was trying to reject because I felt alienated by it. Or I felt like this part of me was alienating me from my American identity. But in fact, it was the only thing that no one had, whatever question, if I said I was Vietnamese, I wouldn’t be like, that’s right, you are. But if I said I was American, they were like, but where are you actually from? And so I think in many ways, the way that Thay had like slowly planted the seeds in both Brother Phap Huu and I, and the younger like hyphenated Vietnamese was a way to like both appreciate and love on our own roots and to tap into who we are as a person and a culture and a tradition to love and to celebrate it unapologetically, and also to critique it too. We’re allowed to critique it because… Is it James Baldwin who says, if you love something so dearly, you can love it and at the same time, you can critique it with your whole heart, right? And so I, you know, I was, I’m so lucky to have had a teacher to like be very patient with me because I’m very stubborn, be patient and continue to plant those seeds and then allow me to fall in love with this history, with this culture and therefore with myself.

00:13:20

Thank you, Nho. And Phap Huu, I want to bring you in here because this resonates to me with your journey as well, as a sort of Vietnamese American and wanting to be, as you talk about, sort of using the metaphor banana that you were yellow on the outside but wanted to be white on the inside. So it would be quite lovely just to hear your journey through this and your reclaiming this Vietnamese culture. And also within that… I imagine this is true for so many people who are not only listening to this podcast but around the world who have roots which have been severed almost and have continued to grow but not necessarily with that rooting or that sort of the love and energy of their origin coming flowing through.

