The Way Out Is In / The Art of Transmission (Episode #93)

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Dear listeners, welcome to this latest episode of the podcast series The Way Out Is In.

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

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

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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’re so happy to share our journey into the unknown. You can pre-order it now, and it will also be available at the live event in London. Our first book, Being with Business, Zen Ways to Transform Overwhelm and Burnout, can also be purchased at your favorite bookstore. We’d love to connect with you in London. And today, Brother, we are going to be talking about the art of transmission. And by that, we mean this sort of, not transmission in terms of TV, but in terms of the transmission of wisdom over space and time.

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The way out is in.

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Hello, everyone. I am Jo Confino.

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And I’m Brother Phap Huu.

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And brother, we are going to talk today about something that’s very particular to Buddhism, which is the art of transmission. And I’ve always been intrigued by this because often when people do a ceremonial acceptance of the five mindfulness trainings, that’s called a transmission. When Thich Nhat Hanh or one of the other teachers gives Dharma talks, they offer not a teaching, but a transmission of the wisdom. So I’ve been very intrigued by this, and I’ve be learning over time what it means. But let’s turn to someone who actually already knows what it mean and who actually is a transmitter of wisdom. So Brother Phap Huu, what do we mean by transmission as opposed to, well, teaching?

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The insight of transmission, or as we’re calling it in this podcast, the art of transmission, we touch something very deep in the teachings of Buddhism, and that is emptiness. Emptiness here doesn’t mean we don’t exist and nothing is there, but in the insight of emptiness, which is one of the highest insights, because that is the pathway to be connected to interconnectedness, or our teacher calls it interbeing. And emptiness here, it speaks about non-self. When we are coming to learn anything, not just Zen, not this religion, even in school or in life, there is something that we have to activate to learn. And that is our not knowing. But we are so well trained in the knowing or the pretending to knowing in order to be seen, to be accepted, to feel we have the right to be in that position. And it speaks about our modern time about identification. And in the light and in the understanding of Zen and Buddhism, when we are coming to learn and to receive, first of all, we have to touch something that is called the beginner’s mind. The beginner’s mine speaks about the willingness to learn. And in the beginner’s mind, we come with a request, a request to be taught, a request to be shown the way, as in Vietnamese and Chinese spirituality is a lot of the time written as now, meaning the path, the way. So when we are at the we want to be guided because we don’t know. So in the beginner’s mind, we also touch something that is we’re empty. We’re empty of not knowing. And that mind is a very precious mind. And one of the highest mind, I would say, in the spirit of learning. And Sister Hero speaks about the art of unlearning. And coming to transmission we are in touch with the unlearning in order to see something new. So there is a gatha that we practice in our daily life, in transmission. And it goes like this, and our teacher, of course, with a poet’s mind and a poet’ skill, he retranslated that touches this beautiful insight. And it goes like this, and we always announce this when we offer a prayer to the Buddha or offer a prayer to our ancestors: the one who bows and the one who is bowed to are both by nature of emptiness. Therefore, the communication between them is inexpressively perfect. The one who bows, that is me, so in my greeting of the one who I am seeing in front of me, I am not just a separate self. In me I already see the teacher in me, I already see you in me therefore the transmission can happen. Your heart is opening up. And the one who is bowed to, the one who is receiving the reverence, receiving the love, receiving the request, for them to transmit, they’re also empty of a separate self. Because when they’re transmitting wisdom, this wisdom doesn’t come from them. This wisdom comes from a stream of ancestors, genetic, spiritual land. And so, therefore, when the transmitter is in that full presence of non-self, emptiness, the transmission is true. There is no pride in it. There’s no ego in it. And when we are in that state, that transmission becomes very alive and it’s a transmission of not just the present moment, but of also the multi generation of past. And that wisdom, therefore, is a stream of living wisdom. Because from the past, it comes to the person who is present. And that person will be transmitting insights but not copying and pasting from what they’ve learned. But they share it from now their lived experience. They’re transmitting it from their direct insight of how they are applying the practice into their daily life. So then this transmission becomes very alive. And therefore, when the transmitter touches that emptiness, the communication is perfect because the communication is preset moment based. As we know in the Plum Village tradition, the first Dharma seal, it is to live happily in the present moment. I have arrived. I am home. So all of our teaching, even though it has a root from the past, but the tree is alive in the here and now. And the leaves and the fruits that is being offered, the refuge that is been offered is today. It is here. It is now. And the fruit has to be alive today for the receiver to eat the fruit. So when we speak on transmission, it speaks on a very deep practice. And it’s very difficult to remember this insight because so many times when we are transmitting, we enter into mode of knowledge only. Not saying that knowledge is not important. Knowledge is present. But knowledge becomes alive when we bring our direct experience into it. And transmission, this word here is not only between teachers and students, it is friendship, there’s a lot of transmission. In daily life, in parents, we are in now the second day of our summer opening. And there’s so much family that is present. There’s a lot of parents, there’s a lot of children, and there’s a little transmission happening right here right now. It’s not through just words. It is through the way we look at each other. It is through how we show up for one another. It is the transmission of energy. And every day we are receiving transmission from the whole cosmos. And there’s a lot of types of transmission where as a practitioner, we also have to develop a kind of awareness to see if we want to receive that transmission. Also, there is negative transmission, there’s positive transmission and there’s universal transmission where we cannot ignore it. And we think that we are protecting ourselves from it, but it is seeping in. Sometimes even in our sleeps, we are receiving transmission. There was a time when our teacher was offering a Dharma talk and in front of him, he saw a mother who is breastfeeding her newborn child. And she was covering herself, but Thay was aware that this child is receiving the nutriment from the mother. But Thay addressed the whole community, he said, In this moment, this child is not only receiving the transmission of nutriment from the mother. The child is also receiving Dharma rain from Thay, who is teaching the way of understanding and love. And he’s also receiving the collective energy of the hundreds of people that are present in this hall. And when I heard that, somehow he activated my awareness that even though I’m not doing anything, there is a part of me that is entering into this baby, this child. And suddenly I realized myself sitting more upright. I was more mindful of my breath. I was more mindful of my presence. So the insight that we are always transmitting can be very supportive for us to engage more in our practice of awareness.

