The Way Out Is In / The Noble Eightfold Path (Episode #87)

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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, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems evolution.

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

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So, dear listeners, today we are going to be looking at something called the Noble Eightfold Path, which is, in a sense, at the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. And in fact, when he was close to his death, he said, the question is whether you want to liberate yourself. If you do, practice the Noble Eightfold Path. And that is what we are gonna do today.

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The way out is in.

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Hello, dear friends. I am Jo Confino.

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And I’m Brother Phap Huu.

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So brother, this is episode 87 of our podcast and we have now, at this moment, arrived at one of the fundamental teachings of Plum Village, the Buddha, Thich Nhat Hanh. So is this the first time we’re going to be talking about this?

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I think it is the first time that we are giving it the spotlight that it deserves, but throughout all of the 86 episodes, the Eight Noble Path was threaded through the teachings, the sharings, and the different themes that we have discussed.

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So brother, you are going to lead us through these eight. And what I’m going to do first, I’m just going to read them out because I think it’s useful just to hear them. And then we will go… because they are in Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, they are sort of shown in a circle. So we’re going to go around the circle because it’s not linear, because of course they are all interrelated. But the eight are: right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right diligence, right mindfulness, and right concentration. So, brother, before we get into these, all of them have the word right in front of it. Why is there the need to say right mindfulness, right view?

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Because there is a wrong view. And the Buddha explained it that when he discovered the path, he called it the right path because there are many pathways in life, there’s many, many pathways in spirituality. And there are paths that don’t lead us to understanding and love. And there are paths that are very concrete and direct it to our cultivation of deep understanding. And the Buddha has said that, why do I call it the right path? Because it does not avoid suffering, but allows direct confrontation with suffering as the means to overcome it. And I think this is very important because sometimes I think we look at spirituality with a mythical eye. If we are to practice this, if we’re to do these exercises when all the stars align, then we will gain a particular source of energy or understanding. And I would say I’m sure some of that probably does happen, but the path that the Buddha has shared with us is a path that is endless in a way, and that is a continuous journey of deepening and cultivation. And I really like this explanation of a path because of language and because of institutions and we, as humanity, we need to put things into categories in order to know where it belongs. So Buddhism is considered a religion, but I don’t think the Buddha himself from the get-go had the concept that I’m going to create a world religion. I was looking for a way to understand the causes of suffering and to liberate suffering. And through his journey of seeking the Dharma, seeking enlightenment, seeking understanding, he found these paths. And through the Sutras, you really see that he taught it as a way of life, rather than these are doctrines that have been given to us from above the skies, and therefore we have to blindly trust it and give our whole belief system to it. But here, the Buddha’s path, it is very scientific in a way. You have to examine it. You have to explore it, you have to put it into practice, and you will gain your own insight. And it’s funny that you mentioned that it’s our 87th episode because actually, when the Buddha gave his first official teachings to five friends that later on became his first five students, the Dharma talk that he explained about the Noble Eightfold Path is considered the first Dharma talk that the Buddha gave. And it was considered the moment of turning the wheel of the Dharma, meaning that even the Buddha sees that he’s not the first one, but he’s just a continuation, but causes and conditions have allowed him to find a path, understand a path, bears fruit of his own understanding and suffering, and then to transmit it. And it is considered in the Buddhist world, the moment that the Buddha gave the teachings on the Eight Noble Path and the Four Noble Truths was considered the moment the Dharma wheel has been put into motion.

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Beautiful. And it’s also true, brother, that it was his last talk as well. So it was the sort of after his enlightenment, they considered the first Dharma talk and his last Dharma talk. So let us pay attention to it. And brother, as I said, it’s a circle, but there is a starting point because the Buddha and in Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings, he said, start with the right view. So why would we start with a right view?