00:14:11

Just before I get into it, dear listeners, when you hear Thay, that means our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. And in Vietnamese, Thay is teacher. So we refer to Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh as our teacher. I think that I can add on to what Nho has shared. I think for Plum Village as a community and as a refuge, our teacher wasn’t only teaching Buddhism, and I think this has to be said because he was teaching culture, he was educating us so that for those of us who have Vietnamese roots, to find a way home to our heritage and I’m forever grateful to a Buddhist monk who felt this kind of role and responsibility because Thay could have taken on many different personas and teachers as a Buddhist monk, but he chose to not only be a Zen teacher, a change maker, a renewer of Buddhism, but he also took on the responsibility of transmitting heritage, and part of that is Buddhism. So Plum Village, we have to remember, it started with the aspiration of being a refuge for refugees, and that’s like part of the origin, and it’s really important, it’s a part of our history, and it goes even deeper, like you had shared from the beginning, you know, about ancestors. And I think many people are surprised when they come to Plum Village, even in our artist retreat and our science retreat and our climate retreat and any retreat that we offer, people have expressed the surprise of how much they have to learn about ancestors in Plum Village, because we may come to this place and we’re expecting to learn mindfulness. But mindfulness is always directed towards a deep looking, right? It’s one of the wings of meditation is to look deeply, to see through. And part of the path of the Four Noble Truths is understanding our roots. And this also comes on a very practical level, like our body, even like our ethnicity, our culture. And I think for probably a lot of us growing up in the West who is not white, we have to tackle this crisis at one space and time in our life when we give ourselves permission. And it can be a very painful journey because you start to recognize like who am I? Because like when I came to Plum, when I came it Plum Village, so we’re starting to just call Plum Village Plum now. When I came to Plum, my English was my better language. I spoke more fluently in English. But in school, they put me in ESL class. And I believe that I spoke better English than some of the white kids around my class. And there’s a system of discrimination that has been ingrained. And this, now that I’ve learned, it’s a colonial mindset of power and status and class. So present moment, like 2025, like this year has been very unique for me in terms of learning to decolonize myself. Because I have realized that a lot of my thinking is very Western-orientated. And Plum Village has already began that journey, but I wasn’t able to name it. Very simple, learning to eat my food. Learning to cook my food, learning to cut the carrots the Vietnamese way. It can seem like very simple, but it has a really deep impact. I remember like coming to Plum Village and not knowing how to speak Vietnamese, there was a shame to that too. And then hearing Thay speaking Vietnamese and I’m like, dude, I need to learn this language because one of the surprises that I had, he became my superhero. He was like my idol, like Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, I was like, dude, how do I… I want to understand this man. And to understand it, it’s like, okay, I need to tap into my Vietnamese roots. And where do I begin? Well, for me, it was the monastic life. It wasn’t the aspiration why I wanted to be a monk, but being an aspirant, I knew like this is something I’m gonna tap into. And one of the factors of enlightenment is investigation. It’s like our curiosity, like our openness, the spirit of Zen. So I started to just open my ears and to listen to all of my brothers and sisters speaking Vietnamese and to pick up the the slang, to pick up the culture, like what it means to say a word and there’s deeper meaning in particularly the Vietnamese language because it’s very beautiful, it’s a very rich. Because one One word can have three different meanings depending on the attitude, depending on the sentence, whether it is a poetic moment or it’s a statement moment, you know, and all these nuances. So exploring my roots was happening without me even knowing it. And as I start to become aware of my own body, I started to tap into it. I can’t run away from my ancestral roots. It took me a very long time though, because I think the first encounter in the body was like our criticism to ourself. Like, why am I so small? Why can’t I be taller? Why can’t I be bigger? And then the complexes that we have established through our childhood. And then we all have suffering, right? Growing up, whether we’re from a rich family, a poor family, a refugee. There’s going to be something that has affected us. And we’re not here to judge like whose trauma is bigger and deeper and sometimes I hear people… I mean I’ve done it myself, I compare my suffering and I feel even little like, he suffers more so like my suffering is not valid. And you know our mind is such an artist of projection and of denial of oneself. So continuing to coming home, like I can keep talking about I have arrived, I’m home, which is the first Dharma seal of Plum Village. And it’s so deep because it is about understanding our roots, but for me, and Nho, she touched on, is like Thay taught all of us very differently. I think, for me, Thay didn’t ask those question, but Thay was just like planting seeds of like you’re a Vietnamese and you need to know that. And he would give me books. Pearl S. Buck was an author he really liked. She understood the suffering of colonialism. One story was about a Chinese man put into an arranged marriage with someone who was from China and to see the different cultural shift and change. So like just growing up in the monastery that Thay was not just teaching the Dharma but also teaching us as human beings to understand it and embrace our heritage. And that’s a big challenge because we all have rejection to that, you know. But he was so patient, like Thay was just so patient. I think we all realized that his role as a teacher is just to continuously plant seeds in us. Seeds in Buddhism is a very, a particular way of looking at our potentials. Like Thay would just tap into our potential and let it evolve in its own conditions. So as a young, you know, now I can say as a young Vietnamese growing up, in Plum Village, not only was I embracing my Vietnamese roots, but at the same time, I was realizing of the fortune I have of also growing up in the West. And Thay taught us this, like we also have to embrace the fortune that we have. Like I speak English, there are cultural aspects that I can tap into the West, and then suddenly we have this responsibility of being a bridge. I was translating a lot, Nho was translating a lot. And we helped because there were brothers and sisters that are from Vietnam who doesn’t understand the Western context. And for me, one of my greatest fortune was I get to see both sides, you know, and I was in awe of the uniqueness, the richness, but also the suffering. I was really blown away in one encounter in the monastic world, that in Plum Village I was living and one of my elder brothers, he shared in a Dharma circle, we have just monastic days within the Rains Retreat. When it’s only monastics, we can unapologetically just share what’s going on with us, and we don’t have to put on the road, I’m a teacher right now, I need to da-da-da, and all of the responsibility that comes with it. And this brother, so open and said, it’s very difficult for me to be in a space with French monastics, because I see them as the enemy. Their ancestors, not them, but their ancestors have killed my ancestors. So I don’t want to be put in groups with French brothers and sisters. I was really young and I heard this for the first time and I was like, holy macaroni, I would never expect a monk to say this. And I was judgmental, I was, you know, like we shouldn’t be judging like this. But we’re also taught to listen and we’re taught to expand our understanding. And I, to today, I am very grateful for that sharing of this brother, because I was able to see everybody’s truth is very different and how we can embrace our truth. We have limits and capacity. And many years later, I asked him, like, how are you doing with the French monastics? He’s like, oh, it’s so much better. I can stand in line with them now. I’m like, we gotta celebrate that, you know? We gotta celebrate that. And he’s still a monk today. But it’s just to acknowledge that these are truths and these are our suffering that we have received as transmission. And when the journey of the way out is in, like coming into it, we have to know our limits and we have know our capacity. But we can see the liberation that we want to touch, right? As a monastic, our greatest goal is to be in liberation. Acknowledging like maybe when you hear this you can say like oh, that’s discrimination. Yes, but I’m accepting it, I’m seeing it as a suffering. So that’s liberating from the suffering to not water the seeds of it is to then tend to it, care for it, and giving yourself permission to not always touch the wound because a wound needs time to heal so it doesn’t become a deeper scar. The journey of like coming home to oneself, it’s very deep and one of the origins coming back to it is just like as a teacher to the Western monastics, Thay would say, help heal the spiritual side of the Western society. You can have double belonging. As a Buddhist, you can deeply heal the spiritual side of your Catholic or Christian roots. Like Thay is such a teacher that goes beyond the boundary of just a Buddhist concept in the world and religion. And I see that as such a gift and of a transmission.