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Beautiful, brother. I love the way you bring this into everyday life as well. And it brought up for me that when I first started working at The Guardian, there was no website, it was just the newspaper, and it moved quite slowly. And the way the editor-in-chief said, the way new journalists were trained was not to be told what to do, but just to sit with the experienced journalists and just spend weeks and months just understanding by watching and being present. And I remember that when the website came along and everything got very busy, I had a bit of a sort of epiphany about The Guardian. And I saw that there was… I saw in my mind’s eye a castle, and the castle was very busy, there was lots of stuff happening. And I went down into the basement and followed along a little path, a little corridor to this small wooden doorway. And I walked in and the room was empty apart from a stool. And on the stool was a cushion, on the cushion was a box. And when I opened the box, there was a pearl. And I recognized that that pearl was the embodiment of all that was beautiful and true in The Guardian’s original intention of being born, what it was there for. But that in the busyness, people were losing that because they were forgetting or they were just bringing their own personal views in rather than seeing that. So I then set up a project, which I ran for 10 years, part of my job. There was… And I set a project called Living Our Values. And it was a way of helping everyone to not just recognize what the values were, but how they were embodying them in their work. So whether it was in the advertising department, or the marketing department, or the editorial department, to have that constant question, which was, are we living our values? Are we speaking to that? Are we holding true to that emanation? And another example that comes to mind, I used to know the chief executive of Unilever, which is one of the biggest consumer goods company in the world. And he said that when he joined the company, the first thing he did was go back to the roots and say, what was the root of this company? Why was it created? And it was created to make soap in Manchester. And during the Industrial Revolution, there was so much dirt and so Unilever created soap to help create health and help people to wash their hands. And on the base of that, he turned the whole company back to sustainability and back to health, to the extent he was able. And it speaks to me, both these examples speak to me of the importance of knowing the root of where something comes from and honoring that root and recognizing it has a life and energy that are beyond our understanding almost. So the Guardian, when I was there, was nearly 200 years old, and no one was alive who was at the start. In fact, there’d been many generations, but there was something in the energy that I felt that was continuing and needed to be nurtured and protected. So given all that, I’m just wondering maybe about for yourself, about how you see your place in that transmission, because the lineage goes back to the Buddha. So the original teachings 2000 years ago, so a bit longer than the Guardian. And yet you are representing those teachings today and being that conduit to people who come who want to understand the teachings. So how do you, given all that about beginner’s mind, how do represent that space? So how to you hold that space so that it is a clean teaching that comes from the Buddha through you and into the future?

