Let Go of Your Enemy | Br. Bao Tang

Added: 2026-06-10

[00:01:37]Before we start uh we will check the translation and we wait a little bit to make sure that all the translation is working well.

[00:01:56]So let me start from the Vietnamese translation. Do we have Vietnamese translation? Is it okay David? Okay. Come.

[00:02:07]Okay. And F.

[00:02:13]Panko. Okay.

[00:02:16]Espanol.

[00:02:20]Italiano.

[00:02:23]>> Okay, good.

[00:02:26]So, we wait for the French translation and meanwhile we can sing together.

[00:02:37]I have arrived.

[00:02:42]I am home in the here and in the now.

[00:02:53]I have arrived.

[00:02:57]I am home in the here and in the now.

[00:03:08]I am solid.

[00:03:13]I am free.

[00:03:17]I am solid.

[00:03:21]I am free.

[00:03:25]In the mate I dwell in the alter.

[00:03:37]I dwell and especi in your soy solid your soil.

[00:04:22]Your so your so and small you me.

[00:04:49]to la your soy Your soil bra your so your soil bra and italiano Uh next time. Okay. Uh practice together as a sa Be a Lumen be a solid Fore!

[00:06:59]Foreign! Foreign!

[00:07:09]A man be okay.

[00:07:31]Okay, we will listen to the three sound of the bell. Let us breathe together.

[00:07:37]Just checking what we feel in our body, in our mind.

[00:07:43]And we allow whatever feeling to be there. And we just accompany our experience like our physical experience and our mind experience together with our breathing.

[00:09:18]Dear most respected teacher, Thai, dear ancestors, teachers, their elders and their beloved community.

[00:09:31]Welcome to Plum Village. Welcome to Upper Hamlet. For those who come for the first time, for those who are returners, for those who come from many many years, welcome home to Upper Hamlet.

[00:09:48]And today we are the 1st of June in the year 2026.

[00:09:55]We are at the still water hall medi meditation hall and um we are in our special retreat.

[00:10:10]In the past we call it uh 21day retreat.

[00:10:17]21 day to allow our mind to stop and to allow the insight to arise.

[00:10:29]So this is a continuation of that 21-day retreat.

[00:10:36]Even it is not 21 day clearly but we do have 21 day. Some of us, some of us has one week, some of us has two weeks.

[00:10:53]But all the weeks is allow us to stop to come back to ourself and to allow the insight to arise in our consciousness and the collective consciousness.

[00:11:10]And we come together these three weeks.

[00:11:12]will be celebrating uh the 60 years of the order of interbeing and 100 years of uh our teacher historical manifestation. Yeah.

[00:11:33]So the first week our theme the things that we want to explore because the dharma is so vast and it's very difficult to know to choose so the sa choose for us what a wonderful huh so the the theme that we want to explore for uh this week is uh the path of engaged Buddhism and we have many different experienced practitioners uh are present here.

[00:12:21]So let us start with hand who are coming for the first time your first retreat.

[00:12:31]Okay we have some hands those who are under five years practice in plum village tradition who are uh 10 years maybe from 6 to 10.

[00:12:51]Okay.

[00:12:52]From 10 to 20 we still have some you see and 20 to 30 there are some hand too.

[00:13:01]Wonderful.

[00:13:03]And then so on and so on.

[00:13:06]We have all kind of level of practitioner. It was wonderful.

[00:13:13]And when we come to the SA when we have all of this diversity we are able to nourish each other.

[00:13:24]Those of us who practice more than 10 years we need the new spirit.

[00:13:29]Those who come for the first time with a lot of fire and diligence uh remind all of us to be to have a beginner's mind. Yeah.

[00:13:44]And we do need also those who practice for a very long time and we would like to enjoy their presence, their stability, their freedom and their joy in the practice.

[00:14:00]And yet we are all brothers, sisters and siblings in one community in a big spiritual family.

[00:14:14]And we would like to focus on um when we talk about engaged Buddhism.

[00:14:22]So we want to have something a little bit more concrete than just an idea.

[00:14:28]The word engaged Buddhism is very beautiful but it might be not very concrete.

[00:14:37]How to engage Will I become an activist?

[00:14:44]Uh because not everyone identify themsel as activist.

[00:14:50]We may not want to be to do big things.

[00:14:53]We want to do just small thing. It's also possible.

[00:14:57]So we need something concrete so that we can put into practice in our daily life.

[00:15:06]And the things that we would like to observe this week is the five mindfulness training and the 14 mindfulness trainings.