00:28:07

Thank you, brother. And just picking up on that point, because it was in my mind as you started talking about it, brother, about the value for those people in the West who are following Thay’s teachings or putting Thay’s teachings into their own life and practice. What is the benefit to them of understanding the Vietnamese roots of this? Because obviously you’ve talked about being Vietnamese living in the West, but for those who are living in the West who are touching this tradition, what is the value for them to understand?

00:28:48

I’m going to put on an academic hat really quick and just borrow some language from the academy and say it’s always a good idea to be able to trace the intellectual lineage of whatever that you study because you understand a little bit more where it comes from. And now I switch over back to my, it’s just Nho hat, right? And understanding is another name for love. And to know, in fact, what was the spirit behind the teachings and what, you know, like, Jo, when you asked me to have this conversation, you said, we just want to understand the context of Plum Village within the greater context of Vietnamese Buddhism, of global Buddhism in general, right? And so it’s like the origin story. Like, where does this come from? And it’s also the invitation to tap into the roots. Like you, you know, everything goes back to the roots. How do you undo suffering? You gotta go to the root. How do love yourself more? Go to the roots, right? You go to roots to find that stability. And I think that it’s important to know where this comes from so that you can go deep. Because it’s an invitation to go to the roots. And if there are things that, you now, maybe you’re like, maybe there’s a way we can innovate this piece here. Then you know exactly how to do it and where it came from and why it had come from that place. Cause there’s things that you could be mad about, right? If you look at how traditions evolve, you’re like, I hate that. But like one time, when I was a young nun, we had Vietnamese sisters come over and they were very kind and they were helping us establish ourself as like proper monastics. And one time I went into the restroom and I saw at the corner of my eye an elder Vietnamese nun just kind of standing there. And I was like, she’s gonna say something when I get out of this toilet. And I knew it. And I came into the rest room. I did my business, happy, lighter. I came out and the sister goes, Sister Nho, you did not pull the panel of your back robe over your head when you came in there, and that is a violation of mindful manners. And I was like, say what? And I’m like, why? And she’s like, that’s the rule. That’s what we’ve been trained to do. And I was like, okay. And I just gave her a smile and a bow as one does. And I said, not on my watch. I’m going to figure this out. I’m gonna get down to the bottom of this because I need to know why we have to do this. And sometimes, you know, I was living in the New Hamlet at that time. So you sometimes have opportunities to bring Thay his meals or, you know, go over to the hermitage. So I made up an excuse to go over the hermitage. I was like, I have to bring him his dinner. I gotta go. And so I came and I brought him his diner. And when you bring Thay dinner, you get to sit and enjoy dinner with Thay. And so, I sat there and I asked Thay. I was, like, Thay, this older sister, very lovely, she told me that I had to pull my back panel over my head when I used the restroom. I was like, is this something that is a part of the practice that I am unaware of? Like, how should I engage with this practice? I need to know. And he just sort of smiled and he goes, ah, yes. He goes, a long time ago, we used to have outhouses. And the way that the outhouses were is that people just did their business and, you know, you’d hope that, you know the stream of water would just push the poop down the ways. But sometimes the poop is big. And so like sometimes there would be flies that are jumping on the poop and then the flies would then jump on your head And so you would take your back panel and cover your head so that you don’t get poop on your head from the flies that were in the outhouse. He’s like, and so that was necessary then. But we don’t need to do it now. We have indoor plumbing. That’s okay. You don’t have to do that. And I was like, huh, and that was sort of my first taste of saying there are things in our tradition and culture that we do, and if we understand where it comes from, it becomes like a beautiful story, and we can understand whether it’s applicable now or not.

