Welcome to episode 90 of The Way Out Is In: The Zen Art of Living, a podcast series mirroring Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s deep teachings of Buddhist philosophy: a simple yet profound methodology for dealing with our suffering, and for creating more happiness and joy in our lives.
In this installment, Zen Buddhist monk Brother Phap Huu and leadership coach/journalist Jo Confino are joined by Nho Tran, a nun in the Plum Village tradition for 17 years now continuing her spiritual journey as a layperson.
Together, they explore the profound importance of spiritual friendship in the Buddhist tradition, while Brother Phap Huu and Nho reflect on the personal journey of their decades-long friendship. They discuss the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh on the centrality of community and togetherness in cultivating joy, stability, and liberation; the challenges and growth experienced through friendship; and the importance of deep listening and being present for one another, which allows for vulnerability, honesty, and the freedom to be one’s authentic self.
Bio
Nho Tran is a scholar, facilitator, and former Buddhist nun in the Plum Village tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She spent many years living and practicing in monastic communities across Asia, Europe, and North America, where she cultivated a deep commitment to interbeing, cultural resilience, and the art of mindful living.
Nho’s work sits at the intersection of conflict transformation, ethics, and systems thinking. Drawing on her monastic formation and experience across diverse sectors, she supports individuals and communities in navigating difficult conversations, fostering cultural change, and reimagining leadership grounded in compassion and collective wisdom.
She holds a joint degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and Religion from the University of Southern California, a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, and an MA from Harvard University. She is currently a PhD candidate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where her research explores the intersections of religion, ethics, governance, and Vietnamese Buddhist history.
Nho teaches negotiation, ethics, and conflict resolution at Harvard, and continues to serve as a bridge between contemplative practice and social transformation.
Co-produced by the Plum Village App:
https://plumvillage.app/
And Global Optimism:
https://globaloptimism.com/
With support from the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation:
https://thichnhathanhfoundation.org/
List of resources
Live show: The Way Out Is In podcast with special guest Ocean Vuong plumvillage.uk/livepodcast
Ocean Vuong
https://www.oceanvuong.com/
Interbeing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbeing
Ānanda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80nanda
Pali Canon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pali_Canon
The Three Marks of Existence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence
The Miracle of Mindfulness
https://plumvillage.shop/products/books/personal-growth-and-self-care/the-miracle-of-mindfulness-2/
Mara
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_(demon)
Brother Spirit
https://plumvillage.org/people/dharma-teachers/brother-phap-linh
Thich Nhat Hanh: Redefining the Four Noble Truths
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eARDko51Xdw
Maitreya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitreya
Quotes
“When we receive a Dharma name, it is almost like a trust that we’re receiving. It is also the intention that a teacher sees our potential in it. And it’s something that is given to us to practice for our whole life.”
“Learn to befriend yourself first, and then learn to be a friend of many.”
“Spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual path. It is the entirety of the spirit path.”
“Monk, you have to have a good friendship. You have to have good conversations. You have to have good deeds. You have to have good efforts. And then you have a grasp on impermanence.”
“The joy of meditation is daily food.”
“One of our teacher Thay’s realizations was that our deepest suffering is loneliness, and it comes from the wrong views of what success is, which is individualistic.”
“Reverence is the nature of my love.”
“In true love, there’s freedom.”
“True love is being present.”
“Understanding is another word for love.”
“Mindfulness always has to have an object.”
“There are ways in which, when people hear, ‘Oh, in true love, there is freedom’, they will be like, ‘Oh, freedom means I can do whatever I want.’ There’s a sort of recklessness. And that’s not the type of freedom I’m talking about. I’m talking about some real, raw, internal stuff, where I can show up in this relationship and he can show up in this relationship in his undefended self.”
“We have to expand our hearts and our way of being to bring people in, because we need friends.”
“Thay said that even if you’re an activist and you’re saving people’s lives and you’re building humanity and rebuilding villages, if you’re doing it from a place of self, of pride and ego: don’t do it. Enter into interbeing; do this because you see them as you, then you can be ‘in service of’.”
“A true friend is someone who understands your suffering, who listens deeply without judging and who is capable of being there with you in difficult moments. They don’t try to fix you, they simply sit with you, in mindfulness. This kind of presence is rare and it is a great gift. When you find such a friend, cherish them, because they help you touch the peace and freedom that are already within you.”
“The greatest technology we have is each other. These relationships that we have with each other, we keep seeking something else. But the thing that makes us feel like we are living a meaningful life is being seen and acknowledged and recognized by the gaze of another person, the loving gaze of another person.”
“The most powerful spiritual technology is the coming together.”
“I tell people to come to Plum Village, but not to try to learn something. Come here just to be. Because I think our thirst for ‘a fix’ is so powerful now. We’re looking for a spiritual teaching to fix us; we’re looking to fix all of our suffering. And guess what? Some of your suffering, you might not be able to fix it.”
00:00:00
Dear friends, welcome to this latest episode of the podcast The Way Out Is In.
00:00:21
I’m Jo Confino, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems evolution.
00:00:27
I am Brother Phap Huu, a Zen Buddhist monk, student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition. And before we begin today’s episode, we would like to share something 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 who has a deep love for our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. And a deep love for 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 that we all need. You can find details and tickets at plumvillage.uk/livepodcast. And we truly hope to see you there.
00:01:14
Yeah, and just 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’re really happy to share this journey with you. You can pre-order it now, and it will also be available at the live event in London. We really look forward to seeing you there. And now on to today’s episode, and we are going to be talking about the power of spiritual friendship.
00:02:10
Hello everyone, I’m Jo Confino.
00:02:12
And I’m Brother Phap Huu.
00:02:13
And brother, do you want to introduce our special guest today?
00:02:18
Today we are joined by a dear friend of mine, my soul sister, ride and die, her name is Nho. And we first met in Plum Village as teenagers in 2000 but she already met my blood sister in 1998 during our summer opening. So we’re all children of Plum Village coming for many many years and growing up to understand what real Buddhism is through Thay as well as the Plum Village ways. And in 2001, without knowing, we both made the decision to become monastics. So we became aspirants together in December and we met in Plum Village. And we went on an incredible journey to enter into the monastery as young teenagers. And we ordained on February 7th, 2002, and Nho and I were monastic for a very a long time, attending Thay also together, on many retreats together, Nho was with us as a nun for 17 years, and then the path led her to continue her spiritual journey, not in the robes, but in the world. And she continues to keep coming back to Plum Village, can’t get rid of her. She is a deep pillar also of my friendship and my community, and she is here with us today. And today we will be exploring the meaning of spiritual friendship.
00:03:48
And brother this is very… We’ve been waiting a long time for Nho to be here so we could record this episode and also because both your and my Dharma names include the word friendship So do you want to just mention your name?
00:04:02
My name, as many of you know, is Brother Phap Huu, and it’s translated as Dharma Friend. To be a friend in the Dharma, to be a Friend of the Dharma. To be… a spiritual friend.
00:04:15
And my Dharma name is Spiritual Friend of the Heart. And so we have that in common. And before we go into, brother, when we are given a name, how important is that? Because we’re talking here about spiritual friendship, but actually friendship is in both our names. How important is it that it’s in the name?
00:04:36
When we receive a Dharma name, it is almost like a trust that we’re receiving. It is also the intention that a teacher sees our potential in it. And it’s something that is given for us to practice our whole life. So I remember when I received my Dharma name as a monk, Brother Phap Huu, Thay, meaning teacher in Vietnamese, Thay told me, learn to befriend yourself first, and then learn to be a friend of many. And I thought it was easy, because I think I was likable, and I think that I can like people. But as life goes on, I’m like, humans are very complicated, and sometimes I’d rather be a friend of a tree, and a friend of a cat. But before becoming a monk, when I received the Five Mindfulness training, we were given our lineage name. So you spoke about your lineage name. And my lineage name was actually Good Human of the Heart, Tam Hien Yang. And I actually really liked that because that was like the journey for me to cultivate kindness in me, to be a good person. So somehow it has always reflected in my way of being, whether I know it or not. So the name has a deep impact on each and every one of us.
00:06:02
Thank you. Now I know what to do with my name. So that’s helpful. Thank you. I should have asked you 15 years ago. Nho, let me come to you. What is the connection between Buddhism and spiritual friendship? How important is spiritual friendship in the context of this path?