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I am still training in the art of deep listening. And I think a transmitter has to know how to listen in order for the offerings to be relevant and to be speaking to the need that is present. When I think about the practice of mindfulness and the practice of Buddhism, a big part of it is about listening. Listening is the first doorway to communication. And I think a lot of us, we may think that communication is just about speaking or writing. The foundation for speaking and for writing, it is listening. When the Buddhists talk about my practice that I offer to the world, it is the liberation. Liberation of what? It is suffering. And first of all, we have to learn to listen to our suffering. Being in the company of Thay, Thay means teacher in Vietnamese. And whenever I say Thay that means my teacher Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Thay has always reminded us when we are a teacher, we have to know how to listen to the present moment. That’s the only way for our spiritual practice to be relevant, to be present moment based and to be up to date. And as a student of Thay, one of his greatest offering in the spiritual world, and then to Buddhism as a pathway, is he was able to make Buddhism alive again through his way of teaching and through his way of understanding the Dharma. And there was one time I was able to watch him retranslate a sutra because a lot of our sutras were handed down orally first and then written hundreds of years later. And so we know that there were misrepresentation of the teachings. And sometimes because of language and because of writings, the writings weren’t kept in a hard drive, in a cloud like today. So there were marks in the Chinese letters that were missing and it becomes another word. And Thay, who was fluent in writing and reading in Chinese because in his generation, Vietnamese, we all had to know how to write and read in Chinese. Like my name Phap Huu, it is Sino-Vietnamese, so it is Chinese-Vietnamese. It is not everyday language. And you have to translate my name and it means […], it means a friend. But we don’t use Huu as in friendship in daily conversation. So our teacher was… not only was he a poet, but he did a lot of translation so that us, everyday life people, who don’t know Chinese and don’t how to write and read in Sino-Vietnamese can understand the deepest writings and deepest gems of Buddhism which were all recorded in Chinese in our Mahayana school of Buddhism. And there was a time Thay said, when Thay re-translated a lot of the sutras, Thay has to practice to check if these teachings are correct. And there is a time he said, Thay has fixed the sutra because it was translated wrong. And because Thay is a practitioner, and Thay understood what the Buddha and the ancestors, the patriarchs, were trying to transmit. And the later translations were done by scholars, but not by practitioners. And Thay said, when we are renewing Buddhism, renewing here is also sometimes in the light of teaching Buddhism, that is renewing Buddhist. We have to also… in Vietnamese they say […], it means pick the worms, meaning there are errors that were there. And we have to fix it. We have to realign it so that it is teaching the right Dharma. And for us the right Dharma has to be in line with the Four Noble Truth, in line with the Eight Noble Path, the Three Doors of Liberation, the mindfulness trainings, mindfulness concentration insight, the Seven Factors of Awakening. And the list goes on and on and and on. But at the core of it, it also has to help us be liberated from suffering. You know, it’s very fascinating to understand and to get to witness a living transmitter, which was Thay, to see how he wasn’t caught in how things were. It’s very safe to lean back into, ah, this is how it was. So let’s just teach it exactly as it is. And when we get stuck there, then our teachings and our way of life won’t be relevant. And there was a time, in an interview, somebody asked Thay, Thay do you see Buddhism as a religion? And Thay said, for some, you know, to give it a frame that Buddhism is a religion is very helpful. Because as human beings, sometimes we need faith to, we need somewhere to give our faith to, our energy of devotion and trust. And religion has that umbrella, has that refuge where we can trust in ancient wisdom. But for Thay, he said, Thay sees that Buddhism is a way of life. When the Buddha embarked on a spiritual quest, he was looking for an understanding to suffering and a liberation from suffering. And therefore, the way of liberation from suffering is to be in suffering, to understand suffering, to embrace it and not to run away from it, but to transform it. So therefore, Buddhism is a way of life. So mindfulness is a ways of life. Transmission is a a way life. And there are formal practices that are helpful. There are