And I'm going to turn it over to Sarah Satie.
Anyone who is new,
I will just briefly introduce myself.
My name is Sarah Satie.
This is book club and this is my first sort of installment of book club.
We are on episode three and we are working with the book,
The heart of the Buddha's teaching.
I'm going to read a few chapters.
I do some reading and read a few chapters every week.
After I read,
We sit for a short contemplation to embed what we have learned into our hearts and I leave you with practices that you are able to,
If you choose,
Use for the week ahead in between readings to help you process some of these teachings.
If you are interested in reading the book,
You can read it in sutra or tantra.
You have to search for the actual readings themselves.
People like Thich Nhat Hanh came into the world and synthesized this for us in a beautiful way and this book synthesizes much of the Buddha's teachings.
We are going to get started.
We are going to be doing a little bit of a conversation with you.
If you miss the first sessions,
You can go and relisten.
It is okay to jump in wherever we are at.
Today we are going into the second section of the text.
We just finished up talking about the four noble truths and Thich Nhat Hanh advised us that what we really need to do is to be able to be able to understand that the next step is to then begin to look at our suffering deeply.
If you were with me last week,
I offered some practices to start looking at your own suffering,
To especially look at the way that you feed yourself,
Not just edible food but all the ways that you feed yourself in life.
This is called the four nutriments in Buddhism.
How you feed yourself and how you feed yourself in life.
This is called the four nutriments in Buddhism.
It doesn't have to necessarily mean something harsh and deep.
It can be a low level discontentment with life.
That is also a suffering experience.
In what ways do you feed yourself?
Hopefully you had some opportunities to do some of that work.
If not,
I encourage you to go back and do it.
Definitely important work.
Now we are moving into the second part of the conversation which is the fear of our own suffering.
That becomes very liberating.
Once we see that our suffering has causes and much of those causes are coming from our own choices,
Then we are able to start looking at what the path to well-being is.
Anything that has a cause also has a cure.
We can feel very excited if we are responsible for our own suffering.
Rather than feeling depressed or nihilistic in some way,
We can start to feel more comfortable with our own suffering and not just alleviating it.
Now we are moving into the second section like I talked about previously,
The noble eightfold path.
This is how we approach well-being.
We know we suffer.
We know the causes of our suffering.
Now we can say well-being is there.
It exists.
It is possible.
How do we achieve well-being?
How do we achieve well-being?
There are practices that we can begin to incorporate into our life today.
Let's begin.
The noble eightfold path today I will be reading from chapters nine,
10,
And 11.
If you have the book,
Of course,
You don't need to have the book.
The noble eightfold path.
When the Buddha was 80 years old and about to pass away,
A young man named Subhada came to see him.
Ananda,
The Buddha's attendant,
Had never heard Subhada's request and said,
Ananda,
Please invite him in.
Even as he was dying,
The Buddha was willing to give an interview.
Subhada asked,
World honored one,
Are the other religious teachers in Magadha and Koshala fully enlightened?
The Buddha knew he had only a short time to live and that answering such a question would be a waste of precious moments.
When you have the opportunity to ask a teacher about the Dharma,
Ask a question that can change your life.
The Buddha replied,
Subhada,
It is not your fault.
You are fully enlightened.
The question is whether you want to liberate yourself.
If you do,
Practice the noble eightfold path.
Wherever the noble eightfold path is practiced,
Joy,
Peace and insight are there.
The Buddha offered the eightfold path in his first Dharma talk.
He continued to teach the eightfold path for 45 years and in his last Dharma talk,
Spoken to Subhada,
He offered the noble eightfold path in his first Dharma talk.
This is the right livelihood,
Right diligence,
Right mindfulness and right concentration.
A noble path of eight limbs suggests the intervening nature of these eight elements of your path.
Each limb contains all the other seven.
So please use your intelligence to apply the elements of the noble eightfold path in your daily life.
The first practice of the Noble Eightfold Path is Right View.
Right View is,
First of all,
A deep understanding of the Four Noble Truths,
Our suffering,
The making of our suffering,
The fact that our suffering can be transformed,
And the path of transformation.
The Buddha said that the Right View is to have faith and confidence that there are people who have been able to transform their suffering.
Venerable Shri Putra added that Right View is knowing which of the four kinds of nutriments that we have ingested have brought about what has come to be.
Shri Putra described Right View as the ability to distinguish wholesome roots from unwholesome roots.
In each of us,
There are wholesome and unwholesome roots,
Or seeds.
In the depths of our consciousness,
If you are a loyal person,
It is because the seed of loyalty is in you.
But don't think that the seed of betrayal isn't also in you.
If you live in an environment where your seed of loyalty is watered,
You will be a loyal person.
But if your seed of betrayal is watered,
You may betray even those you love.
You'll feel guilty about it,
But if the seed of betrayal and you become strong,
You may do it.
The practice of mindfulness helps us identify all the seeds in our store consciousness and water the ones that are the most wholesome.
When one person comes up to us,
The very sight of it makes us uncomfortable.
But when someone else walks by,
We like her right away.
Something in each of them touches a seed in us.
If we love our mother deeply but feel tense every time we think of our father,
It is natural that when we see a young lady who looks like our mother,
We will appreciate her.
And when we see a man who evokes the memory of our father,
We will feel uncomfortable.
In this way,
We can see the seeds that are in us,
Seeds of love for our mother and seeds of hurt vis-a-vis for our father.
When we become aware of the seeds in our storehouse,
We will not be surprised by our own behavior or the behavior of others.
The seed of Buddhahood,
The capacity to wake up and understand things as they are,
Is also present in each of us.
When we join our palms and bow to another person,
We acknowledge the seed of Buddhahood in him or her.
When we bow to a child this way,
We help him or her grow up beautifully and with self-confidence.
If you plant corn,
Corn will grow.
If you plant wheat,
Wheat will grow.
If you act in a wholesome way,
You will be happy.
If you act in an unwholesome way,
You water the seeds of craving,
Anger,
And violence in yourself.
Right view is to recognize which seeds are wholesome and to encourage those seeds to be watered.
This is called selective touching.
We need to discuss and share with each other to deepen our understanding of this practice and the practice of the five mindfulness trainings,
Especially the fifth about the foods we ingest.
At the base of our views are our perceptions.
In Chinese,
The upper part of the character for perception is mark,
Sign,
Or appearance,
And the lower part is mind or spirit.
Perceptions always have a mark,
And in many cases,
That mark is illusory.
The Buddha advised us not to be fooled by what we perceive.
He told Subhuti,
Where there is perception,
There is deception.
The Buddha also taught on many occasions that most of our perceptions are erroneous and that most of our suffering comes from wrong perceptions.
We have to ask ourselves again and again,
Am I sure?
Until we see clearly,
Our wrong perceptions will prevent us from having right view.
To perceive always means to perceive something.
We believe that the object of our perception is outside of the subject,
But that is not correct.
When we perceive the moon,
The moon is us.
When we smile to our friend,
Our friend is also us because she is the object of our perception.
When we perceive a mountain,
The mountain is the object of our perception.
When we perceive the moon,
The moon is the object of our perception.
When we say,
I can see my consciousness in the flower,
It means we can see the cloud,
The sunshine,
The earth,
And the minerals in it.
But how can we see our consciousness in a flower?
The flower is our consciousness.
It is the object of our perception.
It is our perception.
To perceive means to perceive something.
Perception means the coming into existence of the perceiver and the perceived.