[00:15:18]And what kind of spirit that we want to bring into our practice in our daily life?

[00:15:27]Because right now we have so many things that we need to resist in order not to be carried away.

[00:15:37]Uh we are in the era of uh informations.

[00:15:45]Information sometime can be like a flowing river like constantly flowing and sometime it can be like a tsunami can sweep us away.

[00:15:58]through information and we can be bombarded by the information and what we need to resist uh in our life right now. There are some concrete things that we need to resist like discrimination like a deep polarization, violence and craving, greed and despair.

[00:16:38]And this is something that this river is pretty strong right now.

[00:16:46]And how can we resist this river and go against the stream?

[00:16:55]And that's how the engage Buddhism will help us to find a concrete way to do it step by step.

[00:17:09]When we are able to come back to ourself, that is the first uh against the stream that we are doing.

[00:17:24]While collectively we are carried away and go outside of ourself and look for something else.

[00:17:37]We are consuming so many information from outside and looking for something outside and probably we also run away from our suffering.

[00:17:56]We don't have really time to to check what is happening.

[00:18:03]So coming back to oneself is already the act of resistance from the collective and that action itself is a healing for the collective.

[00:18:18]And this is also the first step of what we can do for swifting the collective consciousness because happiness and suffering is not a personal matter.

[00:18:34]It is personal and collective at the same time.

[00:18:39]When we learn that there are suffering somewhere on earth, we cannot just be happy with it.

[00:18:48]We must be able to feel that suffering too and it will give impact to our daily life directly.

[00:19:08]So we may say there are wars in Middle East in Iran and that area but everywhere is getting the impact. I just come back from Australia.

[00:19:27]Melbourne is doing one month of free transport, public transport because the fuel is too expensive for people.

[00:19:38]So it's very far distance have that impact.

[00:19:43]So the suffering is not personal. It's not local.

[00:19:47]We inter are.

[00:19:56]So the five mindfulness training and the 14 mindfulness training that we will explore this week will give us uh path will give us the steps that we can take to first of all taking care of ourself and to see what is what are the opportunities that we have to support the collective change.

[00:20:41]Maybe talking to changing the world is too big.

[00:20:49]Maybe we can let the week unfold and then we see more bigger picture.

[00:20:57]And now let us focus on ourself.

[00:21:04]Some of you are parents.

[00:21:07]Some of you are medical professional.

[00:21:12]Some of you have uh designers.

[00:21:17]Some of you are a brother. Some of you are a sister.

[00:21:22]Some of you are siblings in a family.

[00:21:27]Some of you are grandparents.

[00:21:32]And we are all connected with something at least with our blood family.

[00:21:42]And some of us are completely cut off from our bloodstream family.

[00:21:57]And some of us are well connected too.

[00:22:00]Some of us has been transforming a lot of uh difficulty in us and enjoying the freedom that we are having right now.

[00:22:11]And this is something that we can contribute to the community.

[00:22:17]Those of us who are not very fresh, we can take refuge for those who are fresh.

[00:22:23]So during this week, you can identify first check yourself. What do you have?

[00:22:29]Oh, I have freedom. Then you enjoy your freedom. I have freshness.

[00:22:35]Then you offer your freshness to the community.

[00:22:40]And when we don't have freshness, we look around and you can find easily the participant who are free, fresh and joyful.

[00:22:56]And we can just enjoy their presence.

[00:23:04]So to resist we can also start to learn how to resist.

[00:23:11]First of all we look around where we can take refuge.

[00:23:15]First of all, we can take refuge in the SA in the community and then we can have a chance to come back to ourself to have enough concentration from the collective mindfulness.

[00:23:33]And therefore it is very important every person contribute a little bit of energy of mindfulness to the collective.

[00:23:46]And in plum village tradition, mindfulness energy is the energy that can help us to know what is happening.

[00:23:56]Because in our system, we have a lot of uh activity physically and mentally they are very automatic.

[00:24:07]For example, to feel anxious, you don't even have time to decide whether you want to feel anxious or not.

[00:24:15]Uh the an the anxiety just arise by itself.

[00:24:22]So there are many things that are very very automatic and this is a a good object of our meditation to learn how to resist all of them.

[00:24:36]Resistance here does not means we create enemy.

[00:24:41]We are not creating enemy towards our anxiety towards our anger but instead we want to learn from all the things that arises in us.

[00:25:00]When we recognize what is happening in the present moment uh in our physical level and in our mind, we have a chance to be authentic.

[00:25:14]At the moment, the word authentic is a little bit sick.