ancient technologies we would say, like when we come together in a retreat and we listen to the bell and we all stop, that is a spiritual technology that we’re applying to our modern ways. And it’s very simple. When you hear the sound of the bell in the Plum Village tradition, you’re invited to all take a pause, stop what you are doing. Even if you’re listening to music, having a wonderful, insightful conversation, you are invited to pause, to stop. And that stopping is a transmission of knowing how to cultivate stillness in life in order to listen. Just like in music, for a note to be played, there has to be silence. For insight to emerge, there has be emptiness. For the transmission of insight to be passed on to. And for our own insight to awaken, we have to listen to our thoughts, we have to listen to our feelings, our emotions. We have to listen to our daily life, our pains, our agony, even our happiness. Have we listened to our well-being in order to remain and cultivate that, to transmit that? So the insight of transmission, it starts with listening. And as you, Jo, you asked I come back to it. It took me, we went into… something quite deep. But I asked myself, what do I have to transmit? And sometimes I feel like I don’t have much to transmit. I was speaking to a friend yesterday. We were catching up. He’s been coming to Plum Village for a long time. And he also asked something very similar. And I said, I don’t know. Sometimes I feel very powerless. And sometimes I feel like… I graduated, my highest education was grade eight, you know. And I stopped education. I stopped the normal education. And the rest of my understanding of life was through my life as a monk, through the training, the ancient way of waking up, folding your blankets, making a cup of tea, tending to the gardens, tending to the human gardens, listening, a lot of listening. I’ve been an admirer of my teacher, and one of it that I wanted to offer my love to him was to be his attendant. And I wasn’t being trained. I trained myself how to be a good attendant. And that was just by paying attention. And in the paying attention, it is listening, listening with your eyes, seeing how my teacher operates in the day. When you listen and you observe, you can learn so much. Thay didn’t tell me what he needed. And I think that’s where we clicked and that’s why I became his long-time attendant was because I was able to just observe. And I was receiving his transmission by not asking, but by observing. And in the transmission, you have to have the eagerness to learn. In the Dharma, something that’s very true is, if you don’t want to learn, I can’t transmit anything to you. Even if the wisdom is there, you won’t receive it because you’re not yet ready. You’re not open. You haven’t yet surrendered yourself. You haven’t yet put down the fences of your pride to learn. And each and every one of us, we have our barriers of knowing, and we have boundaries of knowledge, but our boundaries can continue to be expansive for us to see the richness of life. And so as a transmitter, I’m also always knowing that there’s so much to learn. There’s so many to be aware of. There’s much to listen to. So when I was able to acknowledge, like, okay, like, there’s not much that I can offer that maybe in my way of thinking that is sophisticated, but I’ve discovered something, and maybe all of us listeners of this podcast know that I think my language is very simple, and my offering is very simply. And I think that as long as I could be one of the monks or the spiritual friends that can offer teachings and offer my way of life in the most simple way, I think there are those who want to hear the most simple way. And I think that’s going to be my contribution. And to know, like, what is my transmission that I can offer that is true to myself? I’ve tried. I’ve tried to be a little bit more sophisticated. You know, I try to be more, like, as an intellect, you know, writing on the board and so on. And I’m just like, yo, this is not me. This is so not me. I, in this moment, it’s just like, whatever arises, I will just offer it. I’ll offer with the best capacity I can in this moment. And of course, there’s many things I do really prepare for, but I think my deepest authenticity is now I come to a lot of spaces not knowing, Jo. I really come to meetings, I come even to the podcast, even a Dharma talk in front of many, many, many people. I can prepare, like, just a few notes. Okay, I got to make sure I can offer something that people can reflect on themselves. How can I make my life more embodied with understanding and love? And how can I cultivate mindfulness in my life? How can I understand my actions more of its impact, right? Like, these are some of the keynotes I always just bring to myself. But the rest, I want to listen to the community. And here it’s just by being in the energy of the community.