The flower that we are looking at is part of our consciousness.
The idea that our consciousness is outside of the flower has to be removed.
It is impossible to have a subject without an object.
It is impossible to remove one and retain the other.
The source of our perception,
Our way of seeing,
Lies in our store consciousness.
If 10 people look at a cloud,
There will be 10 different perceptions of it.
Whether it is perceived as a dog,
A hammer,
Or a coat depends on our mind,
Our sadness,
Our memories,
Our anger.
Our perceptions carry with them all the errors of subjectivity.
Then we praise,
Blame,
Condemn,
Or complain depending on our perceptions.
But our perceptions are made of our afflictions,
Craving,
Anger,
Ignorance,
Wrong views,
And prejudice.
Whether we are happy or we suffer depends largely on our perceptions.
It is important to look deeply at our perceptions and know their source.
We have an idea of happiness.
We believe that only certain conditions will make us happy,
But it is often our very idea of happiness that prevents us from being happy.
We have to look deeply into our perceptions in order to become free of them.
Then what has been a perception becomes an insight,
A realization of the path.
This is neither perception nor non-perception.
It is a clear vision,
Seeing things as they are.
Our happiness and the happiness of those around us depend on our degree of right view.
Touching reality deeply,
Knowing what is going on inside and outside of ourselves is the way to liberate ourselves from the suffering that is caused by wrong perceptions.
Right view is not an ideology,
A system,
Or even a path.
It is the insight we have into the reality of life.
A living insight that fills us with understanding,
Peace,
And love.
Sometimes we see our children doing things that we know will cause them to suffer in the future,
But when we try to tell them,
They won't listen.
All we can do is to stimulate the seeds of right view in them,
And then later,
In a difficult moment,
They may benefit from our guidance.
We cannot explain an orange to someone who has never tasted one.
No matter how well we describe it,
We cannot give someone else the direct experience.
He has to taste it for himself.
As soon as we say a single word,
He is already caught.
Right view cannot be described.
We can only point in the correct direction.
Right view cannot even be transmitted by a teacher.
A teacher can help us identify the seed of right view that is already in our garden,
And help us have the confidence to practice,
To entrust that seed to the soil of our daily life,
But we are the gardeners.
We have to learn how to water the wholesome seeds that are in us so they will bloom into the flowers of right view.
The instrument for watering wholesome seeds is mindful living,
Mindful breathing,
Mindful walking,
Living each moment of our day in mindfulness.
At a peace rally in Philadelphia in 1966,
A reporter asked me,
Are you from North or South Vietnam?
If I had said I was from the North,
He would have thought I was pro-communist,
And if I had said I was from the South,
He would have thought I was pro-American.
So I told him,
I am from the center.
I wanted to help him let go of his notions and encounter the reality that was right in front of him.
This is the language of Zen.
A Zen monk saw a beautiful goose flying by,
And he wanted to share this joy with his elder brother who was walking beside him.
But at that moment,
The other monk had bent down to remove a pebble from his sandal.
By the time he looked up,
The goose had already flown by.
He asked,
What did you want me to see?
But the younger monk could only remain silent.
Master Tai Tzu said,
As long as the tree is behind you,
You can see only its shadow.
If you want to touch the reality,
You have to turn around.
Imagine teaching,
Image teaching,
Uses words and ideas.
Substance teaching communicates by the way that you live.
If you come to Plum Village for one day,
You have an idea about Plum Village,
But that idea isn't really Plum Village.
You might say,
I've been to Plum Village,
But in fact,
You've really only been to your idea of Plum Village.
Your idea might be slightly better than that of someone who has never been there,
But it is still only an idea.
It is not the true Plum Village.
Your concept or perception of reality is not reality.
When you are caught in your perceptions and ideas,
You lose reality.
To practice is to go beyond ideas so you can arrive at the suchness of things.
No idea is the path of non-conception.
As long as there is an idea,
There is no reality,
No truth.
No idea means no wrong idea,
No wrong conception.
It does not mean no mindfulness.
Because of mindfulness,
When something is right,
We know it's right,
And when something is wrong,
We know it's wrong.
We are practicing sitting meditation,
And we see a bowl of tomato soup in our mind's eye,
So we think that is wrong practice because we are supposed to be mindful of our breathing.
But if we practice mindfulness,
We will say,
I am breathing in,
And I am thinking about tomato soup.
That is right mindfulness already.
Rightness or wrongness is not objective.
It is subjective.
Relatively speaking,
There are right views and there are wrong views.
But if we look more deeply,
We see that all views are wrong views.
No view can ever be the truth.
It is just from one point.
That is why it's called a point of view.
If we go to another point,
We will see things differently and realize that our first view was not entirely right.
Buddhism is not a collection of views.
It is a practice to help us eliminate wrong views.
The quality of our views can always be improved.
From the viewpoint of ultimate reality,
Right view is the absence of all views.
When we begin the practice,
Our view is a vague idea about the teachings.
But conceptual knowledge is never enough.
The seeds of right view,
The seed of Buddhahood,
Are in us,
But they are obscured by so many layers of ignorance,
Sorrow,
And disappointment.
We have to put our views into practice.
In the process of learning,
Reflecting,
And practicing,
Our view becomes increasingly wise,
Based on our real experience.
When we practice mindfulness,
We see the seed of Buddhahood in everyone,
Including ourselves.
That is right view.
Sometimes it is described as the mother of all Buddhas,
The energy of love and understanding that has the power to free us.
When we practice mindful living,
Our right view will blossom,
And all the other elements of the path in us will flower also.
The eight practices of the Noble Eightfold Path nourish each other.
As our view becomes more right,
The other elements of the Eightfold Path in us also deepen.
Right speech is based on right view,
And it also nourishes right view.
Right mindfulness and right concentration strengthen and deepen right view.
Right action has to be based on right view.
Right livelihood clarifies right view.
Right view is both a cause and an effect of all of the other elements of the path.
So this is chapter nine,
And we see here,
Thich Nhat Hanh is talking that first we need to identify when we're looking at right view and applying it in our lives,
What is wholesome and what is unwholesome,
What leads to well-being and what doesn't.
But then we have to go deeper than that.
We actually have to start looking that no matter what we think we know,
No matter what we believe about our perception,
We're always slightly wrong because nothing is one-dimensional,
Nothing is one-pointed.
It's always a three-dimensional or five-dimensional object.
Any person that's looking has a right view in that moment.
So the bigger challenge is to take a step back from our view and see that there is not any one way to experience reality,
That reality is experience in and of itself.
And beyond that,
When we're talking about the Noble Eightfold Path,
We have to recognize that this path is not hierarchical and it's not linear,
It's all happening at the same time and each step on the path contains each other step on the path.
Chapter 10,
Right Thinking.
When right view is solid in us,
We have right thinking.
We need right view at the foundation of our thinking and if we train ourselves in right thinking,
Our right view will improve.
Thinking is the speech of our mind.
Right thinking makes our speech clear and beneficial because thinking often leads to action.
Right thinking is needed to take us down the path of right action.
Right thinking reflects the way things are.
Wrong thinking causes us to see in an upside down way.
But to practice right thinking is not easy.
Our mind is often thinking about one thing while our body is doing another.
Mind and body are not unified.
Conscious breathing is an important link.
When we concentrate on our breathing,
We bring body and mind back together and become whole again.
When Descartes said,
I think,
Therefore I am,
He meant that we can prove our existence by the fact that our thinking exists.
He concluded that because we are thinking,
We are really there existing.