00:06:22
Yeah, you know, I love, I always love listening to Brother Phap Huu talk about his name because every time he talks about his names, there’s something that’s new that comes out. And I learn something more about how he’s like deepening his practice with his name. And, you know, I told Brother Phap Huu before this, well right when we started, I was like, I got some surprises for you today, brother. I, you know, spiritual friendship is profoundly important on this path of practice. There’s this story often that we hear about Ananda’s insight he had as he was practicing, and he brings this insight to the Buddha. And he says to the Buddha, dear lord, I have a profound insight. I’ve realized that friendship is half of the spiritual path. And you know, and not as depicted as, you know, Buddha’s hot cousin, right? But he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s there, he’s a friend to the Buddha. And the Buddha goes, oh, Ananda, silly little goose, right? And he says, spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual path. It is the entirety of the spirit path. And this sort of sets the precedent for a lot of the ways that like subsequent Buddhist traditions start to think about friendship. And it’s not just the story that exists in the Pali Canon about spiritual friendship, there’s other examples where the monks are trying… think that they have to go and practice in isolation and things take a turn and it’s not good. And they come to the Buddha and they’re like, it sucks to sit alone in the forest and I have no insight, I have nothing to show for it. I don’t know if I could do this. And the Buddha is like, here are the things that you’ve done wrong. And the first thing he says is like… You need to have good friends around you, right? He gives like four points. And this is like the story of Megia, the monk Megia. And he goes, monk, you have to have a good friendship. You have to have good conversations. You have have good deeds. You have to have good efforts. And then you have have a grasp on impermanence. Which I think that’s a very beautiful thing to like bring together. Good friend. He starts with friendship. Friendship is first and foremost. And then good deeds. You know, when you get together with good friends, they sort of take you along. And then good conversation, you get to talk about all the things. And then the grasp on impermanence, right? And the question is like, all these things make sense, and then this impermanent part. Why that? Right? And I have thoughts about it, but I would love to hear your answers. I’m not supposed to be asking the questions, but as I read that story, I often think, oh, why impermanance in this particular list? I mean, obviously, Three Marks of the Dharma, all that stuff, but why impermenence in the list of good friendship, good conversation, good deeds, good effort, and then impermanence?
00:09:31
I think you just asked Phap Huu a question.
00:09:37
It’s a very good like koan in friendship about impermanence because just reflecting on these questions, like I’ve also lost friends in this path. Like there were those that we became friends because of the Dharma. We became friends because life allowed us to meet each other. And sometimes we meet someone and we can call them a dear friend, even a soulmate, even having the hope of like leading our life forward together. But impermanence is important because it’s a notion of a truth that we’re ever changing, each and every one of us. And each and everyone of us in friendship, there has to be an openness to see our evolution because I have an idea about you, Jo, I have a idea about you, Nho. And if I just live with that idea, then I live with you in a friendship of a fixed idea that I have created. And let’s say we encounter difficulties. And I think all friendships, we have to have some mud because it’s inevitable that we don’t agree on things that can manifest on our path. And most of us, I think the pictures that Hollywood presents and the media and the stories we hear of friendships as in we’re always aligned. And we know that’s not the truth. And in the impermanence, it’s only when we truly meet each other truly, and we can also outgrow ourselves. Because if we perceive ourself as a kind of friend also to one person, we will never be a true friend to that person because in the journey of friendship that I’ve learned, it’s about love. So to think that spirituality and monastichood and Buddhism doesn’t have love, it’s a very wrong concept. And it’s very dry when we think about Zen where we have to be rigid and we, you know, don’t have emotions and feelings. It’s actually, it’s a very wrong perception. And, you know, in this hut here, it has these four words just, when we look through this door, it says the joy of meditation is daily food. And joy is one of the elements of true love. So for me, in friendship, we have to give space for our impermanence of each other. I’ve also had friends where maybe we grow apart, but causes and conditions allow us to meet again. And when we meet again, it’s a new opportunity. Like, how do we now see each other? And are we open to see the new person in front of us? And I’ve met people where I’ve held on to a perception about them. And only when I truly listen deeply and see who they are, now, I was like, oh my gosh, you have changed. And even in the community, you know, I just was talking to my brothers. I’m like, oh my god, I’m about to turn 39 this year. And I’ve grown in the sangha. And sometimes even the elders in my community, they’re like, Phap Huu, you’re not 13 anymore. I’m like duh. But it’s sometimes we live with just ideas of like who each other are. And it’s harder to break free from that first encounter. It’s like in true love, right? Like we may hold on to our partner as that image, that drawing that our memory has stored. And if we are not free from that then we really won’t be in relation of deep spiritual friendship. And I’ve also learned that in deep love, like, friendship is the thread that keeps our togetherness. And just to continue from the thread that Nho has started, I think it’s really important this history element where the Buddha was like, after his enlightenment, he’s like, where’s my crew? I gotta build a sangha. So the sangha we have a whole episode on the three jewels and the sangha is a jewel that is so important of Buddhism. And whether we are a Buddhist or not, the wisdom from our ancestors through so many different cultures, a beloved community is so important. That is the only foundation where we can truly realize our deepest aspiration. And if we look at all our history through the times of every revolutionist, every leader, every compassionate leader. Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Thay, even Jesus, like they all had students, community around them. And it’s so important that we have to come back to this wisdom. And in our modern time, you know, it’s all about individual leadership. It’s all about individual success. It’s a lot about me, me, me. And Thay, our teacher, one of his realizations of our deepest suffering is loneliness and it’s of the wrong views of what success is, which is individualistic. And it’s bringing back the togetherness. And I think our times of survival now with all the crisis that we are a part of, I’m not even saying that we’re seeing, I say we’re a part of, to heal and to transform and to break the chain of suffering. We have to come back to community. We have to come back to friendship.
00:15:39
Thank you, brother. And you talking reminds me that when I worked at The Guardian one of the things I did was introduce, there was no discussions between the managers and the journalists because everyone was so busy so I introduced this whole system of 360 feedback and one of the things was a survey of all the staff and there were about 70 questions people asked. And like number 36 or 37 was, do you have a friend at work? And the people that the organization that brought this survey and did all the research said that was the most important question of all of them. Because they said, if you have friend at works, then you can deal with any situation that arises. But if you don’t have a friend, then you can very, very quickly be overwhelmed. So given that, let’s get personal before we then open it up again. So even with impermanence, you two have been good friends for more than 20 years and that has endured now through you, even though you left the Plum Village tradition, you carry on sort of in this field, but there’s been a separation of sorts. What is it that holds this friendship together? And how do you support each other? Because, for instance, now, you know, Phap Huu, he’s the abbott, and we know that people who are sort of the senior leaders in an organization, sometimes that’s quite a lonely place because you have to hold the space for everyone. And also, you sometimes have to show sort of strength and fortitude, even if you’re feeling a bit stuck in yourself. So maybe to start with you, how has this friendship shown up for you? And how have you… How does it show up in your support for Phap Huu given all his many responsibilities?
00:17:44
Before I jump into that Jo, if I may, I’ve never left the Plum Village tradition.
00:17:50
No, great, thank you.
00:17:51
Yeah, I’ve, you know…
00:17:53
I meant in terms of…
00:17:54
I shed the robes.
00:17:56
Yeah.
00:17:57
I grew the hair.