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Views are kind of like the headlight of our vehicle, which takes us in a direction. And views, the Buddha has said that our mind creates the world. What we perceive, what we cultivate, as in our perceptions, it paints our whole life, right? We all can be living in this present moment, but we can all be living very different lives with the causes and conditions that have allowed us to have a particular understanding, a particular viewpoint. So then that viewpoint’s become the truth. And for the Buddha, it’s really important, before the Buddha received the title Buddha, so we have to understand that his name was Siddhartha. He was a prince, and he wasn’t yet considered Buddha. Buddha is… the definition of the word Buddha means awaken, an awakened person. And it was given to him when he realized enlightenment or awakening. And sometimes our teacher would explain it, which I really like, as in he realized deep understanding. Because I think enlightenment is a very big word. It’s an achievement that we all run after. But I feel like understanding, as a language, it feels more organic and it is more practical in a way. Like every day I can understand myself more deeply. I can’t understand my suffering more deeply. So the Buddha in his journey of spiritual practice, he had two teachers before. And the two teachers taught a way of meditation, which later on became the four dhyanas, the four meditation stages of mind that in Buddhism it is taught, but sometimes we are attached to these four states of mind, but the Buddha went beyond that, right? And because the Buddha felt that those four states of minds weren’t enough, they helped allow us to touch calm, peace, and bliss, but it didn’t allow us to have breakthrough, to confront suffering. And then he let go of these teachers. So this is a very powerful moment that even though you have teachers, but when you have felt that you realize everything that your teacher have given you, but there is more to understand, you have to have the courage to let go. And these teachers were so fond of their student and wanted him to be their next leader. They were ready to give them the whole lineage, the whole… And he’s just like, you know what, FYI, I was a prince, I was about to be king, and I’ve already abandoned my whole palace, so I’m not attached to titles. I’m now attached to positions and so on. So the Buddha had a very strong foundation of when he went into looking for this spiritual path. And then he left and he started to practice asceticism. So there was a view that for me to overcome suffering, I have to deprive myself so that my whole body can feel all of the pain and agony so that I can transform it. So that was a view. And not only he did it, but five other monks that were part of the different spiritual community that Siddhartha was a part of, joined him. And in his meditation, he had a realization that what he is doing to his body is very violent and it is not going to lead to understanding and awakening. So there was already, we can say, an enlightenment there that the practice that he is performing and cultivating with this view that I need to suffer so that I can overcome my suffering. So the Buddha had a aha moment where in everything that I receive and in my own reflection, just thinking like, if you start to realize the interconnectedness of time and ancestors, like what you’re doing to your body is not, it’s not love towards your own parents, towards your ancestral lineage that have given you this miracle of just being alive. So the Buddha broke free. So another letting go of a practice that he thought that would lead to awakening. And then he went down to the village to beg for food, but he was so weak, so he fainted. And fortunately, a young girl came and saved his life in a way. She was going towards the forest and was bringing food to give to the gods of the forest that her parents had prepared a basket of food. And fortunately, this young girl was very compassionate and was probably not superstitious. So she probably had a thought like, I don’t know if there’s gods in this forest, but I see a monk that needs nutriment. So, in the history, she gave the Buddha goat milk. And the Buddha, thanks to this encounter, his life was safe in that critical moment. And he continued to practice under a tree, which later on became the Bodhi tree, and were supported by children to bring food, to cut the grass so that he can make into a cushion so he would sit under the tree. So there’s similarities, I would say, you know, our teacher also being invested to the children when every summer arrived, because they are the seeds of the future, right? To continue this connection. So we can see that even in the Buddha’s time, this deep connection to children was very real. So it was joyful around him. And the kids would come and sit with him and share the space with him, and they were a part of his enlightenment. When he started to teach to these five monks, after his awakening, he went to find his friends. So this is another important part because we can see that the Buddha is very selfless. He knew that he had something very good, that he have to share it. He wasn’t selfish about it because he could have just given up on the world. It’s like, you know what? The world suffers too much. You guys are ignorant. I don’t think I should share what I have cultivated. I’ve reaped these fruits of my intense training in a way. But fortunately, the Buddha was a very generous human being. And so the first thing he did was to look to build a community. So he went to the Deer Park Garden, which is why our monastery in California is called Deer Park. Also because apparently there were deers back in the days there. There’s more coyotes now than deers, but it is to honor this historical moment when the Buddha came to meet his five friends that later on became his first five disciples. And at the beginning, in the story, it goes that the monks were very critical of him, but his presence, Jo, was of a person that was so peaceful and happy. He was beaming this light of having a path. When you have a path, you just have so much joy that you know that you’re walking down the right path in life. And that’s why in one of our calligraphies that our teacher has written, it is called ‘Now I have a path, there’s nothing to fear.’ Because once you have the path, even if suffering is there, you will know how to walk it, because you start to see the way. And when the Buddha started to explain to them, he said that there are two extreme paths that we should avoid. The first one is seeking sensual pleasures, the pleasures of the world. And then the second one is the practice of depriving the body, such as the practice of asceticism. And those two extremes do not lead towards happiness and peace, but they lead to failure. These are his words, they lead to failure on the path of understanding and love. And he said, and the middle way, so we have to find a middle way. And the middle is the Eight Noble Path. And why right view? It is, right view is also considered right understanding, right insight, right wisdom. And in the teachings of the Buddha, right view is the view that transcends discrimination, transcends separateness. And in today’s world, like, we are all so conditioned to other each other, right? We look for labels, we look for which side are we on, what is our political view, what is our diet’s view, right? Like what is our, you know, just day to day. And the first thing we do, and, you know, we all do this, I do this too, and I’m still practicing, the first thing is we judge. We are so conditioned to not seeing each other as just who we are, but as what title we hold, what path in life are we doing? When we see each other, what do you do? What’s your career, Jo? That’s why in our climate retreat, it’s a very big challenge when we say, let’s all just introduce each other with our first name basis. We know we’re all important. Let’s not give out our CV, our business card, our titles, what organizations we belong to, but let’s just learn to meet each other as who we are in this moment, knowing that we also embrace everything that we do. But let’s go to the space of interbeing. So right view, our teacher would explain that it is like the sword of understanding that helps us break through separation. And in the teachings of Buddhism, right view, it helps us transcend dualism, right, wrong, up, down, good, evil, death, birth, all of these pairs of opposites in the world. But in Buddhism, right view says that happiness can only be present thanks to the goodness of suffering. And when we have suffering, it is an ingredient that can lead us to happiness. And so we start to have an open and expansive understanding of these elements as not separate, only separate entity, but as conditions that can be cultivated in a way to give rise to then, from right view, right thinking. Right? So from what we are conceiving, what we are cultivating our mind then leads to our awareness of what we are cultivating in our daily life, in our thoughts. And here, when we talk about right thinking, it leads towards right speech and right action. So these three pairs, we consider them the three karmas in Buddhism. So we’ve heard a lot about karma in popular modern music even, right? And karma here, it means action. And in the light of Buddhism, all of our actions bear our signature. And our actions will be our continuation into the future. And it is in a way, it is beyond time and space. And this is a little bit scary because that means that every thought we produce has its mark in this cosmos. Then every word that we speak, every lyric that we write, every book that we publish, every poetry that we pen, they all bear our signature and it will continue and become the present and then become the past as well as become an ingredient for a different thinking into the future. And then our actions, our bodily actions, as concrete as how we open the door. What do we do when we wake up? How do we eat breakfast together? How do share a space together? Like all of these concrete actions, they are our truest and everlasting belongings. So when we look at this journey of the Eight Noble Path, it’s already very scientifical, right? There’s a lot of thought into this. And the Buddha said that that the path and the teachings that I will share with you, it is not the result of my thinking, this is very important, but it is the fruit of direct experience. So we can identify and I can say with confidence that these teachings have not just been studied but have been applied through generations. So it’s very interesting to see that in Buddhism we see thinking as already in action, right? We all have thoughts, negative, hopeful, powerful, loving, hateful. And the Buddha said, you know, sometimes keep it in there. That’s an action, that’s an energy, a source of energy already that we are curating, that we’re generating. So our thought is already an energy. And when we have a pleasant thought, it brings healing to ourselves. And when have a hateful thought, it’s very violent. And we may think that it has no effect to us, but it is doing something to us internally, at our core of our foundation of humanity. So right thought is already a pathway. And here, when we talk about our thoughts, we have to speak about what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we are consuming on a daily basis will then affect the way we are thinking. So if we just focus and practice right thought, you will start to have a lot of agency. You start to reflect how your thought patterns are created, what habits arise in your daily life because of your thoughts, because of the kind of ingredients that you have intake through your eyes, ears, nose, and tongue, and mind consciousness. And we know speech is powerful. Right? We do workshops on just learning how to listen before even speaking, right? How to listen with our whole body, how to listen so that we don’t react, how to listen so we don’t allow our judgmental mind to try to fix that person right away. And then to mindfully select the words that we want to use to communicate, even if it’s a wrong perception, there’s a way to communicate, to remove the wrong perception, or there’s way to justify it and create even more distance and destruction. So they’re all choices that we will have once we see this pathway forward and in action. I always like to talk about action, I think because it’s one of the, for me, that’s how I learned when I was in Plum Village. I think because I was so young, I always fell asleep during the Dharma talk. So I don’t remember what Thay talked about, but I learned through the body language of my teacher, as well as the community around me. Right? Being attentive to the kindness that you can bring with action. And there’s such an art to being that we explore in the practice of mindfulness. I just want to stop at these three actions before we move on and see what brings up for you, Jo.