I would conclude the opposite.
I think,
Therefore I am not.
As long as mind and body are not together,
We get lost and we cannot really say that we are here.
If we practice breathing mindfully and touching the healing and refreshing elements that are already within and around us,
We will find peace and solidity.
Mindful breathing helps us stop being preoccupied by sorrows of the past and anxieties about the future.
It helps us be in touch with life in the present moment.
Much of our thinking is unnecessary.
Those thoughts are limited and do not carry much understanding in them.
Sometimes we feel as though we have a cassette player in our head,
Always running day and night,
And we cannot turn it off.
We worry and become tense and have nightmares.
When we practice mindfulness,
We begin to hear the cassette tape in our mind,
And we can notice whether our thinking is useful or not.
Thinking has two parts,
Initial thought and developing thought.
An initial thought is something like,
This afternoon I have to turn in an essay for literature class.
The development of this thought might be to wonder whether we are doing the assignment correctly,
Whether we should read it one more time before turning it in,
Whether our teacher will notice if we hand it in late,
And so on.
Bhatarkha is the original thought,
Vichara is the development of the original thought.
In the first stage of meditative concentration,
Both kinds of thinking are present.
In the second stage,
Neither is there.
We are in deeper contact with reality,
Free of words and concepts.
While walking in the woods with a group of children last year,
I noticed one of the little girls thinking for a long time.
Finally,
She asked me,
Grandfather Monk,
What color is that tree's bark?
It is the color that you see,
I told her.
I wanted her to enter the wonderful world that was right in front of her.
I did not want to add another concept.
There are four practices related to right thinking.
One,
Are you sure?
If there is a rope in your path and you perceive it as a snake,
Fear-based thinking will follow.
The more erroneous your perception,
The more incorrect your thinking will be.
Please write the words,
Are you sure,
On a large piece of paper and hang it where you will see it often.
Ask yourself this question again and again.
Wrong perceptions cause incorrect thinking and unnecessary suffering.
Two,
What am I doing?
Sometimes I ask one of my students,
What are you doing?
To help him release his thinking about the past or the future and return to the present moment.
I ask the question to help him be right here,
Right now.
To respond,
He only needs to smile.
That alone would demonstrate his true presence.
Asking yourself,
What am I doing?
Will help you overcome the habit of wanting to complete things quickly.
Smile to yourself and say,
Washing this dish is the most important job in my life.
When you ask,
What am I doing?
Reflect deeply on the question.
If your thoughts are carrying you away,
You need mindfulness to intervene.
When you are really there,
Washing the dishes can be a deep and enjoyable experience.
But if you wash them while thinking about other things,
You are wasting your time and probably not washing the dishes well either.
If you are not there,
Even if you wash 84,
000 dishes,
Your work will be without merit.
Emperor Wu asked Bodhidharma,
The founder of Zen Buddhism in China,
How much merit he had earned by building temples all over the country.
Bodhidharma said,
None whatsoever.
But if you wash one dish in mindfulness,
If you build one small temple while dwelling deeply in the present moment,
Not wanting to be anywhere else,
Not caring about fame or recognition,
The merit from that act will be boundless and you will feel very happy.
Ask yourself,
What am I doing often?
When your thinking is not carrying you away and you do things in mindfulness,
You will be happy and a resource for many others.
Three,
Hello habit energy.
We need to stick to our habits,
Even the ones that cause,
We tend to stick to our habits,
Even the ones that cause us to suffer.
Workaholism is one example.
In the past,
Our ancestors may have had to work nearly all the time to put food on the table.
But today,
Our way of working is rather compulsive and prevents us from having real contact with life.
We think about our work all the time and we don't even have time to breathe.
We need to find moments to contemplate the cherry blossoms and drink our tea in mindfulness.
Our way of acting depends on our way of thinking and our way of thinking depends on our habit energies.
When we recognize this,
We only need to say,
Hello habit energy and make good friends with our habitual patterns of thinking and acting.
When we can accept these ingrained thoughts and not feel guilty about them,
They will lose much of their power over us.
Right thinking leads to right action.
Four,
Bodhicitta.
Our mind of love is the deep wish to cultivate understanding in ourselves in order to bring happiness to many beings.
It is the motivating force for the practice of mindful living.
With bodhicitta at the foundation of our thinking,
Everything we do or say will help others be liberated.
Right thinking also gives rise to right diligence.
The Buddha offered many ways to help us transform troublesome thoughts.
One way,
He said,
Is to replace an unwholesome thought with a wholesome one by changing the peg.
Just as a carpenter replaces a rotten peg by hammering in a new one,
If we are constantly assailed by unwholesome patterns of thought,
We need to learn how to change the peg and replace those patterns with wholesome thoughts.
The Buddha also likened unwholesome thinking to wearing a dead snake around your neck.
The easiest way,
He said,
To keep unwholesome thoughts from arising is to live in a wholesome environment,
A community that practices mindful living.
With the help and presence of Dharma sisters and brothers,
It is easy to sustain right thinking.
Dwelling in a good environment is preventative medicine.
Right thinking is thinking that is in accord with right view.
It is a map that can help us find our way.
But when we arrive at our destination,
We need to put down the map and enter the reality fully.
Think non-thinking is a well-known statement in Zen.
When you practice right view and right thinking,
You dwell deeply in the present moment where you can touch seeds of joy,
Peace,
And liberation.
Heal and transform your suffering and be truly present for many others.
So this chapter goes from perception to thought.
And now we're really becoming scientists of our mind.
And we're starting to investigate and see more clearly that much of our thinking is not only useless,
But much of it also leads us down a path of negativity and keeps us locked in cycles of habit energy.
And so Thich Nhat Hanh offers us these four practices from the Buddhist teachings.
And they are to question ourselves regularly about the way that we're thinking in ways that first we ask,
Am I right?
Is my thought even right?
And next we ask ourselves,
What am I even doing?
And then from there,
We begin to investigate further with the final step being,
Is this a compassionate thought or not?
So that third step,
What habit energies are ruling me right now?
I had to jog my memory.
So what am I doing?
Am I right?
What habit energies are ruling me?
And am I even thinking with a compassionate mind?
And these questions that we can check in with ourselves about,
They are not just practices of right thinking.
They also begin to put us deeper into mindfulness and daily mindfulness and living in a more mindful way.
So these are sort of like bells being rung.
And when the bell is rung,
It brings your mind back to the present moment and back to looking at things exactly as they are.
The next chapter,
Right mindfulness,
Is pretty long.
So if you remember last week,
I talked about how to listen.
Just relax.
Just let the words come.
And don't allow yourself to strive too hard or work too hard if you do or don't understand.
Just let yourself be present for the words.
Right mindfulness is at the heart of the Buddhist teachings.
Traditionally,
Right mindfulness is the seventh on the path of eight right practices,
But it is presented here third to emphasize its great importance.
When right mindfulness is present,
The four noble truths and the seven other elements of the eightfold path are also present.
When we are mindful,
Our thinking is right thinking,
Our speech is right speech,
And so on.
Right mindfulness is the energy that brings us back to the present moment.
To cultivate mindfulness in ourselves is to cultivate the Buddha within,
To cultivate the Holy Spirit.
According to Buddhist psychology,
The trait attention is universal,
Which means we are always giving our attention to something.
Our attention may be appropriate as when we dwell fully in the present moment or inappropriate as when we are attentive to something that takes us away from being here and now.
A good gardener knows the way to grow flowers from compost.
