The Way Out Is In / The Four Immeasurable Minds (Episode #88)

00:00:00

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

00:00:22

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

00:00:29

And I’m Brother Phap Huu, a Zen Buddhist monk, student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition.

00:00:35

And today, brother, we are going to talk about one of the Buddha’s key teachings, which is on the four immeasurable minds: love, compassion, joy, and equanimity.

00:00:48

The way out is in.

00:01:03

Dear friends, I am Jo Confino.

00:01:05

And I’m Brother Phap Huu.

00:01:07

And brother, we haven’t seen each other for a little while, how are you doing?

00:01:12

I’m doing well. And it feels so good to be back in Thay’s hut to record the podcast. And how are you?

00:01:19

I am very well. I also feel that it’s like every time we come into Thay’s hut, it feels like sort of coming home. And we haven’t described it before to our listeners, but just as a reminder, we are sitting in the Sitting Still Hut of Thich Nhat Hanh, which overlooks the forest in southwestern France. And it’s where Thay lived some of the time. And it’s very, very cozy. It’s very simple. It’s all wooden. It has a warmth, but also more importantly, brother, it has Thay’s essence here, would you say?

00:02:00

Yes, his vibe is still here, as the new generation would say.

00:02:06

Thank you for reminding me of my age. So, brother, we’re here to talk about the four immeasurable minds. And Thich Nhat Hanh had sort of quite a big sort of offering that if we follow these, we can change our lives. So I just want to read what he says. He says, if you learn to practice love, compassion, joy and equanimity, you will know how to heal the illnesses of anger, sorrow, insecurity, sadness, hatred, loneliness and unhealthy attachments. That is a big ask, brother.