00:17:57
I grew the hair, but I’m rooted in this tradition. And it is because of this tradition where I get to engage really deeply with this practice of friendship. I want to double down on what Brother Phap Huu’s talked about, about love. And I said, oh, I have a fun fact for you that your name and the word for friendship in the Buddhist languages, and in Pali and Sanskrit, are linguistically related to loving-kindness. And so it is a practice of love. And I think the whole thing is a practice of love. And I think, Jo, your question was, what is it? What are the practices, or how has this friendship endured, and how do I see this friend, my practice of supporting Brother Phap Huu, even though I’ve taken on another form? And I always sort of go back to some of the things that Thay has said. Thay has these little quotes that we have all over about love, right? Reverence is a nature of my love. In true love, there’s freedom. Right? Understanding is another word for love. And you think those are little fun little quotes here and there that you can get a calligraphy, put on your wall. But those are, I think those are like ultimate truth bombs. Like those are things that are really, you can contemplate that all day, all night, for the rest of your life. And to ask yourself, in true love, there’s freedom. What does that actually mean? And how do we actually realize that? In many ways, when I support Brother Phap Huu, I get so much support back. This is a reciprocal friendship. We are nourishing and supporting and celebrating and calling each other out as well. Right? We’re having hard, difficult conversations. We get irritated with each other. We get space with each another. And yet we continue to maintain… like we keep the eye on the prize. Right? Like in every meditative practice, like Brother Phap Huu, often in the podcast says, mindfulness always has to have an object. Right? In this friendship, there’s an object and we’re here to support each other’s greatest freedom and liberation. And there are ways in which when people hear, oh, in true love, there is freedom, people will be like, oh, freedom means I can do whatever I want. I can, you know, like there’s a sort of recklessness. And that’s not the type of freedom I’m talking about. I’m taking about like some real raw internal stuff where I can show up in this relationship and he can show up in this relationship in his undefended self. Because there’s many ways Brother Phap Huu, who is the abbot of Plum Village and Upper Hamlet, he has to take on particular responsibilities. And there are moments where he has to hold himself in particular ways. I mean, just recently in Bordeaux, Brother Phap Huu was recording, I was with him while he was recording Miracle of Mindfulness. And there was a story where Thay goes and he’s giving the sharing and there was a question and answer portion of it. This man that sort of like says, if you love Vietnam so much, if you care for your people so much why aren’t you over there and doing the work over there? Why are you coming over here? And Thay like takes a deep breath and he like holds himself together and he answers this question to the best of his ability, right? And the story goes after that session, he sort of, after that question and answer, he sort turns to the organizer and he sort whispers something in her ear and then gets up and walks out. And then he goes out and he sort of just takes these big grasps of air and sort of almost collapses because it was such a hurtful question. It was so painful to him. But in that moment, he had hold himself, right? Because it wasn’t just about him. It was just, he kept his eye on the pride. Like, I’m here for peace and I have to come to the roots in order to call for peace. So even in the midst of his criticism and pain he had to hold himself together and behind closed doors, outside away from everyone, he sort of took a deep breath and was holding himself with deep tenderness, right? And I think of that when I heard Brother Phap Huu read that story, I thought of like of him. How, you know, there’s ways in which he has to hold so many things and I think and I hope, in my practice, I hope that he gets to, behind closed doors, he gets just cry, just be, and know that it would be, like we’re holding these tears together. We’re supporting.
00:23:05
Yeah, this is an emotional moment, so let’s just take a moment. What are you feeling right now?
00:23:22
You know, Brother Phap Huu and I have gone through a lot together. A lot. It’s hard to explain what a lot is and it’s hard to unpack that a lot. I mean we’ve literally grown up together in the spiritual path and we’ve seen each other through some of the hardest times as Thay’s attendant and then, and sort of like continuing to grow from these periods of great challenge. Right? And we, yeah, I did not expect this to be so emotional as in sharing this… I always want my brother, he truly is my soul sibling and I will always want him… I see, it’s not even… I see the potential. I just see him. And there’s so much love and reverence in the work that he does and the ways that he has to hold, even in times where it’s really challenging for him and he does it beautifully. And we don’t even have to talk about it post-session. I hope like, and sometimes we just sit silently with each other in a room. We don’t even have to say a single thing to each other. Because we’ve seen each other through, you know, as children, growing up in Plum Village, as young teenagers in Plum Village, and then through adulthood, even through my own disrobing, it was a conversation I had with Brother Phap Huu. And we’d made it together. It wasn’t, I didn’t make a unilateral decision. And it was a tough conversation for the both of us. And it helped us reimagine what our friendship could look like. You know, when I go back to this idea of, like, in true love, there’s freedom, that’s what I, that’s what you think about. I want in particularly, personally, in the relationship between Brother Phap Huu and I, I want him to feel the freest, whether he’s in the public eye or just sitting silently in the room with me. I want them to be able to feel his undefended self. I want to see, see himself the way I see him. And there are moments where I’ve had this like real conversation with him. There are moments where I’ve said things to him that were really hard for me to say, because I was like, am I going to test the boundaries of this friendship? Am I gonna stay nice or am I gonna be kind? Right? And I think there’s a difference between being nice and being kind and I’ve been on this crusade of saying there’s a difference. Right? Being nice is trying to avoid difficult conversations and just avoid discomfort. But because I love him so much and we can only grow with each other, that if I don’t share with him what I see and we don’t get to have a conversation about it, we miss out. We miss out on the connection, we miss on the growth, we miss out on the things that we could do together. We revert back to an individualistic place. And so I have to trust my brother to have these conversations. Right? And I trust him to call me out when things are wilding out too much. And in that, I think there’s true freedom. Because I come full. I come undefended. I come raw. And that’s what I mean by freedom. Meaning I don’t have to protect who I am. I don’t have to perform anything anymore. I get to be in the presence of my friend and my friend will tell me everything exactly as it is. The beautiful, the wholesome, the unwholesome, the neutral things. Right? And I hope and the wish is everybody has this. That everybody has a friend where they feel like, a deep, deep connection, and you feel safe. And it’s okay to come with your full undefended self.
00:28:10
Thank you, thank you, Nho. Brother Phap Huu.
00:28:14
Hey.
00:28:14
It’s an emotional moment because it feels like, you know, it’s like an anchor for you, like a place of… a deep place of refuge where whatever’s happening in your life, there’s a safe harbor for you to come to. So what would you like to share about?
00:28:37
Yeah, I did not expect to get so emotional and tears were just coming listening to Nho speak. And I mean the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha has a debt to pay to Nho because it was also her why I’m still a monk. And a lot of emotion comes up because I think I landed in a position where I had to witness many of my siblings disrobe. And it felt like all of my closest friends in the monastic world were asking me permission to leave. And it’s always a conversation, right? And of course, a part of me is like, no, don’t go, don’t leave me alone. Like don’t… Like we had dreams, like let’s… especially among the Vietnamese, I’m like, dude, we’re incredibly… like, we know what endurance is, like we, our resilience is incredible because we’ve gone through, you know, like so much as a nation and as a people. I’d like to pull through, we’ll get through. But that insight from the Buddha and from Thay is like in true love there is freedom. And that freedom is the freedom from suffering. And when someone suffers, even in the monastic life, because of all the conditions that come together, it can’t continue this path, can’t continue this way, but it doesn’t mean the spiritual path doesn’t stop. That’s impermanence right there, right? And impermanent is hard. It is a hard truth to swallow. It’s a hard realization to embrace. And I, maybe it’s my own defense mechanism, like yesterday, like this is present moment. Yesterday, we just, in a bhikshu meeting, we just read a letter of a monk disrobing. And it’s very, there’s so much love in the room where it’s painful, it’s hard, but there’s the letting go part is so difficult. It was so sweet though. Like one of our brothers was like, yeah, okay. We support you disrobing, but don’t disrobe yet cause we have a canoeing trip like on the 1st of July and today is the 28th of July, right?
00:31:23
Of June.
00:31:23
Of June, excuse me. And he’s like, I want you to still be a monk on this last canoe trip with us. It was just that, that kind of friendship is like, we know you’re going to leave us, but let’s roll the boat one more time together as a monastic. And then you can leave after that. And it was something so simple as that, but then it was like, that is love. And that is like, because as a monastic, non-monastics can’t join this boat ride, this canoeing trip. So it’s like, I still want you to have this energy of siblinghood that you’ve experienced for five years with us. And take it out into the world. And a part of me was like, yeah, you know, like in my mind, I was like okay, let’s just disrobe tomorrow. Let’s get it over with, you know? And there’s a part of me that may be like I’ve numbed myself from like the departures of my siblings. But yeah, sitting here and just bringing that… And Nho was talking about that conversation. I remember it vividly. It was on a phone call and just the love of giving permission for her to be who she is. And to let go of the monastic form, but that doesn’t mean our relationship ends. And it’s been so profoundly our friendship has only been deeper and deeper. And I’ve shared on the podcast about my moments of crisis. And in crisis, you don’t look for your parents, you don’t look for you teacher, you look for friends who you can vent, who you be unapologetically yourself. It’s like, I’m going through a horrible time, you know? And I need to just let it out of my system. I need it to let the energy flow. And in true friends, they give you the space where you also want to respect their listening. So it’s an incredible journey of sharing from the heart. It’s not just like, I don’t want to just dump my trash on Jo or Nho, you know, as it’s like… Cause you are there, I wanna share with you the truth. I wanna to share with in a way that I’m also reflecting it back to me. And it’s been like, you know, like I was supposed to take a sabbatical this year and it’s the two of you that has, you now, really shined the light. Like, Nho, last year or two years ago, I can’t even remember, but she’s like, Phap Huu, I don’t think you’re free. I was a little bit like, what do you mean? That’s a judgment, that’s a heavy word to say. And the monk’s robe represents freedom. But I adorn myself in the robe of freedom every day. And I was like, say more, in an aggressive way.