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Well, brother, that was so beautifully spoken, and I think what it brings up for me strongest is that most of us live a very boring life, because we see things in such a one-dimensional view. And I know when I’m coaching people and challenging people or asking questions, people say, that’s who I am. And there’s this assumption that people have as they go through their life that, you know, my thinking, my speech, my actions, that’s the person I am. And people don’t realize actually that they can change that, that they have agency. And I think what these teachings do is they allow us to see, to break down, as I say, in quite a scientific way, all the different elements of our life and that each element leads to the next element and actually we can change things. One of… This relates very much to our last podcast, which was about, are you sure? Because most of us, we’re very sure, as you say, about our views. And we believe that the certainty of our views defines who we are, but it makes us very brittle. But what this does is it allows us to constantly explore life. And for me, that is the beauty of life, is actually we don’t know the answers. And actually when we start to see that actually our view, as you say, it creates our thoughts, our thoughts create our speech, and our speech creates our actions. So it allows us to see actually that at any one of those points we can intervene in our life, but our view is so critical. What is our belief system and that we can change that?

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And are we listening? I think one of the dangers once our view is so strong, we stop listening, even to the truth and to suffering. And in Buddhism, whenever we talk about truth, it’s always to be in truth with the suffering. Because for us, that is the most direct thing that we know causes us to have a miserable life and others a miserable live. So when we learn to expand our understanding, I think our life will become much richer.

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I think people find it, even though the first noble truth is that we suffer and we know that actually through our suffering we can find our happiness and we can’t bypass that, in everyday life, people are constantly trying to avoid their suffering, they’re trying to find a way through their suffering by bypassing it and that can never work. And what you talk about, and I think it’s really… sort of just highlighting a bit and maybe, brother, you want to just, you know, the sensual pleasures of life because they are what we think is our happiness. And actually… But they are actually trying to avoid our suffering.