00:02:44

Absolutely. And we can see and understand the word love is a very big word. It’s a loaded word, actually, especially in our times. Everybody has a particular definition of what love means to us, what love means to you. And we are very conditioned by society, by the culture that we are built up in, like even the language of love is very different in cultures. There’s so many ways to express love and there’s so much ways to talk about love. But here, in the practice, we wanna talk about being love and our process of bringing these teachings from the Far East into this present moment, new generation, a new space and time. Thay has also shared that it’s so important to restore the word love because I think the word love is very spiritual, it’s a very sacred word. And we use love too freely in a way, like for example, we use it for everything. Oh, I love pizza, which I do. I love to go for a run, which is also true, but it just means that we then take for granted the essence of love. And our mission, in a way, is not to only restore the meaning of love, but it is to bring back to life the core essence. And if we study through all the philosophies and religions and ancestral wisdom, at the core of it, one universal truth is that we all are nourished by love, we all seek love, we are thirsty for love, as well as we want to be able to offer love. And the Buddha himself has given the teachings on these four elements, what you have just named, but it doesn’t come from Buddhism. It was already present in the times of India before Siddhartha became a Buddha. But he brought it into Buddhism and to share that this is also a foundational practice. And it is called the Brahmaviharas. It is our attitude, our cultivation of our capacity to grow our hearts, our minds, so that we can be so expansive that we have the capacity not to discriminate and to see through the dualism of separateness, of othering each other, of othering our separation of us and nature, us and material. And then to have this interbeing, this insight of interconnectedness, which will deepen our love. And that’s why love, sometimes people say it’s a medicine, but I see it more as a vitamin because it has to be nurtured every day. It’s not only when you’re angry, you should be practicing love. I think love has to cultivated on a daily basis. It’s a meditation in itself. We have established the Metta meditation. And metta here is a language from Pali or Sanskrit, Maitri, and it means our mind of unconditional love. And unconditional love is a very big word. And that is part of our mission as monastics or as any of us who want to walk the path of Buddhism. It’s to develop our hearts so that it can be as vast as the ocean or as deep and embracing as Mother Earth. And there’s a story that the Buddha, his son, Rahula, was a young monk and his mentor was one of the great students of the Buddha, lucky him, Sariputra was his mentor. And I don’t remember exactly the detail of it, but I remember the teaching that Sariputra gave to Rahula and is that you have to learn to be like the earth. The earth doesn’t discriminate. It accepts all and it is the mother of all. Whatever you pour into the earth, whether it is our mucus, our urine, our spit, the oils, anything that we pour into the ground of the earth, the earth accepts it all and will find a way to transform it. So our practice as a meditator, as one that walks the path of liberation, is to expand our mind, our heart, so that it can embrace and love and hold all, even those we call enemies. And that is a very, very difficult practice. And maybe let’s park that at, you know, yeah, let’s put that at the Northern star, you know. But that’s the direction where we want to go to. But on a daily basis is we want to not feel that love is something that we can consume. Right? Right now like what do we all do when we haven’t seen each other for a very long time, or Valentine’s day, Christmas, Halloween, you know, capitalism or the the market industry is so good. Right? They know how to get us to consume more and it is advertised in a way to love, to express our gratitude, to express our love, to express our appreciation. And there’s nothing wrong with being able to bring sweets from a different country to share to someone that when you visit them, but it is the tendency to see that love is outside of us. When I started to practice and walk this path, like I had to unlearn a lot of that. I had to like relearn what is true love. And it starts with oneself. And so the first element, which I feel is one of my foundations, is loving kindness. And I really like the word kindness because maybe I feel that’s something that is more natural to me to offer than the word love, because I’m still trying to unlearn that