00:33:04

Thank you, Nho. So we’ve sort of talked a bit around the edge, but I think that’s useful. So I have one more question, then we’re gonna really dive in. And that question is, for most people when they think of the origin of Buddhism or Buddhist tradition, they think of Tibet or they’ll think of India or they think of China. And Thay is sort of almost alone in my mind for a Vietnamese Buddhist teacher to be known in the West, or that tradition to be thought of as coming from Vietnam. And I’m just wondering if there’s a particular reason that that is the case. And we know, of course, that Tibetan Buddhism was partly because of the Chinese invasion of Tibet and that sort of forced a lot of the teachers to flee and come to the West. So we know that aspect. But I’m wondering, is there a particular reason it’s not well-known?

00:34:04

I think the dominant narrative of Vietnam is often around war. And so when you think of Vietnam, you’re like, war. You think of Vietnam, you are like, destruction. You think of Vietnam and you’re, like, poverty. And I think one of the things that has come to light for me is Thay’s insistence is that that’s a part of our history, but that’s not the totality of our story. And let me show you what. Let me show how. Let me show you why. And I think that was one of the liberating pieces, I think, for folks who are like a hyphenated Vietnamese. Because when you do, like when I was younger, as young as six, I remember this, people like older white men would be like, where are you from? And I would say Vietnam. And then they would start telling me war stories from Vietnam. And they’re like, you know, I was in Da Nang, blah, blah, and I was like… And again, that was a particular story that I was fed often was just like Vietnam is equated to war. Thay said, yes, and. Yeah, we did have, we did go through a horrendous war. And let me tell you how beautiful, how rich this culture and history is. But, you know, you’re competing with dominating narratives all the time. And, you know, post-war people were still trying to understand what was happening. So again, this discourse about Vietnam was just about war. And Thay’s insistence like yeah, okay, we get it. And look how beautiful this culture is. Look how beautiful this tradition is. Look how beautifully and resilient these people are. And that is worthy to be celebrated as well.

00:35:47

Great, so let’s look into the end.

00:35:50

Yeah.

00:35:52

What is it about the Vietnamese Buddhism that is different from maybe other origins of, or other developments of that tradition? So what makes Vietnam either unique, special, different, however we want to term that?

00:36:11

I would say that, and I think other Buddhist traditions would also say this, but I would say this like ten toes down, full chest, was that Buddhism in Vietnam is deeply syncretic. Meaning we get access to so much traditions just because of our particular location in the world. In Vietnamese history, we were a port city. We were a stop for folks along the way to China. We had engagement with… I’m trying to not be political about this, but we had influences from Southeast Asia, influences from East Asia, we had influence from Malaysia, India, in fact. There were old French scholars that would call Vietnam the Indianized state of Southeast Asia, because we had civilizations like Champa, right, who that… were both like in the Vedic traditions, but also Buddhist as well. And so we get from the North, the Mahayana influence, and we get, from the South, the Theravada influences as well, and so we have this melange of really beautiful practices. So at any one point in a Vietnamese Buddhist temple, you can see Zen practices, you can see Pure Land practices, you can Theravadan practice, you can see Vajrayana practices. And they all happen and there isn’t this strong notion of like sectarianism, right? Like I am this, I am that. And this is sort of like the, I would say it’s a part of the Vietnamese spirit too, to like hold and integrate and be like, okay, that’s cool, I like that. We could do this. And you see this often, you know, not only in our religious traditions, but also in our foods, right? Like we perfected banh mi. Right? Like, pho is a part… the history of pho is a beautiful history. It came from the bones that were just thrown out. And they said, actually let us use this and see what we can see with this. And it became a beautiful, very nourishing, delicious dish, right? And so it is sort of the spirit of the Vietnamese to be like, to sort of embrace whatever is happening in that moment, and to take it in as a practice as well. And Vietnamese Buddhism also has, folded in it, indigenous practices.