00:34:30
He was like, say more.
00:34:33
I don’t accept this. I don’t accept this. And she was like, well, I think you’re moving around the community, not with your true self, but with all the expectation that people have given you and maybe your own mind have created it. But I know that you have a freedom that you can step into and that is the greatest gift you can give to the community, because that’s your true self. And that was very hard to hear and because the construct of the mind was like, no, I am a free person. But then when a friend says that also at first you deny it but then it stays with you for weeks, months, you meditate on it. And there’s truth to that because also in love, there’s a bitterness to it. It’s like, if I love you, I will actually tell things that I really wanna tell you. But if I don’t love you, I’ll just do whatever the heck you want. Just go down the path of destruction. And it’s very true in community, in friendship. So when I receive like this kind of feedback from someone who I grew up with and I know, it’s a true gift that you have to receive with humility, even though it’s difficult to swallow. And like in Eastern medicine, a lot of medicine are very bitter, but it’s very healthy for you. And then, you know, just thinking, Jo, like, you now, in that time, like how much space you gave me and that one day when you’re like, Phap Huu, you seem so free. I was like, holy macaroni, it’s true, I do feel free. And sometimes we, as an individual, we have so much blind side that we can’t see… Our mindfulness doesn’t have that 360. Our awareness doesn’t have that 360 because we still have manas, we still have desire, we still have greed, we still are looking for recognition, we’re still looking for approval. And it’s a… Manas is not a negative thing that we learn in Buddhist psychology. Manas is just our looking for survival, it’s looking for an identity. But it has a lot of blind side in manas. But when there’s a friend who can water your flower and say, you look free today, and you’re like, huh, you’re right. So, you know, when we started this conversation and just realizing what we’ve been through together, it’s just holy. It’s not, it’s not a… I don’t take it lightly, friendship. You know? And I think sometimes, on our Facebook or our Instagram, how many friends do we have? And that’s such an illusion. You know? It’s not the truth of… I’m not saying the friends that we connect online are not real, it’s just, there are some levels of depths when you’ve met somebody on the path, though. And think about Thay, you know, like… Thay saw his students as his friends. And he said, he told us, you know, he was like, Thay has to practice with having students. He said, Thay would be lying if I tell all of my students that there are students that are not my favorite. I’ll be lying to all of you. Thay would lying to say that there’s some students Thay don’t connect with, and Thay has to put in effort to open his heart, to learn about them, to expand his mind, to bring them into his collective prayer, his collective thoughts, his collective wish for them to be a wonderful human being and to be a lineage holder of this tradition so that they can transmit. You know, when I heard Thay say this, I felt safe. I’m like, oh my god, because I’m judging everybody in this community. It’s like, because I definitely have brothers and sisters that I can say are my ride and die, you know. And there are siblings who I’m just like, I’m never gonna have a cup of tea with that person. And, of course, in Buddhism, you know, our deepest wish of the mind of non-discrimination is like we chat this every day, but it’s hard. It’s really hard. And then when you hear your teacher say, you know, there’s some of you, it’s so easy for me to love. And then there’s some of you, it’s gonna take me maybe a lifetime to practice, to open my heart. That is just so much truth and so much practice. And I speak on this as to give all of us permission to see that love and friendship is an art, is a true art. And Thay said, he trained us when we came in, he’s like, find your inner circle. Find those who you can, in our language today, can vibe with, right? You have the same vibe. You can talk about what you’ve been through, your childhood, the times that you were yelled at by your parents, you know, the beatings you received. You know? Then the like, what we grew up with? Backstreet Boy, what songs did we like? Britney Spears, me… You know, and so on. Like, talk about the worry things that we think we can’t talk about. And then the deepest wishes that we have for one another, even though it may be the simplest things. Like, I just want my parents to accept me, you know? And then from that group, Thay says, that develops a kind of lifeline for you. But then you don’t stop there. You expand your circle or you enter into new spaces because we shouldn’t see ourselves limited to just one inner circle. But then to have that refuge as a circle that you can come home to, always coming home to, I have arrived, I’m home, it’s one of the greatest gifts. You know, Thay, as a teacher, has his inner circle where he can just drink tea with and just ask like, was my Dharma appropriate? Was my Dharma… Did people understand my Dharma? For a teacher to have that was so important. And I remember he even asking me, like, Phap Huu, do you think Thay’s teaching was good enough today? And I’ll be, Thay, dude, it blew my mind. I don’t know about other people, but like, shoo, like, it’s gonna take me a lifetime just to apply that insight, you know? But to think, you know, Jo, like you speak on so many people. Sometimes it’s lonely in different positions that we enter into. And we have to do, and we had to expand our hearts and our way of being to bring people in because we need friends. For me, you know, to have friends where I can drink tea with and just not talk about sangha, it’s one of the greatest gift. To have friends who is like, not asking me a question. It’s just like, who won the championship of the NBA today? I’m like, dude, that’s the conversation I wanna talk about. You know, it’s like, how has the NBA developed? Like, how have the players evolved, you know? And it’s such a place of just being, because even as monastics, and Nho is an academic. Jo, you’re a coach, you are a husband, you are a father. But we are not only that also. And I think the friendship is to give us space so that we can be all of this. I think that is an ongoing practice. And I’ve learned to also accept my siblings. Like I’ve accepted Nho as the new Nho. Like we grew up as teenagers and I had an attachment to that. And then, like honestly, like she’s a high achiever. She has all of these degree, she’s doing a PhD, I’m going to have to call her Dr. Nho one day.
00:43:20
Say it with your chest. Say it with your chest!
00:43:23
But, you know, I know that that are just also titles and means for us to be of service. Even me as the abbot, as a brother, that’s just a means. But deep down, it’s just like…
00:43:38
Same aspiration.
00:43:39
Same aspiration. We are just continuing to apply Thay’s deepest wisdom. And one of his wisdom was siblinghood. He told me, he said, one of the greatest gifts of Plum Village is actually not the Dharma, it’s not the meditations, it is not this podcast. It is the sense of community. He said that is the greatest gift we can give to people. You know, we have… we just finished a retreat here in Plum Village. And somebody came to me and said brother, was it intentional to call the circles that we create in the retreat a family? And she shared with me it was difficult to say family because she said I was adopted So it’s a very heavy word for me. And I said, yes, it was very intentional that our teacher told us to use the word Dharma families because he recognized that so many of us don’t have a sense of belonging, even in our blood families. But we’re not limited from that family. There’s a family of friends. There’s family in spirituality. There’s the family in organizations, in communities that we can create, in schools, and in our life, in the Dharma, in spirituality, there’s a friendship, there is a family, a connection in spirituality. And so Thay said he always judges the community of our harmony, of our togetherness, of our ability to play together, to sit together, to have joy together. It’s like don’t look at… I always look at how are we relating to one another? It’s in the simple thing of how I offer a cup of tea, how I’m ready to just take someone’s plate and wash the bowl because they’re so busy right now. And it’s not a one plus one, it’s like, okay, I did that for you, so you better wash my bowl later. Like in true love, in true family, all of that becomes… The relationship is not of…
00:46:04
Transactional.
00:46:04
It’s not transactional. And I think in our world, like, we have to transform all of this. And I thinks some of the biggest training as a novice and as an aspirant is being unconditional. That’s very difficult. So we’re put in rooms together, we’re put in teams together to cook together, to cut the grass together. And then it’s the relation like, is this transactional? Are you looking for gratitude because you are cooking for someone? And as we were reading The Miracle of Mindfulness, so it’s very fresh. So in the book, The Miracles of Mindful is is one of the books that introduced…
00:46:49
It’s a foundational book.