love, because when I was growing up, love was all about romance, was about getting a partner, you know, hookups, and so on and so. And that word has been, in a way, covered with so much lust, so much craving, so much attachment, and definitely like a running after. But when I heard the word kindness, I’m like, huh. That, I’ve experienced myself, I received a lot of kindness, and that is something that has become more natural to me. And in Buddhism, we always have to start with oneself, and like the name of our podcast, The Way Out Is In, so the way to offer love to others is also to turn inwards. And if we take a moment and we just wanna take a pause and reflect in this present moment, are we accepting ourselves? Do we have the ability to even accept our body? Are we still angry that our form, like I’m too short, I’m not beautiful enough, I have a particular habit that I always make this particular reaction? And we’re constantly comparing and judging and trying to fix us. And all of us, we do this and this is a shared experience and this is something that we can already start to break the separation that we all suffer from knowing that we are enough in this moment. And it doesn’t mean that we’re limited to just this moment, because we have so much potential, but it starts with the accepting. So when we start to come back to oneself, the first meditation is coming home to the body just feeling the pain, feeling the stress, and just being aware of that just say, Oh, my body. You’re so tired. In orientation, I always tell people, if you fall asleep during meditation, it’s totally okay. It’s because you’re so tried. You never allow yourself to sit there without distraction, right? The screen time, the attention, the noise, if we live in a busy city, so our mind is constantly being activated and it craves rest. But we are so accustomed to noise and to movement that we don’t know how to enjoy silence. I remember, in our first climate retreat that we hosted here in Plum Village we did… half of the day was in silence. And I remember one of the friends sharing that when he saw that on the schedule, he was so scared because… We can’t talk? Like what am I gonna do with myself? And you start to hear your internal podcast that you create and you have many channels and many topics and some channels that you repeat again and again. And then by day four, I started to hear people saying how delicious the silence is and how much they needed to allow their body to be in silence, not alone their mind, even their body. So that your nervous system is not always stimulated and activated. It has a chance to rest. So that is an act of kindness when we start to acknowledge and accept ourselves, first and foremost, our body. And then our feelings, our emotions, our present moment, even the sense of hopelessness. It’s like, accept that. Accept that I am feeling hopeless right now. Because that is the art of mindfulness. That is the act of mindfulness is to see, to recognize, to embrace, and then gently, without judgment, to see where are the sources of these suffering coming from? Why do I feel this particular way? And then the opposite, if we are so happy right now, we are in peace, we are pleasant, we are in peace in the chaos of the world. Like we can be in that state, we can be as active and as engaged and still hold a very stable presence. And you can recognize that and say I am in a stable presence in mind and body and spirit. And I can give my stability to my community, to the suffering that is present. And acknowledging that and have to recognize that that state is also of impermanence. So I want to cultivate, I want to keep nurturing that. So all of these way of seeing and then way of enacting, of being, it is a deep kindness to oneself. So, I invite all of us, you know, to really give kindness an opportunity also. It’s not weak. And empathy is so powerful because empathy allows us to truly connect. And that is a part of our humanity that our ancestors have survived to now. It is through empathy, it is through being compassionate, it is though understanding. And as we move through the world, we will hear so many different viewpoints of what it means to be a righteous person, a powerful person. And in the present moment, we can see that this idea of strength is layered by greed. And we are distancing ourselves so much from the reality, not the reality that we want to be number one in power. Because at the end of the day, my friends, we’re all of impermanence. We will have to return back to the earth. That’s one of the remembrances that we can recite. So if we recognize that fact, the insight of kindness becomes so important. It is a vitamin, it is an source of energy that not only nurtures yourself but it is a gift to the world.