00:31:16

Beautiful, brother. It reminds me of when someone was asked, you know, what is leadership? You know, how can you be a good leader? And the response was, well, be truly yourself. Because you can’t be a leader if you’re not yourself, because then you’re not in your center. So, what I love about what you said is that, actually, by being yourself and being the most yourself you can be is the greatest way to teach, because then people trust. And I think there’s so many people in the world who use fine words, but don’t live up to them. And so, that’s the basis of trust, that we can trust people. So, you know, I see that very much in you and that sense of, you talk about being simple, and simple isn’t simplicity. Simple is the essence of the wisdom. And I think that’s why people related to Thay so well, is because Thay’s words are the most simple phrases and metaphors, like, you know, if you plant enough flowers in your garden, look after them, you’ll create a beautiful garden. You know, it sounds, to some people, would be naive, but actually, when you look deeply, the metaphors and language he used allowed us to touch into the depth of the wisdom. And that if he had come with a full-blown, sort of teachings, then people would get lost. So, I love that, what you said about the sutras were translated by scholars, but not necessarily practitioners. And Thay has also talked a lot about that, hasn’t he? Is that actually people who study Buddhism doesn’t equal, they’re sometimes not good practitioners because they don’t, they’ve allowed their intellectual understanding to take over. And so what you’re talking about is your direct experience is more important. And so I think something for you, Phap Huu, is that because you have not had a formal education, gone through university, filled your mind with a particular way of thinking, that’s why you are able to transmit. Because actually your mind has not been cluttered by a sort of westernized view of life and a sort of scientific materialist view of life, that this equals that, a scientific way of seeing the world. But actually from the age of 13 when you arrived here, you’ve been having a direct experience of life.

00:33:56

One thing that I’ve learned in this tradition is also transmission. You don’t have to be eager to transmit to feel whole. And I think this is something that is very difficult in our modern times. I didn’t give my first public Dharma talk until seven years after becoming a Dharma teacher. And that was being true to myself. And that means I have already been a monk for over 12 years. There was a moment in 2016 my elder brother, Brother Phap Ung, he’s an elder brother, a dear friend, but at the same time he was a mentor to me. He was inviting me to give talks because I know he wanted to empower me and to step into my role of holding the lineage and transmitting it. And I tapped into my present moment. And I really felt this is not the moment for me to transmit. Because I wasn’t feeling whole and I was struggling during those years. I was feeling like I was too fake if I was to be given a microphone. And I bowed to my brother with a lot of humility and I said I’m not ready. Maybe for some, you know, that may have looked like a failure. I’ve been over 15 years as a monastic, still haven’t given a Dharma talk. And I wasn’t feeling empowered and ready to hold on to this lineage, to then be a transmitter of it. At that present moment, I was just being true to my my capacity. And I said I’m not ready… When I’m ready, I will let the community know. But what he did activate in me was a seed. Meaning that you know it’s going to come time for you to step into that role. And just one year later, 2017, very organically it manifested. A lot of my elders were away and there wasn’t enough English speaker, fluent English speaker in Upper Hamlet. And there was a day of mindfulness. And it was so it was so easy for me to raise my hand and said I’ll give the Dharma talk on that Sunday. And I reflect on that, on that moment. I wasn’t exactly like I haven’t… I wasn’t liberated from my suffering just one year later. I was still going through my ups and downs. I was still trying to figure out what does it mean now to be a monk without my teacher, teaching and living. Because, you know, it was a privilege and also a curse by being so close to Thay. The privilege was not having to worry about the Dharma because you have one of the greatest stars. And the curse is now you feel very empty and you’re never going to feel good enough because you witnessed his talent and his skillfulness. And the curse was I would never be able to do that. And that was my own view that I created for the Dharma podium. And the miracle of that moment of the present moment was no one is here that can give a fluent English speaking Dharma talk. And in that moment I’m the only one. And it’s almost like the ancestors. It’s like Phap Huu, it’s time, just raise your hand. And when I raised my hand, I raised the hand of the need to serve. It wasn’t for pride. It wasn’t because it’s my time to shine. Anything like after I raised my hand like I had like one month to prepare and every day was like goosebumps. I was like, what have I done? Like I’m going to make a fool out of myself and so on. And then the beauty of then activating that was surrendering to that. So now it’s almost like when you’re a parent, you have to surrender to knowing that you’re father now. Every action you do is a transmission to your children. So as a Dharma teacher when we are in that position, every action that we take and we make is a transmission to our own living community. And I touch something very deeply. When I was a young attendant with Thay, we’ve had, you know, some very tender moments together and some very human moments. You know, Thay maybe you all know him as a Zen master, but he sometimes would ask me coming back to the hut and he was like, Phap Huu, do you think my teaching was okay? Do you think people understood what I said? Do you think people were able to receive the Dharma that I transmitted? So even Thay needed validation. Whether he needed or not it doesn’t matter. What I felt was his human side. You know? And I’m always like Thay, dude, that was amazing. It’s going to take me a lifetime to practice this, you know, but I got it. And I said, Thay, I think if only a few of us got it, it’s always worth it, right? And there was one time like there was a Dharma talk he gave and I really praised him and I said, Thay like that was what the community really needed. And he always tells me this, he always says, it’s not Thay, it’s the ancestors. And whenever he said that, when I was a young monk, I always engaged in that quote as Thay, you’re so humble. Or Thay, you’re such a poet. Of course it’s no you. It’s the ancestors. It is the universe. It’s trees that are speaking. But that day when I stepped into the Dharma hall to give my first Dharma talk and you can find it on YouTube, it’s like in 2017, I don’t remember the title of it.