Right mindfulness accepts everything without judging or reacting.
It is inclusive and loving.
The practice is to find ways to sustain appropriate attention throughout the day.
The Sanskrit word for mindfulness,
Smriti,
Means remember.
Mindfulness is remembering to come back to the present moment.
The character the Chinese use for mindfulness has two parts.
The upper part means now,
And the lower part means mind or heart.
The first miracle of mindfulness is to be present and able to touch deeply the blue sky,
The flower,
And the smile of our child.
The second miracle of mindfulness is to make the other,
The sky,
The flower,
Our child,
Present also.
In the Vietnamese epic poem,
Tale of Kyu,
Kyu returns to the apartment of her beloved,
Kim Trong,
And finds him fast asleep at his desk,
His head resting on a pile of books.
Kim Trong hears Kyu's footsteps,
But not quite awake,
He asks,
Are you really there or am I dreaming?
Kyu replies,
Now we have the opportunity to see each other clearly,
But if we do not live deeply this moment,
It will be only a dream.
You and your loved one are here together.
You have the chance to see each other deeply,
But if you are not fully present,
Everything will be like a dream.
The third miracle of mindfulness is to nourish the object of your attention.
When was the last time you looked into the eyes of your beloved and asked,
Who are you,
My darling?
Don't be satisfied by a superficial answer.
Ask again,
Who are you who has taken my suffering as your suffering,
My happiness as your happiness,
My life and death as your life and death?
My love,
Why aren't you a dewdrop,
A butterfly,
A bird?
Ask with your whole being.
If you do not give right attention to the one you love,
It is a kind of killing.
When you are in the car together,
If you are lost in your thoughts,
Assuming you already know everything about her,
She will slowly die.
But with mindfulness,
Your attention will water the wilting flower.
I know you are here beside me and it makes me very happy.
With attention,
You will be able to discover many new and wonderful things,
Her joys,
Her hidden talents,
Her deepest aspirations.
If you do not practice appropriate attention,
How can you say you love her?
The fourth miracle of mindfulness is to relieve the other's suffering.
I know you are suffering.
That is why I'm here for you.
You can say this with words or just by the way you look at her.
If you are not truly present,
If you are thinking about other things,
The miracle of relieving suffering cannot be realized.
In difficult moments,
If you have a friend who can be truly present with you,
You know that you are blessed.
To love means to nourish the other with appropriate attention.
When you practice right mindfulness,
You make yourself and the other person present at the same time.
Darling,
I know you are there.
Your presence is precious to me.
If you do not express this while you are together,
When she passes away or has an accident,
You will only cry,
Because before the accident happened,
You did not know how to be truly happy together.
When someone is about to die,
If you sit with him stably and solidly,
That alone may be enough to help him leave his life with ease.
Your presence is like a mantra,
Sacred speech that has a transforming effect.
When your body,
Speech,
And mind are in perfect oneness,
That mantra will have an effect even before you utter a word.
The first four miracles of mindfulness belong to the first aspect of meditation,
Shamatha,
Stopping,
Calming,
Resting,
And healing.
Once you've calmed yourself and stopped being dispersed,
Your mind will be one-pointed,
And you will be ready to begin looking deeply.
The fifth miracle of mindfulness is looking deeply,
Which is also the second part of meditation.
Because you are calm and concentrated,
You are really there for deep looking.
You shine the light of mindfulness on the object of your attention,
And at the same time,
You shine the light of mindfulness on yourself.
You observe the object of your attention,
And you also see your own storehouse full of precious gems.
The sixth miracle of mindfulness is understanding.
When we understand something,
Often we say,
I see.
We see something we hadn't seen before.
Seeing and understanding come from within us.
When we are mindful,
Touching deeply the present moment,
We can see and listen deeply,
And the fruits are always understanding,
Acceptance,
Love,
And the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy.
Understanding is the very foundation of love.
When you understand someone,
You cannot help but love him or her.
The seventh miracle of mindfulness is transformation.
When we practice right mindfulness,
We touch the healing and refreshing elements of life and begin to transform our own suffering and the suffering of the world.
We want to overcome a habit,
Such as smoking,
For the health of our body and mind.
When we begin the practice,
Our habit energy is still stronger than our mindfulness,
So we don't expect to stop smoking overnight.
We only have to know that we are smoking when we are smoking.
As we continue to practice looking deeply and seeing the effects that smoking has on our body,
Mind,
Family,
And community,
We become determined to stop.
It is not easy,
But the practice of mindfulness helps us see the desire and the effects clearly,
And eventually,
We will find a way to stop.
Sangha is important.
One man who came to Plum Village had been trying to stop smoking for years,
But he couldn't.
At Plum Village,
He stopped his first day because the group energy was so strong.
No one is smoking here.
Why should I?
It can take years to transform a habit energy,
But when we do,
We stop the wheel of samsara,
The vicious cycle of suffering and confusion that has gone on for so many lifetimes.
Practicing the seven miracles of mindfulness helps us lead a happy and healthy life,
Transforming suffering and bringing forth peace and joy and freedom.
In the Discourse on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness,
The Buddha offers four objects for our mindfulness practice,
Our body,
Our feelings,
Our mind,
And the objects of our mind.
Monks and nuns in many Buddhist countries memorize this discourse,
And it is the text that is read to them as they leave this life.
It is helpful to read the Discourse on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness at least once a week,
Along with the Discourse on the Full Awareness of Breathing and the Discourse on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone.
You might like to keep these three books by your bedside and take them with you when you travel.
The Four Establishments of Mindfulness are the foundation of our dwelling place.
Without them,
Our house is abandoned.
No one is sweeping,
Dusting,
Or tidying up.
Our body becomes unkempt,
Our feelings full of suffering,
And our mind a heap of afflictions.
When we are truly home,
Our body,
Mind,
And feelings will be a place of refuge for ourselves and others.
The first establishment is mindfulness of the body in the body.
Many people hate their bodies.
They feel their body is an obstacle,
And they want to mistreat it.
When Sister Gina,
A nun at Plum Village,
Teaches yoga,
She always begins by saying,
Let us be aware of our bodies.
Breathing in,
I know I am standing here in my body.
Breathing out,
I smile to my body.
Practicing this way,
We renew our acquaintance with our body and make peace with it.
In the Kayagata Sati Sutta,
The Buddha offers methods to help us know what is happening in our body.
We observe non-dualistically,
Fully in our body,
Even as we observe it.
We begin by noting all of our body's positions and movements.
When we sit,
We know we are sitting.
When we stand,
Walk,
Or lie down,
We know we are standing,
Walking,
Or lying down.
When we practice this way,
Mindfulness is there.
This practice is called mirror recognition.
The second way the Buddha taught us to practice mindfulness of the body in the body is to recognize all of our body's parts,
From the top of our head to the soles of our feet.
If we have blond hair,
We recognize and smile to that.
If we have gray hair,
We recognize and smile to that.
We observe whether our forehead is relaxed and whether it has wrinkles.
With our mindfulness,
We touch our nose,
Mouth,
Arms,
Hearts,
Lungs,
Blood,
And so on.
The Buddha described the practice of recognizing 32 parts of our body as being like a farmer who goes up to his loft,
Brings down a large bag of beans,
Grains,
And seeds,
Puts the bag on the ground,
Opens it,
And as the contents fall onto the floor,
Recognizes rice as rice,
Beans as beans,
Sesame as sesame,
And so on.