00:16:38

Beautiful, brother, thank you. I remember when my wife, Paz, and I, when we got married here in Plum Village, and Sister Chan Khong, who’s Thay’s long-time companion, she conducted a ceremony. And afterwards she pulled us aside and she said, the only thing you need to remember is that love is understanding. And that actually if you really want to love somebody, you really need to listen deeply to who they are, to what their happiness is, to how they want to show up in the world, to what their dream is, because it’s so easy to impose ourselves on someone else, or to actually think someone else wants something that they may not to. And Thich Nhat Hanh gives that famous example of the durian fruit, which to some people is like a great delicacy, but he hated the smell of it and hated the taste of it, and he used to say that people would offer him durian and not realize actually he didn’t like it. Just stop giving me durian, I don’t like. Yet people wanted to give it to him because they wanted to give it him, not because they were listening to him and what he wanted. So this has been… I think this is a lifelong journey for me and my relationship to constantly check in with myself, am I actually understanding Paz or am I imposing myself or seeking to impose myself on her? Because actually, even if I sought to do it, I wouldn’t succeed. But can you tell us a little bit more about what it is to truly understand someone? What it is to deeply listen to someone? What it is to let go of one’s own needs and be present for someone else?

00:18:39

I love that phrase and that has helped me relearn what is love and that is the act to understand. And to understand, it takes mindfulness because a lot of the times we are listening with our intellect. How many times have we listened to a conversation, even with our most beloved person, whether it is a partner, our companions, our parents, our brothers, our sisters, our best friends even, right? And there’s always this tendency to like one-up each other, right? Even if you hear somebody talking about how lovely their retreat was, then you have to come up with, oh, and I was home and I able to do this, I was able to that. So while we’re listening, we’re already comparing. And the same is like when we listen to suffering, how many times have I done myself in my mind, I go to fixing mode, right? I’m not even listening to the ones who is asking to be heard. They’re sharing something probably so vulnerable and probably very difficult to express. And here I go into teacher mode or I go into the person that has the answer mode, whatever we want to name it, give it a title, right? And then we start to cut off each other from just the thinking. So our practice has been, it’s a technology, in a way, that we all have, we have to re-equip ourselves and it’s to learn to listen to what they’re saying. It sounds so simple, but it’s a whole art, right? So when you’re hearing something, your body will have a reaction. And one of the practices is be aware of the word that is being said. If your mind is running towards a solution, identify it, come back to your breathing. Your breathing is one of the safest anchors that can ground you to a place of not overreacting and just to be there for that person. And then the second mindfulness that we can be attentive to is the body. Where is there tension? Why is there tension? Did you hear something that triggered you? Ah, it’s not about you in this moment. I’ve learned this like how many times have I made a conversation about me. Right? And you have to relearn that. It’s not about you, Phap Huu, in this moment it’s about Jo. Listen to Jo. Let him share his heart. And be honest, sometimes I have absolutely no response. I have no answer. I would just say thank you so much for sharing. And I can just offer you my space and my heart, which is to love, to care. And so this is a form of deep listening, we call it in our language. It is a space that we enter into, and it’s very difficult, but it’s powerful, and it is very doable, is to listen to the words that is being said, fully with your whole body, your whole presence, not with your mind. And then our teacher even tells us to go even deeper. When you listen even deeper, you can even hear the words that are not being said. Sometimes the words that are being said is just a cover, right? It’s just… Or a smoke bomb…. It’s a safety net sometimes, but behind it, you can see in their language, you can see it in their energy. Maybe nervousness, fear, despair, and you can acknowledge that. Don’t rub it in the face, right? But these are moments where it can help us touch something that is very profound in the person is we are witnessing their whole experience in this moment. Not just the stories. And we have to find skillful ways in language, in moments, to have time to talk to each other. We have our day-to-day language. How are you? Did you eat yet? Can I cook you something? And these are all very important. They’re like the threads, right? But then I think we have… There’s a fear I have, it’s like we’re losing the art of deep communication, of just talking heart to heart. Because there’s fear there sometimes. Am I ready to hear somebody’s suffering, right? Can I share from my heart even? Or do I just wanna get by? Because I’m so lonely, I just want to be heard, I just want to be connected. And let’s just talk on the surface. And I think the surface talk is a gateway. It has its place, but it’s also very draining. For me, sometimes, it’s a leakage of energy. But when you can have a conversation that speaks to the heart, bringing up questions, like, how are you, my dear? How’s your heart? Is there something that you’re holding on to that I should be aware of so I can support you? So there are ways of communicating to bring out the stories or to bring out the experience. And especially living in community, this is an art and we have set up in a way our tea corners. That is a place for conversation. And today we have to build even new habits like can we all, you know, put the the screen upside down making sure that we don’t see the notification, for example. Or put the phone away even. It sounds crazy even just to say that, but, you know, I have to intentionally, I’m like, okay the phone is not needed here, put it away. And then the deeper place is the self. It’s like when I talk about self it’s not you, but it’s like your need in that moment. Because when you’re there and you can offer yourself generously, people will want to hear from you. But when you take up so much space, people will start to become allergic to you. And so it’s a fine art of communication when we speak about communication, listening is already communicating. Showing up is communicating. And then when we are talking about understanding, first and foremost in Buddhism, we always talk about understanding as in understanding suffering. And when we talk about suffering, it also means about well-being. So if we’re talking about suffering, we’re also talking about happiness, because if we can take care and transform the suffering, it will become the happiness, the joy. So in deeper conversations, especially in relationship, we have to create moments where we can enter into those spaces of opening our hearts. Sometimes it’s a story like when you were young, like what is it that you wanted that now you can let go off, for example. Because if you can’t let go of it, you will be very demanding on your descendants. What you couldn’t achieve, you will put it on the others. And I’ve seen that cycle, especially as an Asian, for all of us who are Asians listening to this and grew up in the West, we all know of this. A lot of our parents had to abandon their careers, run away from wars, run away to migrate, and they enter into a new place, they have to relearn or no education, so dishwashing, gardening, nails, so on. And then all of their hopes and dreams, they impose it on us. And there’s this heavy burden that we receive. But you can be angry with it, or you can understand, ah, these were the dreams which my parents wanted that they never could accomplish. And how can I communicate to them? It’s like, my lovely parents, what you weren’t able to do, allow me to do it in my talent, in my ways. And whether it is not becoming a doctor, becoming an author or becoming a monk even, so it’s like this understanding, when you have it, then your love just expands. That example towards our parents is very clear. When I see all of the hopes and dreams that my parents had and they weren’t able to realize, and sometimes I feel that pressure, where’s that pressure coming from? When you understand that you unlock something in you, you unlock your understanding, you become free in that moment. So the understanding and love is, it is one thing, Thay has said it many times, understanding is love, and it’s the most profound love, because when you understand, there’s no more barrier of you and me as separate people.