00:46:50
It’s the foundational book, it introduced the world to mindfulness. It’s a book that is a key to unlock the West to mindfulness, but it was a book of a teacher becoming a teacher. It was Thay writing a letter to his students in Vietnam who he cannot return home to, and Brother Quang, which is one of his lay students, was the main student that he was writing to. And in the book he said even if you’re an activist and you are saving people’s lives and you’re building humanity and rebuilding humanity and villages, but if you’re doing it from a place of self, of your pride and ego, he said, don’t do it. Enter into interbeing, enter into you’re doing this because you see them as you, then you can be in service of. And that, when I read that, I’m like, man, like I still can’t do this. It’s still such a difficult application, but that is the, I would say, that’s the definition of deep friendship is of interbeing. When we hear Thay speak about love there’s no more boundaries because my love is your love, your suffering is my suffering. My transformation is your transformation. Your transformation, I celebrate it. Even though I cannot transform again, I’m not comparing now, because your transformation gives me hope that the Dharma is transformative, right? So I think that’s where all these emotions were coming from when we started to go, when Jo you invite us to go personal, because it’s been such a journey. It’s been a such a deep journey and how rich it is to still be in this tradition. I flirted with leaving this tradition, with leaving the brown robes, with even maybe not thinking about coming back to the sangha. And it is the demons inside of us that tell us go out there, get known, do it yourself, you know, here it’s like, it’s all about togetherness. No, no, no, you want your own name… It’s, those voices are like, in Buddhism, we call it the voices of Mara that pushes us away from our deepest aspiration, our deepest love. And just before we continue to explore, I was speaking to Brother Spirit yesterday because I wanted to congratulate each other and water each other’s flower. Like, being able to host a retreat for scientists, we just finished this, it’s not a small task. And there was so much transformation. And I just said, brother, thank you for doing this. You and Sister Hero and Brother Thien Duc, Brother Thien Khai, and many other were holding this. And I said, in this conversation, I said I just want to water your flower as a member of the community. But sometimes we forget, and Brother Spirit said, you know, Phap Huu, like, he was reminded of the time when he had a conversation with one of our elder brothers, Brother Phap Anh, and he’s given up everything. He was a composer, a scientist, a mathematician to be a monk, and he wanted deep Buddhism, you know, and he asked Brother Phap Anh, he’s like, what can I do to be a better monk? And Brother Phap Anh was like, go drink tea with your brothers. Learn to drink tea with your brothers. And he told me he was so angry. He was like I’ve given up everything and you’re telling me to drink tea? But then he said, but if Brother Phap Anh told me to do this, who I really respect and who I’ve seen, because Thay Phap Anh was also like MIT, so like a scholar. And he said if he also is telling me to do that, because he didn’t believe that Thay was telling us to nurture our joy and our relationship as the main focus. He was like, after that conversation, he said, all right, I’m gonna go drink tea. There’s gotta be truth to this. There’s got to be truth to not ignoring the act of togetherness. Because he’s like, I grew up in academic, in the West. It’s like it’s all about me. It’s about my papers. I need to get the funding for that. I gotta fight. And here it’s like, be friends, man. Like learn to be together. Do this retreat together. Learn to hold the space together. And I love where he went with this conversation after I watered his flower, because he was just saying like, I couldn’t have done this alone. It was because of the siblinghood where he is also getting the energy because it makes him so happy to see all of us nourished and also pushing ourselves to grow more, to see, ah, these are things we want to, we don’t know yet. That’s for the next retreat to do better there.
00:52:21
Thank you, brother. And one of the things that, the word that keeps coming up in my mind is trust, because we can only have this when there’s trust. And there’s something about, we have to trust ourselves first. We have to be friends to ourselves first, we can’t truly be a friend to someone else if we’re not able to find that within us. And also you talked about common aspirations and… I remember, well, it was Paz, so I’m married to Paz. And I think that is more than anything a deep friendship. And Thay once said that, you know, you can share the same bed, but if you don’t share the dream, then it’s gonna go nowhere. And I know that because we’re both on this path, it is such, it’s not that we have a common interest because there won’t be such a sad way to do it, but we have such an understanding of this path, the purpose of this path, what this path offers, how we can be in service as a result of being in this path. That it just means that our lives are woven together and also we have our freedom in that. And I always remember, you know, for me, you know, Paz would say, you know, love is commitment. That often people feel that by committing to something, they’re losing their freedom, but actually it’s when you really commit that you are free. And also, you know, just to talk about, you know, there’s friendship in everything. So in our relationship, you know, I give Paz permission to be completely honest with me, and she gives me permission to be completely honest with her. And that for me is like perfect communication. It’s like empty of a separate self, therefore the communication can be perfect. That we trust each other, we love each other, we’re friends with each other and that allows the difficult conversations to happen and for it to be maintained and that practices in the Plum Village tradition, like beginning anew, that help us. And then I just want to share a bit about sort of my coaching practice because a lot of the time people have deep shame and guilt that they find difficult to share with themselves, but they certainly find it difficult to share even with their closest friends. But in a trusting coaching or therapeutic relationship, people can just release that. And these difficult sufferings dominate people’s lives. They literally are like huge weights that weigh them down. And just being able to just share that, just being able to just honestly share that and for that to be held… And for it to be held there needs to be the presence of holding it. So to know what pain is, we can’t hold, we can’t be present for pain if we don’t know what pain is. And we actually can’t be present for pain, if we know there’s a pathway through the pain. So the sort of the Four Noble Truths are, in a sense, the gateway to be present for people, because if we don’t know suffering and don’t know the cause of it, we don’t want to hear it in other people. And if we don’t believe there’s a pathway through it, then we can’t be present to it, and we try to fix it for people. So now, I want to just read a quote from Thay, which I brought along. First time I’ve actually organized anything before turning up, this is obviously a very bad sign. But Thay said, a true friend is someone who understands your suffering, who listens deeply without judging and who is capable of being there with you in difficult moments. They don’t try to fix you, they simply sit with you, in mindfulness. This kind of presence is rare and it is a great gift. When you find such a friend, cherish them because they help you touch the peace and freedom that are already within you. So I just want to come to this place of fixing, because in my experience, often when we’re a friend and someone expresses a suffering, it resonates to our own suffering. If we don’t know how to handle that, we either try to close the conversation down, minimize it saying, don’t worry, you’ll get over it, or come up with a solution that you can be sitting there listening to someone say, well, I know what they should do. And then you just tell them what to do. Can you maybe share a bit about, for you, about really what deep listening is? And even in relationship to Phap Huu, Phap Huu, for instance, has come to you with his pain. And there’s a part of us that, in any friendship, we wanna fix someone else’s pain. We want them to be happy. But you talked about not being nice, being kind. So can we just talk a bit about that, allowing people to be in their pain, but not needing to fix it for them.
00:57:48
I think it goes back to the thing that you were just talking about. I think it’s trust, right? In the friendship, my friend brings their pain to the table. There’s a certain amount of trust that they’re sharing with me that they could bring to the table, this pain that could be very deep or they just realize that this is a pain that they have. Right? And they’re putting it on the table and I also have to trust that they will figure things out. And that I just have to be there to witness, right? And so I think in many ways, holding space for your friend to both be and become is an art and a practice in itself. Like Brother Phap Huu said, friendship is an art. And in fact, I can’t stop thinking about the story or the way that the Buddha and other Buddhist teachers and Thay talks about friendship. And I really, we just came off of the science retreat and I keep saying, the greatest technology we have is each other. These relationships that we have with each other, we keep seeking something else. But the thing that makes us feel like we are living a meaningful life is being seen and acknowledged and recognized by the gaze of another person, the loving gaze of another person. And that’s all… I think that’s all we’re seeking, essentially. Right? And so, like, what does it mean to like tap into this technology of friendship? And it doesn’t look like one thing. There’s not one model of friendship, right? The way I’m friends with Brother Phap Huu is very different from the way I am friends with my other friends in the world. And there’s ways in which there’s an underlying practice to all of the ways that we show up for each other. And I think, you know, sometimes you do have an answer in your head from the problems at the table, right? You’re like, oh, I know exactly what you need to do. And the kindest thing you can do is just shut up. Because sometimes, as a friend, you have to be like, oh, they’re not ready this and when they’re ready they will ask. Right? And there’s also like, you know, as you said there’s clear communication that you can practice with your friends and say is this a I need you to listen moment or let’s problem solve this together moment? And you trust that your friend would show up or your partner or your loved one could say that to you. But again, you have to cultivate the trust around that beforehand. Right? I think there’s like a… again, in another sutra where the Buddha talks about what is the four things of a bad friend and four traits of a good friend, and the four traits of a bad friend is like someone who just gives you lip service and then abandons you. One is a person who gives you a lip service, and then the second trait, a trait of a bad friend, is someone who abandones you when you have a hard time. Or when you’re facing adversity. And so, as a good friend, the other list that he offers is like, a good friends is an enduring friend, a resilient friend who will sit with you through the discomfort. Right? And so like, I think in like, you know, if we’re taking friendship really seriously as a practice of love, and we take seriously what Thay says about love, that it requires understanding, then to understand in that moment, what is it that my friend needs? What is it I can do to show up for my friend? Is a mindfulness practice in itself. And it’s, again, it’s that relational piece. It’s not a transactional piece. Because, like you said, Jo, you have to tap into yourself. Right? Before you trust another person, you gotta trust yourself. And so in this friendship, oftentimes we think, this is something that’s very outside of me. But I think we gotta take the Buddha seriously. And he’s like, this is the whole of the spiritual path, how we relate to each other. This is the greatest technology we have for a meaningful, well-lived life. And so, I think, you know, the fixing part, oh, and let me tell you, you now, as a young nun, I was, there was lots of trying to affix here because I came… I was a little… Like by nature, I’m a little spicy, right? And spicy…
01:02:27
I can tell. That you didn’t need to say.