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So that will lead us to the next pathway, and that is right livelihood. So once we have seen that the path of understanding, we have to cultivate our right thinking, our right speech, our right actions. Once those three start to be aligned, we have to reflect what kind of livelihood are we living right now? Like what is our environment? What is our continuation of ourselves into the future, like what is our career choices that we make? There are career choices, our teacher always explained, there are pathways in life where we know we can get richer and become filled with wealth. But what is our truest belonging? It’s not money. We cannot, when we die, money doesn’t go with us. Like what is left behind is our legacy of who we were as a human being. So right livelihood is a deep reflection that we all have. As the Buddha and the monks and nuns, our livelihood is we give up everything. We give up all of our worldly possessions. We give our chase for fame, for power, sensual pleasure, money, recognition. And we choose a path of simplicity. And simplicity is a very big word here because with everything that is simple, to have a simple life, there are so many things that are not simple, especially in our modern time, today. You know, like when I first came in, I remember the joy of being not… not burdened by emails. Like I used to support in the office team and people had to send letters of registration to come to a retreat. Now, it’s in a few seconds, like everything is so quick, fast-paced, right? And I just remembered that freedom that we used to have, which is like… And our internet was so slow, it was like, it was one of those telephone ones. So like if somebody’s on the call… Yeah, you got to dial in. It’s amazing. Now, you know, I just saw this interview, and it’s a very fun, it is a very fun thing that they do in New York city, it’s a subway interview. And this friend asked people like, what’s your take? And one of the persons there, my take is every day, no, no, once a day in the week, the internet should be shut off. And the interviewer was like, absolutely not. I can’t survive. Right? But for him, and that’s his truth, and I can see that. And I was talking to some of my siblings yesterday at the dinner table and I talking about this interview, and then one of our sister sasked us, do you think the community can do that? And I honestly said, I don’t think we can, Jo, but I think it’s something we should, and it’s something that like, as an individual practice, it’s going to be so difficult, but if all of us are committed to doing, I think it will work. Just like how we… Our teacher introduced like a no car day once a week, right? So that we know, on that day, we don’t schedule that we go out of Plum Village on Tuesdays. It’s normally our no car day. And then suddenly, you know that that day, you get to stay home. So the livelihood that we live, right? So we have to reflect on the way we schedule our lifetime, our way of daily life. Like, are we living it deeply? 24 brand new hours are before us. How many hours can we enjoy deeply? And even if we’re working hard, can you enjoy that? I love working, I love projects. I’m young, it gives me so much life. But when I do it, I feel very fulfilled because it is a service and an offering to so many. In these last few days, we’ve been working nonstop to prepare our monastery for the Great Ordination and it’s coming from this place of love that everyone is giving their hearts. Like today’s Lazy Day. Brothers are cleaning the bell tower, grass cutters are still mowing the lawns with our siblings doing it, because we’re gonna welcome all of these venerables and brothers and sisters from our different centers home. It’s like we wanna bring them into a place that this is the root temple, Plum Village, France, is the root temple of this tradition. So it’s coming from a space of offering of service. So the right livelihood is, it’s a very dangerous practice in terms of… I think I’ve shared this in the podcast before, but I have a friend that came to Plum Village a few times, and she was a Coca-Cola executive. And after, I don’t know, it was like her third time, she’s like, I got to quit that job because with everything that she have understood now, she can’t continue this and she knew that she was letting go of a very well-paid career. But then she gave it up and then she invested and she created a vegetarian restaurant. Much more work, of course, the money is not the same, but the joy and the feeling of what you’re leaving behind, what is gonna be your continuation, for her, this is something that she can live by. So it’s a mirror, right livehood as a reflection is a strong mirror.

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And also, brother, it’s also about not taking it too literally in the sense that, of course, some people don’t have a choice of what job they have. And one of the things I think right livelihood is about how do we show up in whatever job we have? And I always remember there was one of retreats, one of them had a question and answer session, one the participants said, one of the retreatants, and said, you know, I really don’t like my job because, the people don’t share my values and I want to join a company where people understand my values, and where I feel I’m doing meaningful work. What’s your advice to me? And I can’t remember which monk it was, but he said, well, you know, that’s fine if you want to change your job, but have you thought about, are you able to show up in your current job differently? Are you able to really invest in the people around you? Are you able help generate a different atmosphere that can maybe create change? So can you, by the very fact of having the courage to show up with your values, can you have an impact? So I think there’s something about right livelihood which is saying actually about who are we, who’s showing up, and what courage we have. And that comes back, brother, to, you know, when you first started talking, you know, the Buddha was, as you described before we started, he was a revolutionary. He didn’t just choose the orthodoxy. He didn’t just become the king. He sort of decided to leave that. He didn’t just decide to follow asceticism because that was the way you should be. He decided to challenge that. He actually is right this day, right this moment, challenging us all about how to live life. And I think there’s something very powerful about what it is to be courageous in this life, which is not to blindly follow other people, but to, as you say, follow your own experience and show up.

00:37:20

Yes, and to echo what you said, like there are so many careers in our times and I also remember like a soldier asking Thay about like how can he apply this pathway to his career and as a protector in his line of work, he sees himself as a protector. And Thay said, of course, we want compassionate soldiers. I would rather have you holding that weapon that has deep understanding and has interbeing rather than someone else who is evil and who just wants to punish or just wants to be violent. So the livelihood, like it, we can look at it from so many different angles, like so many ways. And sometimes, you know, even as monastics, we’ve had brothers who were monks and they were just suffering. You know, like I promote it, me and other monastics on this podcast, I said, come join us and become a monk and nun, because it is a lovely path and it is a path of service, but it’s not for everyone, that is for sure. And we’ve had monastics who, when they left monastic life, they were so much happier. They were so more of service to themselves and to the community and the world. So yeah, not to like, like to be tunnelled in thinking that suddenly we all have to become monastics and leave our lives outside.