00:28:53

Thank you, brother. And I was just thinking of what you were saying in terms of my life. And, you know, I was very needy of love when I was young. And when I look back on that, I can absolutely see why it would push people away. Because actually it’s a, you now, we think, we think often that people don’t pick up on our energy. But actually, even if we don’t say anything, as you were saying, you know, people pick up on the energy of something. And I know that for myself, talking about love, when I got to the point in my life where I could say I love myself, the neediness just, you now, it hasn’t gone away. It sometimes comes back. It’s sometimes more sort of obvious than other times. But actually it transformed, because actually if I love my self, then I don’t need anything. And not only that, then I can give something. And it feels like, you know, that metaphor, when your bowl is empty, you just want to fill it. But actually it’s not an empty bowl, it’s a bottomless pit because actually whatever love I was receiving never went anywhere because actually I didn’t love myself. And so actually it was a constant need for love that never met my wish. But when I actually learned to love myself then, actually my bowl was full and brimming, over brimming. And actually then you want to naturally give to people because actually that’s exactly, as you started off the podcast, you know, we want to give love. Yes, of course we want receive it, but we really want to express it. And brother, one thing you talked about, but I just want to sort of name it maybe and maybe talk a bit more about is, Thay would often say that love is friendship. And I think often, you know, and you were talking about this, you know, love has become transactional, that love is about something we give to get. But actually, if we see love as friendship, just by using the word friendship, for me that immediately creates a sort of idea of reciprocity, that I’m there for you and you’re there for me. Suggests deep sharing that if you’re my friend, I can trust you, I can open up to you. And also if you are my friend I’m gonna devote my love and attention to you. And I find that a really healthy way of seeing love.