01:02:31
And, you know, some of the nuns were like, you need to drink some of that milk and simmer that spice down. We’re not here for this, right? And it was tough. It was really tough for me because I felt so like, I wanted to be seen and acknowledged and loved, but it meant I had to fix myself in ways that were not true and authentic. But when you’re trying to show up in friendship and when you try to show up in true love, you get to be exactly who you are. And I think this is the beauty of the community, right? If we are a community that lives in harmony, everyone gets to show up exactly as who they are, and that becomes an offering to the community when you know how to celebrate and support their being and their becoming. I said to Brother Phap Huu, and I said to you, Thay has given us these little nuggets every now and then in his Dharma talks, but he sort of plants a seed and sort of lets you cultivate it so it becomes something. And before Thay would always say, the next continuation of the Buddha of Thay is the community. And as I was reading through some Buddhist text and some linguistic stuff, I was reading about the future Buddha, Buddha Maitreya. And his name actually just means a friend of loving kindness. Do you know what I mean? I was like, this guy, he was just planting these seeds. He’s just continuing the lineage of friendship, of connection, of trust, of helping each other see each other. And like you said, Jo, the Four Noble Truths is a way that we help each other to see each other. And sometimes what I think my suffering is, my friend is like, oh, homie, no, no no. That’s not what your problem is. This is what your problems is. And when we can help each other… And people think the Four Noble Truths is like oh, hop, skip, jump, easy. It is hard. Right? It is so hard. Because sometimes we want to indulge in our own delusions so that we’re like, you know, my problem is this. And the person who loves you is watching you and you’re like, actually, this is what I’m seeing. And so your friend actually helps you get to that first noble truth. And it’s sometimes hard to be honest with ourselves. And so, again, I think it’s like the greatest technology where we get to rely on each other, get to trust each other. As we trust each other, we start to learn how to trust ourselves as well. Because there’s sometimes, Brother Phap Huu would say things to me. I’m like, why… I don’t know.
01:05:14
I’m not so sure about that.
01:05:15
I was like, let me sit on that, right? But to be able to have that conversation, right? Because we’re not trying to be nice to each other, we’re being kind to each. We’re taking each other very seriously on the spiritual path. And we get to say, that’s a great idea. And sometimes I feel like that is a terrible idea. Why would you even think that? That’s horrible. Right? And so to be to help each other arrive at that first noble truth. And then we get to ride the waves all the way down to the fourth noble truth together. And we get to be a sounding board, we have these conversations, we get to be the continuation of the Buddha, continuation of Thay in all these beautiful ways. Right? And so, your original question, I think, Jo, was…
01:05:59
How do we… You know, the importance of not trying to fix people.
01:06:02
I’m trying to fix people.
01:06:03
But be present for people.
01:06:04
That’s right. But the question is, can you just be present for yourself?
01:06:12
No, it’s just something that’s just been coming up like in one of my facilitation new unlocking technology was I sometimes I just help repeat back what someone has shared something. I say, so what I’m hearing you say, da da da, and sometimes with a little bit of a more, also saying what you’re saying, what you are trying to say. Because in the deep listening, especially in friendship, like in community, like I know to a degree of my monastic sibling, like their stories, their suffering, their noble truths. And sometimes it’s so important just to reflect back the source of the second, which is like the source of suffering. And there was recently in a conversation I had with someone was because I wasn’t trying to fix the person because I don’t know what to fix, but thanks to listening to them, I just, I was like, you need to hear what you’re telling me.
01:07:12
Yeah.
01:07:13
And I repeated it. And this person had a realization of then he’s like, that’s… let me sit on that. And sometimes, like, it’s so incredible, like just to keep the learning of deep listening. It’s so powerful. And a lot of times we think deep listening is to equal loving speech. But actually, sometimes just the deep listening and you come… I’ve learned to come more to places really of the unknown. I enter spaces I just don’t know. But what I’m going to do is I’m gonna listen. I’m going to show up. Remember Jack in our podcast, and Jack, our producer, he was recently here for a retreat and we talked about this. I really was trying to ask him, like, Jack, how do you prepare yourself when you’re composing and you’re helping bands create music? And he’s like, brother, my first reaction is I don’t know, because if I know, then the band won’t have space to add the melody into the silence, right? Because if you know, then you’re bringing, you’re bringing already a composed idea that you’ve had. That’s very different. And so I’ve actually applied that cause I like to be organized. And one time we were sitting in this hut with like a bunch of organizers and one of the friends said, I like chaos. And I’m like, I like organized chaos. I don’t like chaos, I like organized chaos, but that also means there’s a place for the unknown. But I guess the organization in me is actually my own center. It’s like, when there is the unknown, how can I move with it? Then, because mindfulness is light. Mindfulness will shine the light to what is being said, what is not being said what the energies are present. And it’s incredible the deep listening. And my new language is like Thay has given us so many spiritual technology. And I think that if we just apply it and we stop looking for something more advanced, more… the enlightenment that we’re running after. Like these practices are enlightenment. They are the realization of great beings. I was like, guys, just listen to each other. It’s like nations, right? If the nations would just stop the bombing, stop the killing, and just listen to the suffering that are present, we have a way forward. It’s, like, oh my gosh. It’s like, if we all just take a pause and just listened to our own pulses, to our own heartbeats, to our own anger, to our own wrong perception, we will have an awakened society. And I think this is why, you know, Thay’s deep insight of like a collective awakening is the only cure to our suffering. It’s, I’m coming back to this, Jo, I’m come back to the this, Nho, like… And I have been realizing, oh my goodness, like all of these retreats that Thay has created this technology of coming together, listening to the trees together, listening to our pain together, listen to the stories that we need to tell of ourselves in a free way, not to be attached to our story, but just to give it a voice and then see other stories can emerge. Like these retreats are some of the deepest peace work that I’m touching now. Like when Thay, as a monk, as an activist, as a voice, he realized, I have a short life. He lived to 95. What I’m gonna devote to it is to nonstop helping people touch their inner peace. Because you cannot imagine the ripple of this transformation. And all of this like, what Nho said is that the most powerful spiritual technology is the coming together. But how do we do it in a way that, for us to heal ourselves, is also to also lower our egos, lower our prides. And we’re doing more and more in our retreats like, even in the science retreat, I said introduce yourself as your first name. Don’t tell me what you did. Don’t tell me what you’re doing. Don’t tell me what you’ve done. I just want to meet you in the here and now. And guess what? Somehow I’m going to learn all about you through this journey. But we’ve been so accustomed now, in our relationship, it’s like, hi, I’m Brother Phap Huu. I am an abbot, I am a podcaster. Then it’s like, please accept me because I have all of these titles. Actually, that’s not even safety. We think that’s a safety mechanism. That’s actually all our insecurities, right? And in our retreats, like, in the artist retreat, when we held it together, people were just like, I don’t want to be known as a violinist. I just want you to know who I am in this moment. And that is so simple, but it was so beautiful that we can all just allow ourselves to be who we are. And then from that the trust is developed, because I’m not here to look for a contract. I’m not here to look for a new opportunity. And I tell people to come to Plum Village, don’t come here trying to learn something. Come here just to be. Because I think our thirst for even a fix is so powerful now. We’re looking for a spiritual teaching to fix us. We’re looking to fix all of our suffering. You know, guess what? Some of your suffering, you might not be able to fix it.