00:39:33

So brother, the next one is right diligence. And what is the Buddhist understanding of diligence? Because we could go any direction with that.

00:39:44

Yeah, so when I first heard right diligence, I thought of it as discipline. And actually, the way Thay explains it, it is the diligence of how we are watering the seeds in us, the mind, the garden of mind. What are we cultivating on a daily basis? So this talks about Buddhist psychology. So in our tradition, we have a school that talks and dives quite deeply into the mind consciousness and store consciousness and the different layers of consciousness. And we’ve explored this in different podcasts, but just a refresh and for those who are new, in our way of looking at how our mind operates on a daily basis is that we have two big layers, which is mind consciousness, which is everything that we’re feeling in this moment, like our emotions, our feelings, our thinking. And then we have a store consciousness, which is, it’s like a basement, it’s a storage of all of the experience that we have received from the world, as a whole. In our tradition, we say we have 51 mental formations, 51 different kinds of seeds that then occupie our mind, from positive, like peace, love, mindfulness, hope, understanding, curiosity, to negative, evil, jealousy, craving. And then there are some seeds that are universal and some seeds that have two directions. For example, shame. So shame is one that the Buddha always teaches that it’s good to have, but it’s also too much is very bad. It’s like when you’ve done something wrong and you don’t feel shameful, then you’re not being aware of the consequences of your actions. But if you allow shame to then imprison you into an inferiority complex or a complex that doesn’t allow you to move on and to shine and to grow, then it becomes a danger. So the right diligence is, at the core of it, is what are we doing in our daily life that is cultivating the different kinds of mental formations that we produce every day. So then when it comes to a tradition, like the Zen tradition, or the Plum Village tradition, we break it down into our daily life, right? The choices we make. We’re vegetarian, we have a harmony, we choose not to use foul language in the monastery. We have a dress code, we have a schedule that aligns all of us, that helps us become more disciplined to training our mind, like sitting meditation, walking meditation, silence, learning to reflect, learning to listen, then having the opportunity to listen to the teachings of the Buddha and teachings of the experience of practitioners before us. So they’re all like watering the seeds in us that allows us then to also journey through our own garden. Everything that we’ve received from our ancestors, from the society, right? And that cultivation, the diligence is an everyday action. So for us, our teacher says Buddhism has to be very engaged. So our diligence has to very engaged, so especially as a monk and a nun, we have precepts, we have rules that help us be diligent and vigilant with our desires. Like when we leave the monastery, we always go with a second body, for example. Because if we go alone, nobody sees us, we may do something that is maybe harmful to our own aspiration. So we have particular rules and trainings to then support the store consciousness and the mind consciousness. And the diligence, then it goes to a layer of manas, right? Like our desires, looking at our habit energies, where are we always falling into the bait of the chocolate or of the shiny new technologies of the world or whatever it may be, you know, it’s something that makes us feel that we’re not good enough, then we have to run after. So, right diligence, at the core of it, is the cultivation of the mind of awakening. But then, practicality, how are we living our life every day, right? Are we… How are cooking breakfast? Can that be a mindful moment? How are we sharing a meal? Are we watching a movie while we’re sharing a meal? Or are we share a meal in a way that we can truly connect to each other? So, this… The diligence, it’s an art form, in a way.

00:45:14

So I know this will lead us into the next one, right mindfulness. But brother, I just want to pick up one phrase you said. You said, training the mind. And for me, that is at the core of all of this because our minds are wild. You know, our minds, we have so many desires, so many, as you say, beliefs, judgments, so many feelings that we’ll only be happy if this happens. But actually, our mind is like that all the time, every day. It’s like thousands of times a day, our mind is going off in different directions and pulling us hither and thither, and taking us away from actually what we most want in our life. And it’s like, all this is about saying, actually, focus, come back to the source, because we cannot be happy if our mind is everywhere. And we are, it’s like a wild horse. If we aren’t in control of the horse, the horse will just take us off and probably throw us off. But if the horse is tamed and we know how to handle the horse, then we can go in the direction we want. So can you tell us a little bit more about our monkey mind and how we start to train it? Because actually, what’s so important about these teachings, it is a daily practice. It’s not an annual practice. It’s not something we go away for a week and try and do. This is something we have to, in a sense, monitor our mind all the time. And we’re leading often such busy lives that it’s very hard sometimes for people to find the time. And also a lot of people want to avoid challenging their thinking. So maybe that leads us to the next one, right mindfulness. How do we start to train this wild mind of ours that has had many, many years often to take over? And it looks like we’re prisoners of it.