00:31:33

Wow, that is very beautiful, and it’s very true. The word Maitri is very close to friendship in Sanskrit, and Mitrata is like the word for friendship. And ta daa, my name means friendship, Brother Phap Huu is Dharma friend, or Friend in the Dharma. And I feel very honored to have that name because… Kindness, when we spoke about it at the beginning, in a way, that kindness that you offer to yourself is an act of befriending yourself again. And when you’re befriended yourself, you’re befriening all of your ancestors, from your closest ancestors, which are your parents, to the ancestors that have served the country, to serve the world, and also the ancestors who have done harm. We embrace them all and we’re befriending them because in this moment, thanks to the causes and condition, we weren’t, we couldn’t choose who we’re gonna, which family we’re going to belong to, but we’re here. And an act of accepting is an act of befriending. And that is very empowering because now you’re a continuation of, so you can help renew the legacy, renew the future and the past through who you are. So friendship is a very safe place to develop relationships in. You know, I’ve, sometimes people, you know, have the perception that monastics, because we’re not in romantic relationships, we don’t know what love is. But I felt like I’m so married to this community and like I don’t have one partner, I have like hundreds of partners of relationship that I am upkeeping, I am renewing, I am in pain with, you know. There’s okay, you know, I’m feeling a little bit sad or tender, but I have a sibling that I had to speak up in a meeting. And I think what I shared impacted this person. And me and this person are having distance right now and they can’t even look at me in this moment, you know? And I’m very aware of this. And this person is very dear to my heart. We have been in so many organizing teams together. We have done so many things together. And I think it’s healthy also to experience this and to know our limits and our capacity. And I have also been reflecting on how I was sharing and how it affected my friend. And at the same time, I know that the friendship is still there though, and I trust that right now we need a little bit of space. But in time, we will re-mend our relationship because our true friendship was always there. We were always there for each other in the hard times, in the happy times, and so on. So I have that trust, but we also have to be very raw and honest, like when there’s a wound in a friendship, it’s painful. And I also think of romantic relationship, it enters… once you’re over the honeymoon season, because I’ve seen, I’ve witnessed so many couples, we’ve done ceremonies for some couples, right? And from romantic to companionship and the deep thread of companionship is friendship. And I know of a very good friend who’s in the sangha and the two of them love each other so much and they’re still a couple, and they have decided, in the later years, that they don’t even need to share the same bed. But they feel so in harmony with each other that there’s a moment that the understanding of love is beyond the body intimacy. It’s the intimacy of spirit. It’s the intimacy of understanding, of supporting. And this friend who is a very successful business woman, her husband is not fully a practitioner, like Plum Village. She’s a diehard, you know what I mean? She, like, we would joke, I’m like, I think you bleed Plum Village. And she was like, ha ha ha, absolutely. But he is so much in support of her to walk this path as an OI member, an Order of Interbeing member, receiving the 14 trainings. And that’s a deep love, that’s deep understanding. And sometimes maybe our understanding of love is everything needs to be the same. It’s so cute when we see couples wearing the same shirts, the same hoodies, the same sweaters, couple days. I think it’s more of an Asian thing, in the Southeast Asia. And it’s to express how in harmony we are. At the same time, like in love and in relationships and in friendships, there’s a lot of space for exploring our talents, our hobbies, our curiosity. And we all also have our expansive mind can even embrace each other’s different religions, even different understanding of the movement of the world. And it’s hard sometimes to embrace also those who have different worldviews, right? And I’ve experienced this myself, and my practice is still to go beyond the worldview and is to still see them as a human being that needs to be nurtured by love. Needs to be seen as just a human being. And I remember one time we were in a conversation and yeah, there’s a lot of different worldviews. And at one point we’re just like, how is that gonna change our present moment? Like, are we just gonna keep battling each other with who’s right and who’s wrong? Is being right more important than us being able to actually sit down and have a cup of tea? And then to talk about, you know, what are the things that you are transforming for your ancestors? You know, to go there sometimes just to break free from these, you know. The headlines are important is to keep us aware of what’s going on, but sometimes we base everything on all of the headlines that are going on in the world, which is important once again. But where do you meet people to also help them transform? And help ourselves transform is to be open to listen, to have friendship. And in friendship we have seen our humanity is thirsty for friendship and there’s this a clip that is on Youtube, and I don’t know how it was in my algorithm, but, you know, like during World War One, I think it was during Christmas day when they called for a ceasefire and they played football. Or in America, North America, soccer. And that was a moment of humanity, and that was a moment of friendship. Isn’t it so… Like we have all the facts of what we, as human beings, where we thrive the most is when there is love and friendship. But because of power and greed and because of individualistic ideas and separation, we other each other. We are capable of seeing the others as less than us. That’s when it’s very dangerous. And that’s when somebody has no friends, somebody’s so lonely, somebody who just wants to be accepted. And then they have these views that they will lead their actions. And that’s why our teacher always says, the safest foundation for us, to be in action, is understanding. When you have that, you can work tirelessly because your understanding is your compass. And it can give you so much insight and so much way of bridging the separation. Our teacher has spoken to business leaders, to teachers, to world leaders, and he always said that if you speak and listen from the place of heart, you see their suffering as yours, your way of leadership will change drastically. And you’re a leader for the people, not the leader for the dollar, for the euros, for the separation of ideal power of money. And I was just thinking, I was listening to a podcast and it was Trevor Noah, I think it’s, I forgot the title, like What Now, or something like that. And he also asked a question, like if you can do one thing to change the world, what will you do? And it’s a deep question, right? As you have one thing, you can only choose one thing. And it is too obvious to say like world peace or something that. And I was thinking, oh, like what if, because in the Buddhist term, we have something called merit. The merit of action, the merit of thoughts, the merit our service. And I was thinking like, wouldn’t it be so beautiful if our currency was our acts of kindness? We will all want to be good human beings because that is the equivalent of our currency. And then, your love you can transfer, you can give more to other people, and then that would change your whole mindset of giving, receiving, supporting, loving, understanding. And I was really just contemplating that because of, you know, all of the economical trades, right now the tariffs are being put on so many nations, just like, you know, this is 2025 and seeing so many people are going to suffer with these decisions made based on greed and based on power and based on ignorance, to be honest…