01:13:29
Lifetimes.
01:13:31
It may be the next generation that will do it for you. Right? So it’s this nuance that I’m touching in our modern time. One of the loneliness is epidemic, but also this craving for fixing, for well-being. Well-being is important, but the Buddha teaches well-beings can only be there when ill-being is there. And when ill-being is there, well- being is already there. You just have to expand your hearts and your mindfulness to see it. So in the loneliness, there’s a friendship that can be there. It’s your breath. It’s the friendship of oneself. It’s the friendship of my suffering. And also, when I am in relation, I can be motivated by your strength. I’m don’t become jealous of it. Your success is like, dude, I’m going to celebrate that because there’s a part of me there and you have to train this because it is a very competitive stream in the world. Right? And I shared this of a deep friend who was here in the artist’s retreat. He was a monk and he joined the five year program and he left. But he was a producer and in the artist retreat he was able to invite one of his artistic friend who became a singer and a very famous singer in Germany. And it was in this retreat that he saw the path, they all took different routes. He became a monk. And then the other one became a known artist. And he was just, in the retreat, he was able to just celebrate who he has become. And that was so liberating for him. And he able to share that, how happy he is that the path, that this friend has become a known singer. And this friend then was able to say, and thank you for introducing me to this retreat because you became a monk and I was so curious to what you have been doing and who you have become and Plum Village, Plum Village like I just have to go there. And it was because you… because the journeys we’ve taken have shown us two different routes. But now we’ve meeting again, new humans in this retreat. And he shared with me is like I’m celebrating, brother, his success. And what I’m hearing is I’m celebrating my reconciliation of also my jealousy and my competitiveness that was coming up. And it was so beautiful and some healing may take years. And the beauty in this is now he can transmit that freedom that he has in his way of being. So these are just some like real stories like I was just able to encounter in the last two months.
01:16:46
A couple of things from that. One is, in my experience, the biggest danger in any relationship, any love relationship, is competition and power struggle. In my first marriage, we were in power struggle, and there was this competitiveness of who was winning and who was losing, who was succeeding, who was failing. And ultimately, I think that destroyed our relationship because we weren’t able to manage that. In my relationship with Paz, you know, it’s such a relief, is to want the best for each other. It’s just, oh my God, it’s so, you know, I want the very best, you know, my deepest wishes for Paz to blossom in the way she wants to blossom. And her deep wish is for me to blossom. And there’s no competition in that and partly it’s because of the Dharma. Because if you don’t have the Dharma’s foundation, then it’s very difficult to see someone else’s success as our success and to see the interbeing nature, and we just remain with our individual selves. And the second thing you just started talking about, which I want to just come back, come to you on really is about time. So you mentioned sometimes lifetimes, sometimes it takes time. So one of the… I went on a few management training programs when I was younger, and I’d forgotten absolutely everything, apart from one thing. And in management training, they love these sort of four quadrants. And there was one called the Jahari window. And it goes like this. It says the first quadrant is what I know about myself that another person knows. So that my name’s Jo and that I live in Plum Village. And the second is what I know about myself that you don’t know. And the third is what you, what I don’t about myself, that you know. So for instance, you know, when people go for media training, in their film they suddenly realize they say things or repeat things that they don’t even know about. So, and then the fourth one is what I didn’t know about myself and what you don’t know about me. And that is a journey, because the journey is to share what I know about myself that you don’t know, because that is allowing you in. The third is about me not knowing something that you share. So you’re talking about the way you are with Phap Huu, the kindness of pointing out the things that are difficult. And when we do those two, then it opens into the unknowing. And it can’t open to the unknowing unless there’s a deep, deep sharing. And that takes time. So I just want to get back to the personal here, because I want you to cry again. It’s good for the numbers.
01:19:49
Good thing you don’t see my ugly face when I cry.
01:19:52
I’m a cute cryer, so I’m crying a lot, so.
01:19:55
Just focus on that, focus on now. Is… I’m just interested in sort of how you see your friendship developing because these things are not static and it’s impermanent and the hope is that your friendship will continue through your life. And so I’m wondering, because you already know each other so-called well but my wife always says to me, you know, we’ve been together 20 years but do you really know me? And do I really know you? And I think, well… God, I probably have got a hidden lives of things that I don’t fully share, and she has her own life, and we don’t truly know each other on certain levels. There’s an infinite amount to learn about oneself, never mind the other person. So I just want to sort of… What is your, in a sense, wish for your friendship with Phap Huu? So you’re ready, you could stop at this point, and it’d be like, that’s pretty good. We’ve gone a long way. But there’s a long way to go.
01:20:59
We hope.
01:21:01
And if there is a long to go, how would you like to see that as a sort of, not just in terms of you and Phap Huu, but in terms of also, in general terms of how can things continue to develop. And are there any, because you have a great knowledge and understanding of the teachings, whether there are teachings that can help us to know that journey.
01:21:29
I think that in order to properly discuss the future of our friendship, I think I’ll have to say something about the past of our friendship. You know, when I disrobed, it wasn’t like, I’m gonna disrobe, this is great. It was the hardest decision I had to make at that time. It was a painful decision. And it wasn’t just the decision in that moment where I was like, I’m disrobing. I mean, that’s all I had known for my young teenage life into my young adult life was being a monastic and holding tight to this vow that I had. And when Phap Huu and I had this conversation about disrobin, I always thought, I wondered if I was a failure. You know, there’s a world in which you’re like, dang, you know, I had the chance to kneel in front of Thay, take these vows with my brothers and sisters, and here I am, returning these robes. At that moment, it was such an intense moment. And sometimes, there’s not so much now, because of the friendship. But in the beginning, I just could not shake off the feeling of being a failure. Like, I didn’t do the thing that I said I was gonna do. And then I would look at Brother Phap Huu, who is my best friend, my soul sibling, the one that like we’ve just again, ride or die. And there are moments when I looked at him and I was so jealous. Like profoundly jealous of the life he got to live as a monastic, because that’s all I wanted. And I think that Thay has given us so much. You know, I said, you know, in the beginning of the podcast, I said in true love is freedom, reverence is the nature of my love, right? And you know all these things that Thay says about love and one of them is in true love, love is being truly present. And in the moments when I looked at Brother Phap Huu, and I was like God, if only I could have that. I actually had to learn to be present for myself. And to hold that. And I think that because, you know, Thay has all these little seeds that he would just drop in these moments that were so hard, because again, it’s the original aspiration, right? I always say it’s my first love is this monastic life. And you know there’s ways in which when you think about your first love, you’re like, it could’ve been, it should’ve been, I wished it could have. Right? And there’s ways in which you gotta get to that first noble truth for yourself. And you can only get to that first noble truth if you’re present and be truly present for yourself. And so when I was sitting in this presence of these feelings that I would never want to have with my brother. Right? I would not want him to know that I was jealous of his monastic life. There’s one time, and one time he didn’t know anything but one time we were having this conversation I always skirt around the question why did you disrobe and one time he just said and I was I was giving one of these like you know cousins in condition I was trying to you know skirt around it and my brother, in a true moment of friendship, said can I interrupt? And he said, some of us are really lucky. And some of us are less lucky sometimes when it comes to the conditions. And he said, I so happen to be lucky. And my sister didn’t have all the conditions there for her. And for the first time, I was like, oh, I felt this, he didn’t know it. I only told him weeks later, months later. But for that, he was so present for me in that moment and he saw me fumbling with this part of my becoming. And he came in and he swooped in, and he gave me a raft, and it delivered me. Right? And I think in that sort of presence that we had for each other, without ever having to fix each other but noticing, oh, in this moment, I need to show up for her in this way, or I need show up, he helped relieve me of this sense of failure. And it allowed me to sort of just sit with what it meant to fail as a monastic. But then in this presence that we shared with each other, in the practice of being present for each other, it helped us reimagine what it looked like to do the work that we once made a vow to do together. Right? And so here I am rocking this head of hair. Right? Rocking my fits. And he has opinions about my fits, he lets me know if my fashions are on or off point. Okay?
01:26:54
Yes, it’s true.