00:38:47

So give us an example.

00:38:49

You know, this is a conversation I just had recently. In Vietnam, we have a practice of […], which is sort of like a… Many scholars argue that Vietnam is not a matriarchal society, but a matrilineal society. It’s like a matriarchal society, right? There’s still elements because, you know, we had influences from China and and Confucian elements that impacts the way that our culture starts to evolve. But for the most part, matrilineal, right? And there is a practice of female divinity worship in there. And so from this indigenous practice, you have notions of what we call […], right? Like Lady Buddha.

00:39:39

And their statues.

00:39:40

And their statues, right. And then you have these stories and these manifestations of the divine feminine in Buddhist statues, right? And so, like, if you look at Japan and you look at their, you look at Avalokiteshvara in Japan, […] has a mustache, letting you know that it’s a male manifestation of the Bodhisattva. But if you you look in Vietnam, the manifestation of Avalokiteshvara often takes a very feminine form. And I think that is a part of the matrilineal influences on Vietnamese Buddhism as it goes into… of Vietnamese indigenous practices onto Vietnamese Buddhism as well.

00:40:25

Given all these influences that have come together, what does that mean for the practice? So rather than being Theravada individually, you say there’s this mix. What is the impact of that?

00:40:45

I’m gonna turn back to what Brother Phap Huu said about being able to have a foothold in two worlds, right? And I think this is the teaching that Thay offered, especially for folks, hyphenated Vietnamese folks like Brother Phaph Huu and I, who grew up both in the West and the East. You get to tap into so many sources of wisdom, and you don’t have to limit yourself to one, right? I think one time Thay in a Dharma talk said, what’s the benefit of being so exclusive, right? And so here, I get to tap into Theravada’s practice. But the thing about the Buddhist tradition in general, not just specifically the Vietnamese Buddhism, but the Buddhist traditional in general, the canon is open. That’s a major technological advancement for what we consider one of the world religions, and I put this in quotes because that is a very contested term in the academy, but it’s an open canon. So you get to, as a Buddhist, go at it, have at it. And so you get pull from different sources of wisdom in order to create practices, mindfulness practices that address the problems that we’re facing today. And you know, I know a lot of scholars who are like Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhism has no roots, it doesn’t represent Vietnamese Buddhism. This is where I get heated, right? This is where I Kendrick Lamar, don’t tell no lies about me and I won’t tell truth about you, okay? Who are you to say what is Buddhist and what is not Buddhist? Who are you to tell a Vietnamese person, a Vietnamese Buddhist practitioner, what you’re doing isn’t Vietnamese enough? By what metric are you going to say you, Vietnamese Buddhist. You, medium Vietnamese Buddhist, you, Vietnamese Buddhist light, you, not even. And so I think that we have concepts and ideas of what Buddhism should be, ought to be. It needs to be like this. And because we have these concepts and ideas, I think we’re asking the wrong questions often. Especially in the context of the academy, where they’re always trying to say, is he Vietnamese enough? Is this representative of Vietnamese Buddhism?

00:43:24

Now, taking that on, and Phap Huu, then I want to bring you in, is given that historical narrative, here comes Thay.

00:43:33

Yeah.