In this way,
We recognize our eyes as our eyes and our lungs as our lungs.
We can practice this during sitting meditation or while lying down,
Scanning our body with our mindfulness in this way might take half an hour.
As we observe each part of our body,
We smile to it.
The love and care of this meditation can do the work of healing.
The third method the Buddha offered for practicing mindfulness of the body in the body is to see the elements that it is made of,
Earth,
Water,
Fire,
And air.
Breathing in,
I see the earth element in me.
Breathing out,
I smile to the earth element in me.
Earth element refers to things that are solid.
When we see the earth element inside and outside of us,
We realize that there is really no boundary between us and the rest of the universe.
Next,
We recognize the water element inside and outside of us.
Breathing in,
I am aware of the element of water in my body.
We meditate on the fact that our body is more than 70% water.
After that,
We recognize the fire element,
Which means heat inside and outside of us.
For life to be possible,
There must be heat.
Practicing this,
We see over and over that the elements inside and outside of our body belong to the same reality,
And we are no longer confined by our body.
We are everywhere.
The fourth element of our body is air.
The best way to experience the air element is the practice of mindful breathing.
Breathing in,
I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out,
I know I am breathing out.
After saying these sentences,
We can abbreviate them by saying in as we breathe in and out as we breathe out.
We don't try to control our breathing.
Whether our in-breath is long or short,
Deep or shallow,
We just breathe naturally and shine the light of mindfulness on it.
When we do this,
We notice that,
In fact,
Our breathing does become slower and deeper naturally.
Breathing in,
My in-breath has become deep.
Breathing out,
My out-breath has become slow.
Now we can practice deep,
Slow.
We don't have to make an effort.
It just becomes deeper and slower by itself,
And we recognize that.
Later on,
You will notice that you have become calmer and more at ease.
Breathing in,
I feel calm.
Breathing out,
I feel at ease.
I'm not struggling anymore.
Calm,
Ease.
And then,
Breathing in,
I smile.
Breathing out,
I release all of my worries and anxieties.
Smile,
Release.
We are able to smile to ourselves and release all of our worries.
There are more than 300 muscles in our face,
And when we know how to breathe in and smile,
These muscles can relax.
This is mouth yoga.
We smile,
And we are able to release all of our feelings and emotions.
The last practice is breathing in.
I dwell deeply in the present moment.
Breathing out,
I know this is a wonderful moment.
Present moment,
Wonderful moment.
Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment,
Fully alive and fully aware.
So it goes in,
Out,
Deep,
Slow,
Calm,
Ease,
Smile,
Release.
Present moment,
Wonderful moment.
If you use this poem during sitting or walking meditation,
It can be very nourishing and healing.
Practice each line for as long as you wish.
Another practice to help us be aware of our breathing is counting.
As you breathe in,
Count one,
And as you breathe out,
Count one again.
Then two,
Two,
Three,
Three,
Until you arrive at 10.
After that,
Go back in the other direction.
10,
10,
9,
9,
And so on,
Until you arrive back at one.
If you don't get lost,
You know that you have good concentration.
If you do get lost,
Go back to one and begin again.
Relax,
It's only a game.
When you succeed in counting,
You can drop the numbers if you like and just say in,
Out.
Conscious breathing is a joy.
When I discovered the discourse on the full awareness of breathing,
I felt I was the happiest person on earth.
These exercises have been transmitted to us by a community that has been practicing them for 2,
600 years.
The second establishment in mindfulness of the feelings in the feelings.
The Abhidharma authors listed 51 kinds of mental formations.
Feelings is one of them.
In us,
There is a river of feelings in which every drop of water is a different feeling.
To observe our feelings,
We just sit on the riverbank and identify each feeling as it flows by and disappears.
Feelings are either pleasant,
Unpleasant,
Or neutral.
When we have a pleasant feeling,
We may have a tendency to cling to it.
And when we have an unpleasant feeling,
We may be able to feel it.
We may have a tendency to cling to it,
And when we have an unpleasant feeling,
We may be inclined to chase it away.
Or some people are inclined to cling to unpleasant feelings.
But it is more effective in both cases to return to our breathing and simply observe the feeling.
Identifying it silently,
Breathing in,
I know a pleasant or unpleasant feeling is in me.
Breathing out,
I know there is a pleasant or unpleasant feeling in me.
Calling a feeling by its name,
Such as joy,
Happiness,
Anger,
Or sorrow,
Helps us identify and see it deeply.
Within a fraction of a second,
Many feelings can arise.
If our breathing is light and calm,
A natural result of conscious breathing,
Our mind and body will slowly become light,
Calm,
And clear,
And our feelings also.
Our feelings are not separate from us or caused just by something outside of us.
Our feelings are us.
And for that moment,
We are those feelings.
We needn't be intoxicated or terrorized by them,
Nor do we need to reject them.
The practice of not clinging to or rejecting feelings is an important part of meditation.
If we face our feelings with care,
Affection,
And nonviolence,
We can transform them into a kind of energy that is healthy and nourishing.
When a feeling arises,
Right mindfulness identifies it,
Simply recognizes what is there and whether it is pleasant,
Unpleasant,
Or neutral.
Right mindfulness is like a mother.
When her child is sweet,
She loves him,
And when her child is crying,
She still loves him.
Everything that takes place in our body and our minds needs to be looked after equally.
We don't fight.
We say hello to our feelings so we can get to know each other better.
Then the next time that feeling arises,
We will be able to greet it even more calmly.
We can embrace all of our feelings,
Even difficult ones like anger.
Anger is a fire burning inside of us,
Filling our whole being with smoke.
When we are angry,
We need to calm ourselves,
Breathing in,
I calm my anger,
Breathing out,
I take care of my anger.
As soon as a mother takes her crying baby into her arms,
The baby already feels some relief.
When we embrace our anger with right mindfulness,
We suffer less right away.
We all have difficult emotions,
But if we allow them to dominate us,
We will become depleted.
Emotions become strong when we do not know how to look after them.
When our feelings are stronger than our mindfulness,
We suffer.
But if we practice conscious breathing day after day,
Mindfulness will become a habit.
Don't wait to begin to practice until you are overwhelmed by a feeling.
It may be too late.
The third establishment is mindfulness of the mind in the mind.
To be aware of the mind is to be aware of the mental formations.
Formations is a technical term in Buddhism.
Anything that is formed,
Anything that is made of something else is a formation.
A flower is a formation.
Our anger is a formation.
A mental formation.
Some mental formations are present all of the time and are called universal.
Contact,
Attention,
Feeling,
Perception,
And volition.
Some arise only under particular circumstances like zeal,
Determination,
Mindfulness,
Concentration,
And wisdom.
Some are uplifting and help us transform our suffering,
And others are heavy and imprison us in our suffering.
There are mental formations that are sometimes wholesome and sometimes unwholesome,
Such as sleepiness,
Regret,
Initial thinking,
And developing thought.
When our body and mind need rest,
Sleep is wholesome,
But if we sleep all the time,
It can be unwholesome.
If we hurt someone and regret it,
That regret is wholesome,
But if our regret leads to a guilt complex that colors whatever we do in the future,
That regret can be called unwholesome.
When our thinking helps us see clearly,
It is beneficial,
But if our mind is scattered in all directions,
That thinking is unbeneficial.
There are many beautiful aspects of our consciousness like faith,
Humility,
Self-respect,
Non-craving,
Non-anger,
Non-ignorance,
Diligence,
Ease,
Care,
Equanimity,
And non-violence.