00:41:05

Put it in the show notes.

00:41:08

You can see how young I was and maybe how naive I was even maybe in the way I presented the Dharma. But I remember, I remember routines and Thay had a routine to prepare to transmit something. You got to prepare yourself when you’re going to be a transmitter. And his routine was whenever we came into this hut here that we’re sitting it would always be in silence. I’ll make tea and he creates this aura around him, this force field. It’s like, don’t talk to me. But it’s not scary. It’s almost like I’m entering into a space of non-self. Don’t bring yourself to it. Join me in this energy. And I would invite Thay a cup of tea and we would sit in silence to have a cup of tea. And then he would look at me and say, it’s time. And I said, it is time. And we would walk in silence from here to the meditation hall. It’s not that far. But that walk is a walk I always felt of like just deep present moment. And it’s like a field of preparing oneself. And I’ve always felt as his attendant, one of my roles is to intercept anybody who is going to intercept Thay. But because of the force field that he has created, you can’t intercept him even. It’s like you don’t dare to touch that space. And then he comes into the hall and in our tradition when a teacher comes in, we all show respect. And we all stand up. And we stand up, it’s not about hierarchy here. It is about somebody is going to come and offer their whole self, the knowledge that they have gained. And they’re just going to offer it to us generously. And the least we can do is to show our presence. And in our tradition, that’s an action of all of us standing up as one body to receive from one person that represents a whole lineage. I remember when the community stood up. I had goosebumps. It’s the first time everybody in this hall who are, many of them are my senior, all stood up I. And I felt, I wasn’t walking in the shadow of Thay’s footstep, but I felt like I was walking in the footsteps that Thay has transmitted to me which is a footstep of presence, non fear, and of ancestors. And I felt in that moment, Jo, like this is not even about me. So what I’m going to give is just to everyone that is present. And what I’m going to give is just a Dharma. It’s not about me. It’s not if you like me or not. It’s about a transmission of love and understanding. And when I entered into the podium and I sat down and I finally understood Thay’s quote. It is not me. And for me it is not you. It’s the ancestors now. That was the moment when I received a very strong transmission myself.