00:42:41

And bullying.

00:42:41

And bullying. And it’s, and we’re all tied to currency, right? The economical foundation that we are based on that one day, I hope, maybe our children’s children can have a new understanding of giving and receiving.

00:43:02

Beautiful, brother. Brother Phap Huu for president!

00:43:07

Absolutely not. I wouldn’t be Brother Phap Huu.

00:43:13

And brother, before we move on to compassion, I just want to relate to one thing there, which is I have a lot of experience in my relationship about learning about the power of unconditional love. So in my first marriage, there was a lot of love but there was power struggle and there was wish to change each other and not fully accepting who we were and not really deeply understanding what the vision or dreams were of each other. I mean, it was there on one level, but when it came down to it, often came down to one of us was right and one of us was wrong. And of course, no one likes to feel wrong. If you need to be right, the other person needs to be wrong. And that is not friendship or understanding. That is literally a struggle. And with Paz in the last 19 years we’ve been together, she has fully understood me and she really loves me unconditionally. She really wants the best for me and I really want the best for her. I would say that all my, not all my, but a large percentage of my success and happiness over the last 20 years has been based on that very, very simple foundational premise that I know that I can trust her love. I know that when she says something that it’s from the best intention of her, I know that over the years, she has sought to understand me more deeply and to recognize my suffering and that when my suffering comes up or gets triggered, that she has a really beautiful way of diffusing it. Rather than being triggered by it or rather than running away from it, it’s to move actually closer to me, to actually be present for me in those moments and for me to be present for her in those moments. And that is real joy and happiness because it’s like, it feels it has equality in it, it has care in it, has understanding and it has friendship. And just lastly, I think what you talk about is, you know, the, in a sense, all relationships go through ages, go through periods of time and we are in that period of time you very much mention, which is about what it is to be deep companions. What it is to be that, that actually, at the end of the day, that is what you’re left with. Everything else can change, but actually when it just sort of, it’s like a, when it comes down to the core of it, that actually it’s to care for each other and to know that we’re there for each.

00:47:06

So brother, let’s go on to compassion, which is the second of the four immeasurable minds. And what I like about Thay is he talked about, he said one word can release suffering, one action can save a life. And he talks about sort of looking with the eyes of compassion, we can listen deeply to the cries of the world. I love that. Tell us more. What’s your sense of how this can actually help us to lead a better life, a more full life?