[00:25:19]We need to heal that words too because nowadays when we talk about authentic people have a tendency to image to imagine that someone is expressing their suffering then it become authentic.

[00:25:39]So if someone can get angry we can say we say oh that person is authentic.

[00:25:44]If someone is crying, you know, until uh the tears dry, we say, "Oh, that person is authentic."

[00:25:56]So, we still need to heal that words.

[00:26:00]Because being happy and because we are happy, that is also authentic.

[00:26:06]Feeling joyful because we have joy, that is also authentic.

[00:26:11]And to know whether we have a real joy, to know if we have suffering, we need mindfulness.

[00:26:20]We need that technology to help us to recognize.

[00:26:26]We call it mindfulness.

[00:26:31]And once we become mindful of our body, of our mind, then we have been already practicing resistance towards our ignorance, resistance towards our forgetfulness.

[00:26:52]Because naturally we are just functioning based on habit which is not your fault. Nobody is is wrong because you are ignorant. It's just because our mind is function like that because our mind want to save the energy so that you don't have to brush your teeth every time and you have to learn.

[00:27:20]Huh? Can you imagine every time you brush your teeth, you have to learn how to system help us to record how to brush the teeth, how to chew the food, how to walk.

[00:27:38]So we can save the energy from learning how to walk and how to brush the teeth.

[00:27:48]And then everything become very very automatic.

[00:27:56]So by learning to resist all of this small automatic we will be able to resist a bigger thing.

[00:28:07]We can be able to resist a bigger desire, bigger greed, a bigger anxiety, all the bigger unh wholesome things.

[00:28:21]So we learn from very very simple things first and celebrate every moment our success of resisting. Yeah, it's very pleasant when you're able to to claim your agency, to claim your freedom. Yeah.

[00:28:45]And let us listen to one son of the bell and to claim our breath because our breath is so precious.

[00:29:47]the engaged Buddhism from outside. When you look the pra look at the practitioner, it can be looking a little bit boring because they don't do sitting meditation for 10 hours.

[00:30:03]They don't practice noble salons for 3 months.

[00:30:07]So it can be a little bit boring because what they do is like cleaning the ports, cleaning the toilets, eating together, sitting meditation for 30 minutes only.

[00:30:23]It looks very boring. Yeah.

[00:30:28]In the time of the Buddha, it was happened like this too. People observing the Buddhist community, they don't have ritual.

[00:30:40]They eat, they clean, they sleep, they share the dharma, they talk to each other. So they don't see anything special until one time they come to the Buddha and ask actually what is the difference between your community and all of us as householder in the society. What are the difference?

[00:31:09]Because you al you do everything almost the same like world what we do in the world.

[00:31:17]And the Buddha say the only different is when they sit they know that they are sitting.

[00:31:25]When they clean they know that they are cleaning.

[00:31:30]When they eat they know that they are eating.

[00:31:34]And that are the root of engage Buddhism.

[00:31:40]Something that is there in the core of our daily life.

[00:31:47]is engaged in our daily life, engaged in all our being, body and mind.

[00:31:57]So this is what we will do this week.

[00:31:59]This week in all retreat actually to help us to come back to ourself to be there on what we are doing and right now listen to the dharma talk. You know that you will listen to the dharma talk. As simple as that.

[00:32:24]This morning we have guided sitting meditation and we just need to know that I'm having guided meditation.

[00:32:34]Yeah.

[00:32:39]So bell listen to the bell is the one of the way to help us to bring back ourself and come back to our inb breath and out breath.

[00:32:55]And for those who will facilitate your SA, I will make a bit uh review on how invite how to invite the bell because this is really an art and this is uh our instrument plum village instrument.

[00:33:17]It's a kind of music instrument.

[00:33:22]Then when you make it sound, it need to be the sound of nourishment not the sound that shock you.

[00:33:33]It has to be the sound of like something you want to enjoy.

[00:33:41]So we are instructed to have a good relationship with the bell and to not treat the bell as a non-living being but it's something that is beyond a living being and non-living being something that can help us to come back to the present. a moment bring our body and mind back together.

[00:34:15]So when you see us bowing to each other, this is the body and the mind coming together.

[00:34:24]This is one of our silent communication.

[00:34:30]There are many language to say hi to each other.

[00:34:34]In French we call bonju.

[00:34:37]In Spanish we call bendia.

[00:34:40]In Italian we call ciao.

[00:34:45]Many ways to greet each other. But in monastery this is our language.

[00:34:52]We join our palm and we bow to each other.

[00:34:57]We call it uh recognizing the Buddha nature in front of us.