00:45:24

Beautiful, brother. I may go back and look at that myself. 2017. And brother, also speaks about the accumulation of wisdom and that transmission doesn’t stay put in one place. So for most people who have listened to Thay’s Dharma talks, that Thay would probably be over 60 years old at that point. Or maybe 70 or 80. And had been practicing since he was a teenager. So I’m sure if we’d seen Thay talk sort of when he was 25, 30, 35, it would have been a very different Thay. So I think there’s something around also being in the present moment with the teacher and not saying… So often people say, oh well, 10 years ago you said. And I hold you to that. We see that in politics, all places. You said this 20 years ago, but actually our understanding deepens, our wisdom deepens, and our ability to share deepens. So brother, as you’re talking I can’t help it because I am relating that in a sense to my practice because I coach people. And when I look out at the websites of other people who coach, so many of them promise so many things. I’m going to heal you of this, this. I’m going to… Within 30 days you will be changed by this, this. And there’s a part of me that feels there’s such a hook in that. Because for me a transmission is… doesn’t have I am transmitted to this and you will therefore become this or you will therefore learn that and you’ll change, transform into that. Whereas for me when people sort of ask me how do you work? I say, well, I don’t have any theory of change, I don’t have any methodology, I’m just going to love you. I am just going to be your friend. There’s no hierarchy, I’m going to walk alongside you. And also what has developed more recently is I’m not going to try and save you. Because I realized I was very caught up in the past by the success of the coaching was based in did that person change? Did they solve that problem? And I’ve increasingly understood that through a few teachings of Plum Village, firstly the teaching of ripening that it takes time and that it may be that in the time I spend with this person that, as you talk about, I will plant the seeds of change but it may not ripen in that time. Also that that person may not be ready, they may, part of them may be wanting to change, but another part of them may be holding back. But also about the interbeing, which you talked about earlier, is ultimately I’m coaching someone or I’m with a group, but actually it’s one person present. And that that person’s suffering is my suffering and my suffering is their suffering and that I’m not here to tell them what to do. I might share my experience. But actually also it’s about just deep listening, as you talked about. I’m going to really listen a hundred percent and in the listening I will pick up signs because if I’m talking a lot then I won’t be able to hear. All that to say, brother, that there’s something very tender about transmission.

00:49:09

I think what’s tender is our willingness to grow. And that means that means like shedding our skins to have fresh skin like a snake right? Like a lizard a snake. I’m not sure about lizards but I know snakes they They know when it’s time to like to let go of that shield so that the new shield the new skin can manifest. That’s very hard to do especially with knowledge. As human beings, we’ve been taught to have knowledge is one of the greatest power. It’s one of greatest essences of superiority. And so if I have knowledge that means I’m better than you. It’s a whole system of competition. It’s whole system of who’s better than who. Right? Report cards, and A plus, B minus, C…

00:50:13

With me brother it was D and E.