00:47:48

I think we did 17% of it already about understanding and just to add on to it, compassion, once again, it’s a verb, it is not just a word that we throw up, but compassion is to understand. And it comes from a deep desire and all Bodhisattvas, bodhisattva means those who want to walk the path of awakening and those who are committed to be of service to the world. A big chord in our pathways of to do this is to alleviate suffering. And compassion is an insight that allows us to be tender, to be kinder, to embrace and accept others who suffer, and even accept those who are angry. Even to accept you who are angry. And compassion has many layers. There is the compassion to hold and embrace all. I said, when you’re in a presence of somebody who’s very compassionate, you feel this warmth. You feel this acceptance of this person seeing you who you are. We need more of that in today. I was recently at a conference, and at the conference, everybody is showing up to represent their business, platform, communities, movements, and it’s beautiful. There’s a lot of deep aspiration, but there’s also a hunger to be seen and to be heard, and to just be accepted. We are given titles, you know, I was given a name tag and Brother Phap Huu, Abbot of Upper Hamlet, da da da. And I honestly just want to say Brother Phap Huu, smile. But, you know, to move in the world, sometimes titles are important and it can help get you through a door, for example. And the conversations that I was able to have with folks, when I can just be as curious as I am to their aspiration, that’s an act of kindness, that’s an act of compassion. You get to hear something that is so deep within them. And your way of listening, your way of presence, your way of warmth, allow them to be comfortable to share. And this is a training. And it’s a training of deep listening and a deep sense of curiosity have to be there. And then there is the compassion. We call firm compassion, or fierce compassion. And, when we think about the energy of anger, for example, anger is sometimes seen as a negative energy in the literature of Buddhism, in the philosophy of Buddhism. And anger is given a title to be transformed. And there’s truth there because anger when it is not tend to leads to more destruction by the words we speak, the minds, the thinking, the views we create, as well as the bodily action that we can impose or enact. So anger is a source of energy to transform. But when you have a moment to reflect on and see your anger, it comes from a layer of love. You’re angry because something is wrong. You’re angry because you have felt unkindness, hatred, violence, racism. And so there is a place for the anger to manifest because that is a human reaction, a human communication. But a practitioner invites compassion to be present also. Compassion can embrace, give the anger a new jacket and a new power, because you can still be, in the face of hatred and discrimination, and not accept that, but to show up and speak out in a way that can shine the light to the ignorance, to the suffering, to the pain that are there. So compassion, when in the Buddhist light, it comes from a deep aspiration to transform suffering. I don’t know if listeners have had a chance to hear our Namo Valokiteshvara chant and our teacher always introduced it and he also always introduced it to give us three layers to meditate on when we’re listening to the chant because it can go on for 20 minutes or even 30 minutes sometimes. And the first element of where we focus the compassion is to oneself, being compassionate to yourself, knowing that you have trauma, you have wounds, you have pain, and it’s okay to suffer. But if we know how to suffer, our suffering will have an opportunity to transform. So the first object of our compassion is oneself, because when we can heal ourselves, our wounds, love becomes a source that we can offer to others. But sometimes we have to know our limits and we know, oh, if I give more, I’ll be dried up and I’ll lose myself. So kindness to oneself. And then the second object of our compassion we send to, it’s the ones that are around us in our daily life, whether they are our parents, our brothers, our sister, our colleagues, our partner, then we send that compassion. We offer them this compassion. And it’s a meditative practice and it’s in action, every day we can do it. We can see… When I see someone suffering, we can be so compassionate to that person. We can already just bring our thoughts of mind wishing them healing energy. And there is, this is not like, this is not like la la land. Like this is actually real. When people receive care and love from people’s thinking, it has a great power of trust. You can trust humanity again. And then the third element of compassion we sent to it’s all of the world. It’s places where we know that suffering is so present. Whether it is the war places, hunger, or the nature being destroyed, going beyond the human even, even the beings, right? We know that in our lifetime already, we have seen extinction of so many insects and bugs. And not many of us even know this. When I was told by climate activists that came through Plum Village, there was a deep sorrow there. Because our way of living, our way of consuming, our of being at the top of the pyramid, we have allowed for so many living beings to be extinct. But with death, there can be birth again, right? So compassion to give out for regeneration to be possible. So these three elements of practice, of inner surrounding and an outer, it’s a continuous practice that develop our mind of non-discrimination which will become one of the minds of love, but compassion is so crucial because that is sometimes is considered one of the greatest alleviators because there’s understanding. And I see transformation happens in retreats for example, when somebody understands their suffering they have an aha moment And it’s not only their compassion that they receive from their own practice, but it’s from the collective, from the listening that people offer to each other, the presence we offer to each other. Even in the small talks, there is an element of compassion there. So compassion is a force field and it’s a fuel that we can cultivate to give us more resources to be in action.