[00:35:05]I bow to you.

[00:35:07]The Buddha to be.

[00:35:10]I think the Buddha to be is a little bit futuristic.

[00:35:13]Maybe we can change it a little bit. I bow to you the part-time Buddha because maybe sometime when people bow to us, we become remember to practice.

[00:35:27]We can remember to come back to our breathing.

[00:35:32]So we bow to the bell before we Invite the bell. We also don't say ring the bell. We don't say hit the bell.

[00:35:44]We say invite the bell. So we bow to the bell and then we invite the bell to our on our palm.

[00:35:56]And before we invite the bell, we want to breathe in and out and be present and be one with the bell.

[00:36:08]And there is a guta to help us to connect with the bell.

[00:36:16]So we can say body, speech and mind in perfect oneness.

[00:36:22]I will send my heart with the sound of the bell.

[00:36:26]May the hearers can be free from forgetfulness and transform all anxiety and sorrow.

[00:36:35]It's beautiful.

[00:36:38]So the sound is representing our heart.

[00:36:42]You know sometime the first time we invite the bell we are a little bit nervous and sometime we have to say sorry dear sana I send you my heart with the sound of the bell but there's a little bit of anxious a little bit of nervousness please forgive me yeah and then we invite the bell but once you become professional you only have peace in your heart you have compassion in your heart and you know that this sound of the bell will go to everyone consciousness and allow each of us to become mindful and present in the here and now.

[00:37:28]So in order to not make people shock we invite half sound of the bell. So the half sound of the bell will be look like this.

[00:37:53]So that is half son of the bell and then we have a chance to breathe and we listen we listen to the surrounding.

[00:38:05]Are the people ready to receive the sound of the bell? Especially when we invite the bell in the crowd.

[00:38:16]>> So we need to make sure that everyone is ready.

[00:38:21]Probably not everyone. Sometime we are get carried away by our conversation. We don't even hear the one of the bell.

[00:38:28]Yeah.

[00:38:30]So we give half sound of the bell and we hear how many% people start to come back to themselves and get ready for the bell.

[00:38:42]If the percentage is not very high, you do the second one a little bit louder. Yeah.

[00:39:03]So the second sound is a little bit louder and then you see the response from the surrounding the people are more ready to receive the bell and then you can invite your bell so that everyone can enjoy the bell together.

[00:39:25]Yeah. So, let us listen to one small sound of the bell together.

[00:40:09]So as facilitator we need to train that as much as we can so that we become friend with the bell.

[00:40:21]So we are not afraid of the bell anymore.

[00:40:24]So when we invite the bell, we are not afraid that the bell will be painful.

[00:40:29]So we know what kind of sound of the bell we want to produce.

[00:40:36]So the half sound of the bell is not just a ritual form that we have to invite half sum to time.

[00:40:44]There is a purpose why we do this. Yeah.

[00:40:48]Is to be also the facilitator need to be mindful of the surrounding.

[00:40:53]We can feel it if the sana is ready to listen to the bell or not.

[00:41:03]So when we listen to the bell is a opportunity for us to come back and breathe in and out enjoy our inb breath and out breath relax our body.

[00:41:17]Sometime I see some people practice freezing rather than stopping.

[00:41:24]So they are like scratching their head and then there's a belt and they stop like this.

[00:41:35]So let's practicing stopping. Don't freeze. Okay.

[00:41:40]Especially when you leave this uh sanitizing plates.

[00:41:45]If you freeze, you will be like shaking.

[00:41:48]Huh? The plates and the ball the balls are very heavy. So when you listen to the bell, when you leave this, find a place to put down.

[00:42:00]Yeah. You can continue to walk until you find a place to put down.

[00:42:05]Yeah.

[00:42:07]In one of the text of touching of the earth, we are reminded not to practice form.

[00:42:15]Everything that we do has the purpose of transformation and healing. It's not just to fulfill the form of a tradition.

[00:42:26]Yeah.

[00:42:30]So when we listen to the bell, please make sure that your posture is easy to breathe and you can listen to the bell, the chime of the clock so that we allow ourself to practice mindfulness in the present moment.

[00:42:48]If you feel for example in hurry, you recognize it.

[00:42:54]Oh, I am in hurry.

[00:42:58]If you feel anxiety, you just tell yourself, "Oh, I have anxiety."

[00:43:06]If you feel peaceful, when you listen to the bell, you tell yourself, "I have peace in myself." We don't need to do anything.

[00:43:14]We don't need to transform that anxiety, but instead we want to be present with our inb breath and outreath.