00:50:15

Oh my gosh, like, you know, like if I have a C I’m happy, you know. But it’s… And it creates this stereotype how we look at each other in the world. And we bring it to spirituality. I’ve seen it. I’ve see it in the monastics. I’ve it in the friends that come through the practice, it’s like, I want to go deeper, brother. How do I go deeper? I’m like what does deep mean to you? Are you… It’s a real question and our thirst is also a hook. Just like you said, it’s good to have aspiration. It’s to have intention to learn. It’s go to have the openness to learn, but when you only want to learn and you’re not practicing though that becomes dangerous, that becomes a kind of hungry ghost energy that we speak about in our tradition. And hungry ghost in Buddhism it represents those who are always hungry. And artist draws an image is somebody who has a very skinny neck, but their bodies are very big because they’re very hungry, but they cannot swallow because their throat is so small. Sometimes we have this hungry ghost energy in us. We want more. I want more. I have this energy in me. We also speak of it as the wanderer where it’s not happy in the present moment, who thinks about the grass that is greener on the other side. And even with all the knowledge we have, we’re not practicing. We’re applying anything. We have insight, a lot of us we have insights, but we can’t stop going in circle. So, as a transmitter, what is very important and I apply this to myself, you know. It’s number one, am I practicing? Am I practicing the Dharma that I am transmitting? Am I giving space and time to also see if my teachings can translate into people’s lives? Am I asking questions with my peers, with my friends, with my spiritual friends? Like what I offer, did it make sense? Was it too woo woo? Was it too hopeful? Was it to raw? And that’s really important to get feedback, especially as those of us in the spiritual space. Sometimes our own arrogance and our own pride becomes the obstacle to hear and to listen to what wasn’t helpful. I’ve heard feedback where I got angry because all I wanted to do was to help someone. But I listened and said oh, I was so unskillful. And maybe the energy I brought, you know, maybe it’s the way I was speaking it. Maybe it’s my body positioning. It’s so much nuances to the art of supporting someone. And as a transmitter we can only become a better transmitter when we see ourselves changing in the way we offer. And I see it. I slow down a lot in my speaking. I articulate much better now, and this is because of listening. And this because I learn. When I listen to others teach I am in awe of how they represent. But I’ve learned to not fall into the traps. I want to be like that. It’s not being like that, it’s about ah, there’s a skill there, there’s way there that I would like to cultivate in myself. And language is really important. Like, you know, how the Buddha says that the mind creates the world. And for me, to take that one more step, the mind is already action. And we know the second course of action that the Buddha speaks about in Karma is our words. What we say, how we say it, the tone of saying it, that creates a reality. That creates a transmission of knowledge, a transmission of feelings, a transmission of energy. Now when I listen to a teaching, I listen also to that person’s body, what is coming up for them. I’ve listened to teachers who can cry in the present moment. And in that moment I feel very humble to be allowed into that space of vulnerability. And I ask myself, you know, are there sides of me that I’m still hiding from myself? So like in the emptiness of communication, when we’re listening to a Dharma talk, to a podcast, the deepest way of listening, our teacher would always encourage us, don’t bring your notebooks. Don’t bring a pen. Because when you’re writing things down, you’re missing the rest that is being offered. Because you’re caught in the words or the phrase that you feel, ah that is so great. Let me take that. Let me steal that. And I’ve heard this. I want to offer a language to all of us. In the Dharma, everything is to receive. Instead of let me steal this. I heard this in the science retreat. And it was in a panel. It was a beautiful panel between young scientists and the whole community. And a lot of these young scientists are all long term practitioners. And this one young scientist professor was offering something. And somebody watered the flower of the friend and said, what you said there was so beautiful. I’m going to steal that. And my whole body reacted. I am like this is colonialism 101. And the transmitter was like, it’s all yours. Take it. You know, I wish, I wanted to speak up. I wanted to say wait, wait, can I just correct the language right now? Because Buddhism it’s a very generous tradition. The Buddha offers, the teachers offer, you’re the receiver. You can receive. When you use the language of I am receiving, it’s very different than I am taking. Or even worse, I am stealing. Because when we steal that indicates that’s yours now. It belongs to you. But when you receive, you have now a responsibility to transmit. So in the other light of transmission in our tradition, whatever you are receiving is not yours. Now you have a role. Because you’re holding on this flame of light. You have a responsibility to transmit this warmth, this light, this compassion, this wisdom to others now. The tradition should be a tradition of generosity. So please, all of us, let us be mindful of language we use. I’ve been on a very deep journey of decolonizing my own mind. So language is very important. The words we use, can I steal that? Can I take that? Can I receive that? Can I receive your offering, dear teachers, dear siblings? And when the time is right, I will transmit this. And that is the spirit of inclusiveness. And that also highlights the you in it. There is a you in the receiving. But that you is empty because that you knows that you’re going to transmit this now. And there is so much power when we enter into that space. You become so generous. You become so compassionate. And your heart is not little anymore. But when we use languages like, let me take that. Can I take that from you, Jo? And can I brand that? Can that be Phap Huu now? That’s so dangerous, right? There are things that we have to honor. What I offer to you it’s of this tradition. But this tradition is made of non-traditional elements. Buddhism is made of non-Buddhist elements. And it’s also so important to bring our gratitude to its roots also. So in our practice now, in my own practice as a transmitter, I do it sometimes signlessly, like I don’t do it for people to see. It’s my own self. I would touch the earth after giving a talk, after offering a retreat, because I do feel a lot of joy, and in that joy, there’s a pride, right? It’s good to feel that we’re able to help people, we’re able to embrace a retreat of 200 people and to see 200 people leave with a lighter heart. Like, I wanna feel good about that because that gives me meaning to my life. But there’s another practice I have to do is to share that merit. It’s then to transmit this feeling of worth, this feeling of success to now the whole cosmos, to the past, the present, and the future.