00:43:34

So how has… So picking up on that point, how has that, in a sense, traditional lineage flowed into Thay? And also a specific question within that. I remember the first interview I did with Thay for The Guardian. On the comments, on the online, someone said, he’s not a Zen master. So I’d like to sort of just, if you can just talk about how that, how Thay fits into this… how it’s flowed into him and, and flowed through him. And if there’s so many traditions, why is he a Zen master rather than another, you know, why has he got that moniker to his name?

00:44:22

Is this a Phap Huu and me question?

00:44:25

This is for you first and then I’ll bring Phap Huu.

00:44:28

You know. Because we come from the Dhyana lineage. Because we are the… Brother Phap Huu and I are 43rd generation of the Linji lineage.

00:44:39

So is Jo.

00:44:39

And Jo. We, at this table right here, everyone at this tables here, is 43rd lineage of the Linji. So we trace back to the Zen school, right? And again, it goes back to, how dare you say, I cannot, he cannot call himself a Zen master? Who, like, talking about decolonialism, who made you the one who can judge what’s what? We’re tracing our lineage back to this practice, 43rd generation of the Dhyana school, the Linji Dhyana school, the ninth generation of a Lieu Quan tradition, Dharma line.

00:45:17

So tell us a bit about theose two lines.

00:45:20

I think this is a Brother Phap Huu question.

00:45:22

Actually, I don’t really, to be honest, I’m not very well versed in it, but the Linji is a very big Zen branch that originates from China. And what we have to also, for me at least, as a student, I’m a not a scholar and I don’t ever want to be a scholar.

00:45:42

Dang.