00:47:25

I want to quote Sister Lang Nghiem, Sister Hero, she said, meditation is the art of unlearning everything that we’ve learned, to learn again. And it is like very concretely, the way we walk, the way we sit, the way we breathe, the way we open the door. Like all of these actions that we do every day becomes a training. So when we, as a novice monk, when I was ordained, I felt like I was a brand new human being. I was learning to walk again. I was learning to sit again. I was learning to speak again. And of course I know how to talk, but I was becoming very aware of every action that I was taking. And it is so fundamental that it becomes the most advanced practice. As you were speaking, I was rushing to this podcast. I was from one task to the next task, right? And I was walking on the way to the Sitting Still Hut, and I hear the brothers playing volleyball. It was so joyful. And it’s spring. It is so beautiful. And I see one of our long-term practitioners who is here for the monastery stay program. He was sitting under a cherry blossom tree, drinking a cup of tea. And that was a bell of mindfulness for me when I saw that. And I came and I joined him and I said, my friend, do you have an extra cup? Can I have a cup with tea with you? I have three minutes before this podcast. And he laughed, he said, only three minutes? I’m like, yeah, but let’s make it worth it. And I sat there. And it was the action of pausing and stopping. And I was just in awe of how beautiful this moment is. Like the sunshine, the blue sky, the freshly mowed lawn that the brothers have been doing for two days. And you hear the birds, like, this is it. And here I was, you know, from one mission to the next, one task to the next. And I always remember like with Thay, Thay means teacher, my teacher, with Thay like every step he took I just felt like this was a step of true presence, of grounding the mind, that the mind is present in this step right now. So I just want to share… It doesn’t mean, I think sometimes we think Zen, or we talk about the Zen mind as a mind that is empty. That’s not it. Emptiness in Buddhism, in the deep meaning of emptiness, emptiness is very full because because of emptiness everything can coexist. But we’re not practicing to have an empty mind. We’re practicing to ground the mind, to have a concentration. Thinking is a part of life. It’s an energy that we are producing the thoughts, the writings, the future in a way, but our teacher has reminded us on multiple occasions or his whole life, he said that most of the time our thinking is nonsense. He calls it the nonstop radio station. And recently, on the trip to Tanzania, Sister True Dedication calls it, our mind is like the non-stop podcast because that is of our modern time. That’s what everybody listens to now. So it’s like the nonstop podcast that we are creating. And it’s not, we’re not creating alone. We’re creating because of the condition. So now it comes to, once we see our monkey mind, we see our diligence that we want to focus on, brings our practice to right mindfulness. And why is it right mindfulness? Because everything that is in accordance to the teachings of the Buddha, mindful first and foremost is to be mindful of the suffering that is present, as well as mindful of joy and happiness that is also present. So we want to continue to transform suffering as well to create and generate joy and happiness for ourselves and for all beings. So, with this, mindfulness has to have ethics, that’s why it’s called right mindfulness. I know mindfulness now it is very popular. It is very mainstream. It’s, as one of my childhood friend would say, he’s like, you have chosen a career that is very sexy in our times today because everybody wants mindfulness in their resume, a mindfulness course, a mindfulness leader. And fun fact, you know, Plum Village, after 10 years, you then are considered to become a Dharma teacher. Ten years, Jo. I didn’t give my first Dharma talk until 2017 and I ordained in 2002, because in our tradition, in the spiritual dimension of ripening, there is something that we call the ripening of the Dharma. And my own mindfulness, I know that I wasn’t ready in those other years. I know that I could have given a talk, but it would have been quite fake in a way. It would be like a copy and paste thing that I’m doing, but it wasn’t alive. It wasn’t vivid in me yet. So for us, right mindfulness is a continuous journey of practice. So when we are cultivating concretely on a daily practice, the meditations, they are first and foremost to help us stop and recognize. That’s why we have a habit in Plum Village every time we hear a sound of the bell, we stop. We have brothers who have made it their mission to be slow, like Brother Phap Ung, Brother Turtle, in our community, when he walks, I feel this is the presence of the awakened energy, and it’s a reminder for all of us to pause. And the way we… When we come into the meditation hall, you enter into a space of silence to look inwards, right? So