Unwholesome mental formations,
On the other hand,
Are like a tangled ball of string.
When we try to untangle it,
We only wind it around ourselves until we cannot move.
These mental formations are sometimes called afflictions because they bring pain to others and ourselves.
Sometimes they are called obscurations because they confuse us and make us lose our way.
Sometimes they are called leaks or setbacks because they are like a cracked face.
The basic unwholesome mental formations are greed,
Hatred,
Ignorance,
Pride,
Doubt,
And views.
The secondary unwholesome mental formations arising from the basic ones are anger,
Malice,
Hypocrisy,
Malevolence,
Jealousy,
Selfishness,
Deception,
Guile,
Unwholesome excitement,
The wish to harm,
Immodesty,
Arrogance,
Dullness,
Agitation,
Lack of faith,
Indolence,
Carelessness,
Forgetfulness,
Distraction,
And lack of attention.
According to the Visnivada School of Buddhism,
Although there are 51 kinds of mental formations,
Including feelings,
Since feeling is by itself the second establishment of mindfulness,
The other 50 fall into the category of the third establishment of mindfulness.
Every time a mental formation arises,
We can practice mere recognition.
When we are agitated,
We just say,
I'm agitated,
And mindfulness is already there.
Until we recognize agitation as agitation,
It will push us around and we will not know what is going on or why.
To practice mindfulness of the mind does not mean not to be agitated.
It means that when we are agitated,
We know that we are agitated.
Our agitation has a good friend in us,
And that is mindfulness.
Even before agitation manifests in our mind consciousness,
It is already in our store consciousness in the form of a seed.
All mental formations lie in our store consciousness in the form of seeds.
Something someone does may water the seed of agitation,
And then agitation manifests in our mind consciousness.
Every mental formation that manifests needs to be recognized.
If it is wholesome,
Mindfulness will cultivate it.
If it is unwholesome,
Mindfulness will encourage it to return to our store consciousness and remain dormant.
We may think that our agitation is ours alone,
But if we look carefully,
We'll see that it is our inheritance from a whole society and many generations of our ancestors.
Individual consciousness is made of the collective consciousness,
And the collective consciousness is made of individual consciousnesses.
They cannot be separated.
Looking deeply into our individual consciousness,
We touch the collective consciousness.
Our ideas of beauty,
Goodness,
And happiness,
For example,
Are also the ideas of our society.
Every winter,
Fashion designers show us the fashions for the coming spring,
And we look at their creations through the lens of our collective consciousness.
When we buy a fashionable dress,
It's because we see with the eye of the collective consciousness.
Someone who lives deep in the upper Amazon would not spend that amount of money to buy such a dress.
She would not even see it as beautiful.
When we produce a literary work,
We produce it with both our collective consciousness and our individual consciousness.
We usually describe mind consciousness and store consciousness as two different things.
But store consciousness is just mind consciousness at a deeper level.
If we look carefully at our mental formations,
We can see their roots in our store consciousness.
Mindfulness helps us look deeply into the depths of our consciousness.
Every time one of the 51 mental formations arises,
We acknowledge its presence,
Look deeply into it,
And see its nature of impermanence and interbeing.
When we practice this,
We are liberated from fear,
Sorrow,
And the fires burning inside of us.
When mindfulness embraces our joy,
Our sadness,
And all our other mental formations,
Sooner or later we will see their deep roots.
With every mindful step and every mindful breath,
We see the roots of our mental formations.
Mindfulness shines its lights upon them and helps them to transform.
The fourth establishment is mindfulness of phenomena.
In phenomena,
Phenomena,
In phenomena,
Phenomena means the objects of our mind.
Each of our mental formations has to have an object.
If you are angry,
You have to be angry at someone or something,
And that person or thing can be called the object of your mind.
When you remember someone or something that is the object of your mind,
There are 51 kinds of mental formations,
So there are 51 kinds of objects of mind.
When we are attentive to a bird singing,
That sound is the object of our mind.
When our eyes see the blue sky,
That is the object of our mind.
When we look at a candle,
An idea or image of the candle arises in our mind.
That option is composed of the ideograms for sign and mind.
A perception is a sign,
An image in our mind.
Investigation of dharmas is one of the seven factors of awakening.
When observing dharmas,
Five kinds of meditation can help us calm our minds.
One,
Counting the breath.
Two,
Observing interdependent arising.
Three,
Observing impurity.
Four,
Observing with love and compassion.
And five,
Observing the different realms.
What are the different realms?
First,
There are 18 elements,
Eyes,
Forms,
And the consciousness that makes sight possible,
Which we call eye consciousness.
Ears,
Sound,
And the consciousness connected with hearing.
Nose,
Smell,
And the consciousness connected with smelling.
Tongue,
Taste,
And the consciousness connected with tasting.
Body,
Touch,
And the consciousness connected with touching.
Mind,
The object of mind,
And mind consciousness.
These 18 elements make the existence of the universe possible.
If we look deeply into the 18 elements and see their substance and their source,
We will be able to go beyond ignorance and fears.
In the discourse on the many realms,
The Buddha taught that all of our anxieties and difficulties come from our inability to see the true face or true sign of things,
Which means that although we see their appearance,
We fail to recognize their impermanent and interbeing nature.
If we are afraid or insecure,
At the root of our fear or insecurity is that we have not yet seen the true face of all dharmas.
If we investigate and look deeply into the 18 elements,
We can transform our ignorance and overcome fear and insecurity.
One day during sitting meditation,
The venerable Ananda realized that all anxieties,
Fears,
And misfortunes arise because we do not understand the true nature of physical and psychological phenomena.
Later,
He asked the Buddha if this was correct,
And the Buddha said yes,
First explaining the need to penetrate the 18 elements.
Ananda then asked,
Is it possible to penetrate the 18 elements in another way?
And the Buddha replied,
Yes,
We can say that there are six elements.
These are the four great elements of earth,
Water,
Fire,
And air,
Plus space and consciousness.
All physical phenomena are made up of these six elements.
If we observe these six elements inside of us and around us,
We see that we are not separate from the universe.
This insight frees us from the idea of birth and death.
The Buddha then taught Ananda the six realms,
Happiness,
Suffering,
Joy,
Anxiety,
Letting go,
And ignorance.
Happiness can be true happiness or deception,
So we have to look into its substance and go beyond attachment.
True happiness will be of benefit and nourish ourselves and others.
Deceptive happiness brings temporary pleasure and helps us forget our suffering,
But is not of lasting benefit and can actually be harmful,
Like a cigarette or a glass of wine.
When something causes us to suffer,
If we look deeply into it,
We may see that it is exactly what we need to restore our happiness.
In fact,
Suffering is essential for happiness.
We have to know the suffering of being too cold to enjoy and appreciate being warm.
If we look deeply into the realm of joy,
We can see whether it is authentic or whether it is just covering up our suffering and anxiety.
Anxiety,
The illness of our time,
Comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.
Letting go is an ongoing practice,
One that can bring us a lot of happiness.
When a Vietnamese woman who escaped her country by boat was robbed on the high seas of all her gold,
She was so distraught that she contemplated suicide.
But on shore,
She met a man who had been robbed of even his clothes,
And it helped her very much to see him smiling.
He had truly let go.
Letting go gives us freedom,
And freedom is the only condition for happiness.
If in our heart we still cling to anything,
Anger,
Anxiety,
Or possessions,
We can never be free.