00:45:43

No, no, really, I know my lane, you know. Just coming back to all the questions of like, why is it important to know our roots? It’s because we know like, this is not made up. And it has been transmitted from so many generations. And we are of the Linji Dhyana school. Dhyana is a meditation school. So Linji was a teacher that many around the nation at that time in China saw that he is a Zen master. He is a teacher. And I don’t really like the word master. I think I’ve said this a few times in a podcast, but you know, in Vietnamese, it means teacher of Zen, translated. But we’re all teachers of Zen because we are a student of a teacher of zen. So what we transmit is Zen. So we can have errors of defining what Zen is, but at its core, right, it’s like we have two wings of a bird, which is learning to stop, which is part of meditation, learning to look deeply, to have insight. And they trace back to then the teachings of the three trainings in all Buddhist school, which is mindfulness, concentration, and insight. And it goes on, like we are just… The teachings of the Buddha, one of the beauty of it is that the monks are also scholars. They love to help articulate the teachings of Buddhism. They love put lists and they love to categorize things as a means to transmit. And then the deepest practice is then being free from all of that and to see the weaving of all the teachings. Like we have the teachings of the Four Noble Truths, the Eight Noble Path, like in the Plum Village teaching, Thay said, if our Dharma doesn’t have the Four Noble Truths, the Eight Noble Path, the insight of dwelling happily in the present moment, present moment focus, which also embraces the three times, the past, present and future, that’s not Plum Village Dharma. Like we can define our teachings. And so as part of a lineage of Lieu Quan Dharma line which just to know that it has roots where it comes from. Like, I honestly, like, I’m not… We don’t present ourselves as like, this is our titles, this is where we’re from, but it’s good to know where our origins are. And then Thay goes, and Plum Village is a new tradition that has roots. Like, the Plum Village Dharma school is a manifestation from the Linji Dhyana school and the Lieu Quan Dharma line. It’s beautiful. So we have to see the school of Buddhism like a forest. And many teachers have said, Buddhism is like so many schools and so many different forces that are refuge for the birds, the animals, the insects, for new plants to manifest. So we’re not limited. And that’s the beauty of it, right? And in the will of, you know, our teacher written to all of us, his monks and nuns students, he said that one of the greatest heritages of Buddhism, of the Buddha’s teaching, what he gave to us, is this openness to ever grow, to ever change, and not to believe in a god, a doctrine, that this is the only way. Right? It has its truth, which is the noble truth. So wherever there is suffering, there has to be a response to transform that suffering. So therefore, the insight will continue to blossom and have new forms, but it all has a source of origins of love, understanding, of the Four Noble Truth, Four Establishments of Mindfulness, you know, coming back to our body, learning about our minds, our feelings, our emotions, about impermanence. So all of the manifestation of Buddhism has adapted to the ancestral wisdom of culture. That’s why Buddhism has so many flavors. That’s why Buddhism has so many different robes, so many different colors. In Vietnam it’s brown. Then it became yellow. In China, it is yellow and orange. At some stage, it was grey at the Shaolin school. Sometimes they would have purple sanghatis. And then in the Theravada school, it is orange, red-ish, like earth color. Then goes to Korea, it becomes grey. Goes to Japan, it becomes black… For me, I love that. I love having choices. I think one of the richness is like having options are great. But then one of the, like for me though, like to then, you know, keep going on in, as a journey to look through spirituality, like, I know Plum Village is my tradition. And I am very biased. I open my mind to learn from other traditions. I wanna hear how they expand, how the Buddhism has lasted in that country and how have they evolved and how is it not growing? Right? It’s to understand the suffering. I didn’t know that in the scholar world, that’s why I don’t really tap into that. Like they were like, you know, challenging Thay as a Vietnamese monk. He’s not Vietnamese enough. I’m like, wow. But you know the beauty of Thay is that he doesn’t mind. Like he’s like, people are going to have perception and people are going to judge, people are gonna write about Thay. And Thay once told me this, it’s like we don’t have time to go and correct people. We have time to develop our liberation and transmit this beautiful teaching to the next generation. Thay’s role though as a monk and as a teacher was to make Buddhism alive again. That was a very important thread that he transmitted to the Plum Village tradition. That’s where engaged Buddhism came from. And then it was like in 2012, if I remember, Sister True Dedication will know more, because Thay was communicating a lot to her about language and literature of Thay’s redefining of our tradition. Because people were so caught in the word of engagement. Because they thought that to be engaged, you have to just be a social worker. But Thay’s like, no, you have be engaged in the world, but then you have to apply the practice to your engagement. So then at one point, Thay called it, Thay reframed it, Thaye renamed it, applied Buddhism. And for me and us now, we’re like, it’s engaged Buddhism with a plus one and it’s applied, you know, and like, like I say, language is just language. Like we don’t want to be away from the essence of daily adaptation of the practice. That is the most key and important aspect. And to come back to, you know, like what we’re discussing and then maybe we should go into like some history facts, cause it’d be fun. When I was with Thay, Thay knows his roots. And he once said like, Thay is very progressive in order for the tree to grow, but Thay’s very conservative to restore the roots. That’s, he said, that’s the dance we always have to move around and in the teachings of the Buddha, the middle way, we have to find a pathway that continues to evolve to meet the present moment but then we have a root… When we say root teacher, it’s the Buddha. Our root teacher is the Buddha, but then we know that the Buddha’s insight was, didn’t just manifested from Buddhism, it was from his upbringing from Hinduism and all the different traditions that he encountered too. Thay has said Buddhism is made of non-Buddhist elements. Plum Village is made up of non Plum Village elements, but it does have foundations and we have the Four Plum Villages seals, that Thay said these are the defining of our way of teaching and of practice. But he never said, and this is it, maybe as we continue to grow, we can see new seals in our Dharma line. But Thay is always, he’s not about just renewing, he’s actually about restoring. He’s about bringing back Buddhism so that it can be adaptive, applying, and it’s transformed. Because Thay said, if Buddhism is just about writings and about papers and about, it’s about a combat of who’s right and who’s wrong, we defeat Buddhism. Buddhism is a way of being. It’s a way life. It’s a way to engage into the world. It’s how we cultivate all of these teachings in order to enhance our deep technology, which is being together as human beings at one level and then at a deeper level to the cosmos, to the trees, to how we innovate, right? That’s where Thay was like, let me teach the tech to bring in spirituality. Let me teach the business world to bring in spirituality. Let me teach political people empower there to have a deeper understanding of compassion, you know. So Buddhism is not limited at just a, in quotes, religion. It is much more deep, because the Buddha’s question is how do I liberate all of us from suffering? And that is a deep vow.