our mindfulness then creates spaces of sacredness and actions of sacredness. And right mindfulness on an ethical level, our teacher has written and upgraded and updated the language and the way of looking at how we interact into the world into the five mindfulness trainings. So if we’re curious, please explore the five mindfulness training, and these are for everyday life people, they’re not just for the monastics. And then from right mindfulness, we are living and generating this awareness inside, outside, this awareness that shines to see our thoughts, to see out speech, to see your action, and then it leads to right concentration. So the next three, right mindfulness, right concentration, and right view, or sometimes it’s also right wisdom. It is mindfulness, concentration, and insight. It is the three universal training in all Buddhist schools. If a Buddhist tradition doesn’t have these three trainings – mindfulness, concentration, and insight – we have to check. Are they teaching Buddhism? Because these three trainings should be embraced by all Buddhist traditions. Concentration, I think today, it’s so needed, like how easily distracted are we? Like our attention span, our fidgeting, our restlessness, our seek for a quick fix, Jo, it’s so… Like this friend who I listened to on this very quick interview, he was saying that we weren’t built for this fast-paced internet world. Like if you are to give the social media presence right now to somebody who is like, I don’t know, a hundred years ago or two… Exactly, he literally said that, he said this would be overstimulating, but we are now conditioned to be overstimated so that we are so numb to the present moment. So concentration is a whole training in itself. So our teacher always explains it as mindfulness can be very quick. You have mere recognition and example. We can all be sitting on Thay’s deck and looking at the sunrise. And we’re mindful that the sun is rising, but we can lose that mindfulness right away because our monkey mind then goes into the thinking. It is not conditioned to enjoy the sun, to be present. So we have to learn to tame the mind so that it stays. And a very concrete practice is the breathing. That’s why the breath is a refuge we always come to. Our teacher once explained the breath as the closest spiritual friend that you have and you should be friend, because it is always with you. And the moment that friend is not there, so are you. Right? That breathing. And this practice of mindful breathing and mindfulness of the body, you can practice it to the degree that once you’re in a state of shut down, it can kick into autopilot. And a very concrete example was with my teacher when he entered into a coma, after his stroke, even though he was in a coma, his breathing was so deep and consistent that all the nurses and doctors were so surprised. I’ll never forget one of the nurses saying like, I can’t believe Thay is 88 and his breathing is better than some young healthy people. The consistency, the oxygen level and the pace of it. And I was in his presence through that time and I really saw that the mindfulness became, it’s not a practice to attain anymore, it was just a way of being. So the concentration that we focus on, it aligns with the Four Noble Truths, such as the First Noble Truth is understanding that there is suffering. That is awareness. But we don’t stop there. Then the second, in the deep-looking of suffering, you have to concentrate on it, and you see the source of your suffering, the cause of your sufferings. So that concentration then brings the right awareness, wants you to have the right thinking, the right thoughts that you produce, the right speech, the right action, to the right livelihood, and then the continued right diligence to nurture the right mindfulness, right concentration, then to give rise and born to right understanding. But that is philosophical, like I wanna go to like a very practical level. Like concentration, resting is a concentration. Can we learn to just lay and release all of our muscles, the tension that builds up? All right, that is a deep meditative practice, deep total relaxation is a deep listening to the body. Right? And then being aware of our busy mind, our monkey mind, concentrating ourselves so that we arrive into stillness so that we can allow the mind to have a focus for it to be grounded in. And if the breathing is difficult, than the walking meditation, bodily movement, gardening can be very meditative practice. Breaking the leaves, cleaning the home, like these are fundamental practices that have been included into the Zen school, that’s why we have our hours of service meditation within the day. So from the state of stillness, we can apply it into the state of action. And I think that’s very hopeful for all of us busy people, because we then break… We break the idea that meditation is only on a cushion and in a retreat, but concentration can be grounded and can be developed everywhere, anywhere, and all at once.