The Buddha taught another list of six realms,
Craving,
Freedom from craving,
Anger,
Absence of anger,
Harming,
And non-harming.
If we look deeply into our craving,
We see that we already have what we crave,
Because everything is already a part of everything else.
This insight can take us from the realm of craving into the realm of freedom.
The fire of anger burns in us day and night and causes us to suffer,
Even more than the one at whom we are angry.
When anger is absent,
We feel light and free.
To live in the realm of non-harming is to love.
Our world is full of hatred and violence,
Because we do not take the time to nourish the love and compassion that are already in our hearts.
Non-harming is an important practice.
There are three further realms,
The desire realm,
The form realm,
And the formless realm.
The form and formless realms describe certain states of meditative concentration.
In the form realm,
Material things are somewhat subtle.
In the formless realm,
They are very subtle.
In the desire realm,
Material things are present in their grossest form,
And human beings do not meditate there.
These three realms are produced by our mind.
If our mind has craving,
Anger,
And harming,
We are like a house on fire.
If craving,
Anger,
And harming are absent from our minds,
We produce a cool,
Clear lotus lake.
Every time we practice Right Mindfulness,
It is like jumping into that cool lake.
If we are standing,
We only have to know that we are standing.
If we are sitting,
We only have to know that we are sitting.
We don't have to add or take anything away.
We only need to be aware.
Finally,
The Buddha taught the meditation on the two realms,
The realm of the conditioned and the realm of the unconditioned.
In the conditioned realm,
There is birth,
Death,
Before,
After,
Inner,
Outer,
Small,
And large.
In the world of the unconditioned,
We are no longer subject to birth and death,
Coming or going,
Before or after.
The conditioned realm belongs to the historical dimension.
It is the wave.
The unconditioned realm belongs to the ultimate dimension.
It is the water.
These two realms are not separate.
To arrive at liberation from narrow views and to obtain fearlessness and great compassion,
Practice the contemplations on interdependence,
Impermanence,
And compassion.
Sitting in meditation,
Direct your concentration into the interdependent nature of certain objects.
Remember that the subject of knowledge cannot exist independently from the object of knowledge.
To see is to see something.
To hear is to hear something.
To be angry is to be angry about something.
Hope is hope for something.
Thinking is thinking about something.
When the object of knowledge is not present,
There can be no subject.
Meditate and see the interbeing of the subject and the object.
When you practice mindfulness of breathing,
Then the breathing is mind.
When you practice mindfulness of the body,
Then your body is mind.
When you practice mindfulness of objects outside of yourself,
These objects are mind.
Therefore,
The contemplation of the interbeing of subject and object is also the contemplation of the mind.
Every object of the mind is itself mind.
In Buddhism,
We call the objects of mind the dharmas.
Contemplation on interdependence is a deep looking into all dharmas.
In order to pierce through to their real nature.
In order to see them as part of that great body of reality.
And in order to see that the great body of reality is indivisible.
It cannot be cut into pieces with separate existences of their own.
The object of our mind can be a mountain,
A rose,
A full moon,
Or the person standing in front of us.
We believe these things exist outside of us as separate entities.
But these objects of our perception are us.
This includes our feelings.
When we hate someone,
We also hate ourselves.
The object of our mindfulness is actually the whole cosmos.
Mindfulness is mindfulness of the body,
Feelings,
Perceptions,
Any of the mental formations,
And all of the seeds in our consciousness.
The four establishments of mindfulness contain everything in the cosmos.
Everything in the cosmos is the object of our perception.
And as such,
It does not exist only outside of us,
But also within us.
If we look deeply at the bud on the tree,
We will see its nature.
It may be very small,
But it is also like the earth because the leaf in the bud will become part of the earth.
If we see the truth of one thing in the cosmos,
We see the nature of the cosmos.
Because our mindfulness,
Our deep looking,
The nature of the cosmos will reveal itself.
It is not a matter of imposing our ideas on the nature of the cosmos.
Sitting and watching our breath is a wonderful practice,
But it is not enough.
For transformation to take place,
We have to practice mindfulness all day long,
Not just on our meditation cushion.
Mindfulness is the Buddha.
Just as vegetation is sensitive to sunlight,
Mental formations are sensitive to mindfulness.
Mindfulness is the energy that can embrace and transform all mental formations.
Mindfulness helps us leave behind upside down perceptions and wakes us up to what is happening.
When Thich Quang Duc made himself into a human torch,
People all over the world had to recognize that Vietnam was a land on fire,
And they had to do something about it.
When we practice mindfulness,
We are in contact with life,
And we can offer our love and compassion to lessen the suffering and bring about joy and happiness.
Do not lose yourself in the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
Do not get caught in your anger,
Worries,
Or fears.
Come back to the present moment and touch life deeply.
This is mindfulness.
We cannot be mindful of everything at the same time,
So we have to choose what we find most interesting to be the object of our mindfulness.
The blue sky is wonderful,
But the beautiful face of a child is also wonderful.
What is essential is to be alive and present to all the wonders of life that are available.
In many talks,
The Buddha spoke about the threefold training of precepts,
Concentration,
And insight.
The practice of the precepts is the practice of right mindfulness.
If we don't practice the precepts,
We aren't practicing mindfulness.
I know some Zen students who think that they can practice meditation without practicing precepts,
But that is not correct.
The heart of Buddhist meditation is the practice of mindfulness,
And mindfulness is the practice of the precepts.
You cannot meditate without practicing the precepts.
When we practice mindfulness,
We generate the energy of the Buddha within us and around us,
And this is the energy that can save the world.
A Buddha is someone who is mindful all day long.
We are only part-time Buddhas.
We breathe in and use our Buddha eyes to see with the energy of mindfulness.
When we listen with our Buddha ears,
We are able to restore communication and relieve a lot of suffering.
When we put the energy of mindfulness into our hands,
Our Buddha hands will protect the safety and integrity of those we love.
Look deeply into your hand and see if the Buddha eye is in it.
In Tibetan,
Chinese,
Korean,
Vietnamese,
And Japanese temples,
There is a Bodhisattva with 1,
000 arms.
It takes that many arms to help others,
And in the palm of each hand,
There is an eye.
The hand represents action,
And the eye represents insight and understanding.
Without understanding,
Our actions might cause others to suffer.
We may be motivated by the desire to make others happy,
But if we do not have understanding,
The more we do,
The more trouble we may create.
Unless our love is made of understanding,
It is not true love.
Mindfulness is the energy that brings the eyes of a Buddha into our hand.
With mindfulness,
We can change the world and bring happiness to many people.
This is not abstract.
It is possible for every one of us to generate the energy of mindfulness in each moment of our daily life.
This is a big chapter,
So we're going a little long today,
But that's just how it is.
I hope it's okay for you.
This chapter can be studied fully on its own.
So first,
Thich Nhat Hanh introduces these ten or the seven mindfulness miracles,
The miracles of mindfulness.
These are to be present and touch deeply,
To make the other present also,
To nourish the object,
To relieve the suffering of others,
Looking deeply,
Understanding,
And transformation.
And this is the process of developing mindfulness and what comes out of that process.
He also gave a lot of practices inside of this chapter that could be studied,
As I said,
Really deeply.
You could read this chapter again and again and truly find some sort of antidote for anything that ails you.
But the deeper message in this chapter is that what we really need to cultivate in our lives is correct placement of our attention.
And that means to be in our bodies with our minds,
Listening to ourselves,
Think,
Speak,
And move every moment of every day.