01:26:55
And we get to reimagine together what it looks like to continue the work together. And there, I don’t, there’s, again, there is no longer this feeling of jealousy, but I’m like, bro, you ultimate monk. I’m here, I support and celebrate it. And he goes, sis, you out there, this is what we’re going to do. And so everybody, everybody gets to ride their own Dharma. And it’s true, I think that if I stayed a nun, I would just spend my time being in trouble all the time. I love my nuns, by the way. And I know I’m a particular flavor that is sort of sometimes, sometimes hard. Right? And so to be able to like, you know Mr. Rogers?
01:27:46
Yes.
01:27:48
When he received an award one day, he made the whole audience meditate on those who loved you into being. He’s like, let’s take a moment to think about and bring forth those who have loved you into being. And I think that is such a beautiful practice. In terms of your previous question, Jo, about fixing each other. Right? Because sometimes we think that we have to come with an agenda and we’re like, if I love you, I’ll fix you, I’ll do all these things for you. But in fact, it really is loving someone into being, into who they are, into the Dharma that they are going to be, their own expression of the Dharma as they are. And how do you love someone into being? Go back to Thay’s saying, true love is being present. And this is, I’m just doubling down on what Brother Phap Huu said where you, like, practice is just to be present first for yourself, so that you can be present for the other person. And then when everyone can be for real with themselves, and when everyone could be clear and complete with themselves and who they are, that jealousy that comes up, the sense of failure when I look at my brother, doesn’t come up. It really goes back to what Phap Huu said, when he helps retreatants transform suffering, that’s me too. I’m a part of that. And when I’m outside and I’m giving lectures or I’m working in the corporate world and I am doing the thing outside, I bring him with me. And so I think that when I reflect on the past of our friendship, because again, we’re humans, we’re real real with each other, and the feeling of jealousy and yearning for what he has helped me understand a little bit more… And the ways that he responded to that when he saw me fumbling with myself and my own becoming has helped me respond to actually re-imagining and really tapping into myself. Actually, what are my strengths? What are the things that I can offer? What does it really look for me? What does it look like for my own authentic expression of the original aspiration and the Dharma as I see it fit for me and for those who I love and for who I want to be present for? And that’s the thing about fixing, right? Because fixing, you’re like, there’s a particular model. Your problem and I know exactly how to fix it because you’re sort of you know boxing in the problem. But the problem for each person is very particular. It’s very different. You know, your suffering is your suffering, and my suffering is my suffering. They interare and they’re also very particular in its own ways. And so, I think that in our friendship, as I grow in our friendship, A, I’m learning to love myself so much more profoundly. And I could not say that before. I could not look and, you know, one time Thay says, have you ever looked in a mirror and smiled at yourself? And actually I was like, uh-oh. I’ve only looked in the mirror to check for flaws. I’ve never looked in a mirror to smile at myself. And I actually went into the bathroom immediately after I heard this, and I went and I smiled at myself, and it was the most awkward smile I have… I was like, ooh. I’ve never smiled at myself. But being in friendship with Brother Phap Huu has allowed me to smile at myself and to say, hey, yeah, I can love myself. This is cool, right? I could be present for myself. I could stay with the discomforts of the things that are arising in me. And I could, at the same time, I could able to cultivate that love, that presence, that patience, that generosity for myself so I can offer it to other people as well. Right? So like the loving interbeing piece is the presence, is the ability to stay with the discomfort, is the ability to help each other, reflect each other, so we can see ourselves in another light so that we can truly show up just as we are. And as we think about the future of our friendship, I don’t know. I really, I’m stepping into the unknown. But the vow is whatever iteration Phap Huu shows up with, I’m here for it. I’m here to love on it. I’m here to understand it. I’m heard to ask about it. I’m to criticize it if it needs criticism. But I’m here for it, I am present for it. And truly if it wasn’t for Brother Phap Huu, we wrestled with the idea of my disrobing and he’s the one who brought me home. In so many ways like, Brother Phap Huu says there’s so many ways in which I’m still a monk because of Nho. And there’s so many reasons why I’m Nho, it’s because of Brother Phap Huu. And when I say he invited me home, it literally was an invitation back home to Plum Village. And I was nervous to come home. I was nervous to come home with a head of hair, no longer in brown robes. I didn’t know what it meant to not be a monastic, and to be in Plum Village. I didn’t know what it meant to walk into Thay’s hut and to not be in robes.
01:33:36
As you are now, sitting in Thay’s hut without robes.
01:33:41
But the invitation to come home is the invitation to come home. It is the invitation to come home to the place of my becoming. And it’s also the invitation to come home to the home that I once had abandoned inside of me. And I think that is sort of the wish that I have in the friendship with Brother Phap Huu is like don’t want him to abandon any parts of him. I want him full, raw, real, and I think that is the greatest gift that he can offer the community, the world, just, you know, the cosmos. And I can see that that’s exactly what he wants for me too, to be able to show up real, raw, true self. And so in the future, what is our… What do we want for our friendship? Everything as is and more. You know, Thay has that poem, if you ask me, what do I want, I will say, I want it all. I want it all. I want every single part, every single bit, every single iteration, every single manifestation, because it’s going to feed me too.
01:35:37
Phap Huu, I tend to give you the final word. I don’t know if we need a final word, that feels like the final word. So let us allow that to be the final word. Thank you so much for your deep sharing and for being so present. And the way Phap Huu described you before you arrived, it looks as though now you can come in and be a teacher to the monastics, in the same way the monastics can be a teacher to you. And that is a truly beautiful thing to come back also as a teacher.
01:36:16
It’s going home.
01:36:18
And Phap Huu, I’ve said enough times how much I love and respect you, but I love and respect you even more today and to just honor your journey. And your journey for yourself and your journey that you offer to everyone else because you’re making this path safer for other people who choose to step onto it. And they don’t, won’t even know, but they’ll know. And, in that sense, you are, as all the monastics are, and in your own flavor, a wonderful continuation of Thay because you continue to walk that path and behind you, open that path for others to follow. So how wonderful that you two are walking it side by side. Thank you both.
01:37:11
And I have to say thank you, Jo, for also being part of this path and being a friend, but also a shoulder, a shoulder to rely on, a shoulder to lift the sangha up to when the monastics were like, dude, we’re so tired. I can’t do this anymore. And your kindness and your… refuge for many of us. I hope you know this and if you’ve forgotten I will just keep reminding. And this podcast too for us to explore where we’re at and to reminisce on also how the Dharma has shaped our life but how it moves us forward and continue to explore together. This is what I like, like dear listeners, we never come in with what we’re gonna talk about. We have a theme and we’re like Nho asked so what are we talking about? I say, we’re going to talk wherever Jo leads us. And I think it’s very true to the way out is in, cause if we don’t come into this present moment, then this podcast wouldn’t be authentic. And I really value this because there’s not…. I think the podcast is also a place for me to also just be vulnerable and let things come out as it needs to come out because some things I’ve been just holding. And dear listeners, we’re very happy to be back in the podcast. I know we’ve been away for two months and…
01:38:53
And that, you, listeners, are our friends too.
01:38:56
Absolutely.
01:38:57
It’s like no separation and it feels cozy because we’ve actually, we also have met some of you and get responses from some of you and it does feel like family, it really does.
01:39:12
And we hope that we can continue to be your friends on this path and that you are really alive every time we put the mics up and we start, with the introduction, welcome to another episode… Because it’s like mindfulness, you need to have an object to practice to in the podcast. We have to have a community that we are sharing so that we can hear ourselves, but also to cultivate and to be a part of your journey in this life. So I’m so very grateful and very honored. Thank you so much, dear friends.
01:39:50
Thank you.
01:39:59
Dear listeners, we hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, you can find many more and you can find us on all podcast platforms, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, also on our own Plum Village App.
01:40:17
And you can find all previous guided meditation of this podcast on the On the Go section in the Plum Village App. This podcast is co-produced with Global Optimism and the Plum Village App with the support from the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation. If you feel inspired to support the podcast moving forward, please donate at tnhf.org/donate as well as you can also support our construction projects in Lower Hamlet after the fire incident, as well as other infrastructure projects that are the home of many monks and nuns and the community. And we really want to offer our gratitude to our friends and collaborators, to Clay, aka the Podfather, our co-producer, as well Cata, our other co-producer. Grateful to our other friend that is also named Joe, who is our audio editing. Anca, our show notes and publishing. And Jasmine, Cyndee, our social media guardian angels, as well as today, Georgine, our sound engineer. As well as Paz, who is a continuous support in the room. Thank you and see you next time.
01:41:58
The way out is in.