And that if we are able to do that,
Naturally,
The rest of our lives will fall into a well-being place.
And so even if we just focused on this alone,
And I have to tell you because I also teach mindfulness courses,
What I often notice is people don't take it very seriously.
They do a little bit of the work and then they kind of think,
Okay,
Well,
Now I'm mindful.
But to truly be mindful,
To truly be present every moment of every day and in some Buddhist traditions also every sleeping moment,
This is much more effort than just taking a four,
Six,
Or eight-week class.
You need to be practicing this for years and years to truly become someone who's mindful.
So I encourage you not to stop if you're on the path of mindfulness.
I encourage you to actually go deeper and deeper and then to remember that while practices are important in the beginning to rest,
What we actually want to do is take mindfulness out of meditation and apply it to daily life.
And if that translation isn't happening for us,
Then we need to think about practicing in a different way.
So before I give the assignments for the week,
Let's sit for a short contemplation.
Wherever you are,
Sit up straight and allow your eyes to close.
Just listen.
Bring your awareness to your breath.
Feel the air as it comes in.
And experience the air as it goes out.
Let your mind rest fully on this experience,
The air as it comes in,
And feeling the air as it goes out.
As you observe your breathing in this way,
Notice that at the same time,
Many other things are happening in and around you.
And keep your mind focused on this experience of the breath,
Feeling the air as it comes in and the air as it goes out.
Observe that if you place your attention on the breath,
All the other things that are happening in this moment don't affect you quite as much.
You breathe in and other sounds exist,
Other feelings exist,
And you breathe out and everything is okay.
Keep this gentle focus on the breath,
Not needing to change anything at all.
And then begin to investigate the contents of your mind,
Asking yourself first,
What are your perceptions about meditation?
What are your perceptions about yourself inside of the practice of meditation?
Perhaps words come to mind or perhaps it's a visceral experience and you have physical sensations that arise.
Allow everything to be okay as you continue to notice the air as it comes in and the air as it goes out.
First,
Exploring your perceptions around yourself and meditation and then asking the question,
Are you sure these perceptions are correct?
Could you be wrong?
When you practice meditation,
Where does your mind go?
How often do you find yourself jumping on the train of your thoughts and finding yourself somewhere far down the tracks before you realize what you were really doing was just observing?
Do you have habitual tendencies inside of your practice?
Do you find you get bored or restless?
Do you often forget what it is you are practicing in the first place?
How do these habitual tendencies affect your practice?
Looking at these habitual tendencies,
Some of these negative patterns that exist within you,
Ask yourself now,
Can you love yourself anyway?
Can you love yourself in your fullness?
Ask this question,
Feel the answer,
What is your mind telling you?
Are you lovable even when you have wrong perception?
Are you lovable even when you have wrong thinking,
Wrong attention?
Can you extend love and compassion to yourself even then?
Regardless of if the answer is yes or no,
You can or you cannot seem to love yourself inside of your flaws.
Explore how whatever your answer was impacts not only you and your ability to practice,
But also impacts all of the people around you.
Observe yourself.
Discover the cage you have built with all of your conditioning and limits.
As you observe in this way,
Do not try to become something other than you are in an effort to be lovable.
Let the effort be towards loving yourself exactly as you are in this moment.
Continue to observe the breath,
The air as it goes in,
And the air as it goes out,
And open your heart to all of your experiences.
The practice is to be with ourself and to see what's real and to see what's true and to use our meditation as a space to practice an ability,
A capacity to transform the way we relate to life on a regular basis so that you're truly with the people that you're with when you're with them and you're truly with yourself in every waking moment.
That is the work that needs to be done.
So the practice for the week,
If you are playing along with me,
The practice for the week,
I want you to print these four questions.
These came from chapter 10.
I want you to print these four questions on many pieces of paper.
So you'll put all four questions on a few different pieces of paper,
And I want you to place them around yourself.
So whether it's in your house,
At your place of work,
In your car,
Places that you will see them regularly.
And you can imagine these will be like little bells.
You can even set reminders in your phone that pop up with these four questions.
And whenever you see these four questions,
Whenever this reminder pops up in your life,
In your eyes,
I want you to stop.
I want you to take five deep,
Mindful breaths,
And I want you to truly ask yourself the four questions and contemplate the answers.
So the first question is,
Am I sure?
The second question is,
What am I doing?
The third question is,
What habit energies are ruling me right now?
And the fourth question is,
Can I love myself and others more because we are flawed?
So am I sure?
What am I doing?
What habit energies are ruling me right now?
And can I love myself and others more because of our flaws?
And so I want you to put these four questions on many pieces of paper,
Put them all over your house.
I want you to use them as bells in your life to remind you not just to investigate your right view,
Not just to investigate your right thinking,
But to bring you back into the present moment every time you may be lost and to use this as a practice to cultivate mindfulness in your daily life.
So now we're beginning to introduce well-being into our lives.
We're walking the Noble Eightfold path.
We understand the Four Noble Truths,
And we're starting to investigate if we know we suffer,
If we know the causes of our suffering,
How is it that we can alleviate our suffering?
The questions one more time.
Yep,
No problem.
The questions are,
Am I sure?
That's one.
Number one,
Am I sure?
Second question is,
What am I doing?
What am I doing?
Third question is,
What habit energies are ruling me right now?
What habit energies are ruling me right now?
And then the fourth question is,
Can I love myself and others?
Can I love myself and others more because of our flaws?
Am I sure?
What am I doing?
What habit energies are ruling me?
Can I love myself and others more because of our flaws?
And so again,
You see this,
Maybe you post it next to your bed,
You see it when you wake up,
Maybe you post it next to your desk,
You see it when you get to work or on top of your laptop,
You see it when you open your computer.
As soon as you see it,
You stop.
It doesn't take a lot of time,
So it's not going to take time out of your daily life.
You stop,
You take five deep mindful breaths,
Seeing the air that comes in,
Seeing the air that goes out,
And then you ask yourself these four questions and you just feel the answers.
They don't have to be words,
More words,
More thoughts.
You can feel the sensations in the body that arise and use this practice as a tool to bring yourself back to the present moment and to challenge your perceptions and your thinking as we as a community step onto this Noble Eightfold Path and work to enhance our lives in meaningful ways and alleviate our suffering.
Again,
I'm recording these sessions,
So this is episode three and this will be up on Insight Timer within the week.
As an audio version,
It will be on YouTube,
On my personal YouTube channel after today,
And so you can watch it or you can listen again.
I really appreciate your time and energy.
I really appreciate doing this work with a community of people.
I wish we could see each other so that we could really communicate and digest some of this work in a dialogue.
That would be so incredible,
But for now,
This is what we have,
So this is where we're at.
Thank you so much for joining me.
If it's your first time here,
No problem.
Lots of recordings,
So you can go back.
The book is called The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching.
It's timely that I chose this book because,
Of course,
Thich Nhat Hanh has just recently passed out of his form body,
And so a real blessing to be able to share this work with the world.
It's an excellent book,
A lot of practices.
If you need some specific practices or you need some specific help,
Please try to find me.
I started a group.
I don't know how groups work,
So I'm really just trying to figure it out.
I started a group on Insight Timer for this book club,
And if you want to go in there and ask some questions,
I would love to engage with people,
So please feel free.
Also,
You can find me on the internets anywhere,
And you will be able to connect with me,
Email or Instagram or something like that.
Until next time,
Live mindfully,
Be well.
Happy Sunday,
And I hope to see you next week here.