[00:43:24]And when we listen to the great bell, the first seven sound and that is the time we can stop and enjoy the breathing and the rest of the bell. Please feel free to move around mindfully because it takes quite long time.

[00:43:48]Uh so the first seven sound only breathing is one of the basic way that we can help us to reconnect with ourself in this retreat. We are so many people.

[00:44:10]We may feel disconnected.

[00:44:13]We may feel not belong to the group.

[00:44:19]It's okay.

[00:44:21]It's normal because we have all of that feeling.

[00:44:26]Everyone has that feeling.

[00:44:30]And don't get panicked because of that.

[00:44:33]When we feel not belonging, that is just a symptoms.

[00:44:39]It's a bell of mindfulness that telling us you are disconnected and we have learned how to connect ourself by coming back to our breathing. Then our body and our mind have a chance to connect.

[00:45:00]And when you are connected your body and mind then you know that you are present.

[00:45:08]In this retreat there will be a lot of picnic lunch.

[00:45:12]Picnic lunch is the tough the toughest practice.

[00:45:16]If you come alone especially newly first time retreat who do you want to sit with? And then you see oh they are sitting together there and they are sitting together there and we can feel very not belonging.

[00:45:36]So in my practice I would just come back to my breathing and tell myself what do I want to do at now and most of the time I just get the answer easily. I just want to eat.

[00:45:51]It's not the time for hang out. This beautiful food is on my hand. Somebody is cooking three hours in the kitchen and then I suffer in the middle of the crowd that I don't know where to go.

[00:46:05]Actually, I just want to eat. So, I just go anywhere I want to eat and be mindful of my food and be nourished by my food or we just welcome anyone. So when we see someone is walking around and looking for a place just call that person do you want to join us so that people can feel belonged to or if we are courageous enough we just go to a group can I join you yeah we are all living together this week so we are all like a family this is a time for us to challenge ourself also to connect with each other physically This is an exercise that we can do a real connection with human being not online.

[00:47:01]And in the morning, every morning and every evening we may have a chance for sitting meditation too.

[00:47:08]Maybe not all evening but morning at least.

[00:47:13]And when we practice sitting meditation, it's not a it's not a heavy labor labor work.

[00:47:23]It's a time to stop and rest.

[00:47:29]Yesterday morning we I was in Paris and we have to go to the train station very early at 6:30.

[00:47:42]And we see in the highway the the traffic jam is already very long.

[00:47:50]And in each car there are at least one person the driver. Yeah.

[00:47:58]So sometime when I do sitting meditation in the morning, I just need to remember all of these people are in traffic jam and make me recognize that not everyone is as lucky as me.

[00:48:18]I wake up this in the morning and the first job is to rest. What a wonderful activity.

[00:48:27]What a wonderful activity.

[00:48:31]So when we do sitting, it's not only for us. It's also for everyone who has no chance to sit.

[00:48:38]We sit for the people who are on the highway. We sit for the people who are still working in the hospital.

[00:48:46]We sit for those who are still working in the factory. Some people they finish their shift at 7:00, they still working at 6:30.

[00:48:59]So when we sit like this, we have a lot of compassion, love and gratitude in our in our hearts to see how much privilege we have and that only have 30 minutes of sitting and we want to be there.

[00:49:20]Whether or not you have concentration does not really matter.

[00:49:26]The most important thing is to not struggle during sitting.

[00:49:32]So for sitting meditation I have a few tips.

[00:49:37]So first of all check with your body if your body comfortable enough or not.

[00:49:45]Sitting on the floor or sitting on the chair it does not matter.

[00:49:51]Make sure that your back is straight and relaxed and breathe easily.

[00:50:01]If your mind going somewhere else, don't get angry.

[00:50:07]It's normal because your mind is still functioning well.

[00:50:14]That's why your mind is thinking. Huh?

[00:50:19]Because in the Buddhist psychology one of the condition that the mind stop thinking is when you are in coma and you are not. Okay. So when you think it's normal it's is it's is it's common happen like this and so we just need to gently bring back to our breathing and enjoy our sitting again.

[00:50:46]It can be 1 second, it can be two second, does not matter.

[00:50:51]And sometime the whole session of 30 minute will just disappear somewhere else. It's also fine. Yeah, as long as at the end of the session you listen to the bell and then you find yourself still sitting, it's good enough.

[00:51:08]Yeah. So don't make a very high pressure to oneself in the sitting meditation.

[00:51:18]I start to enjoy sitting when I have no more enemy because I also start from a a very strong motivated sitting meditation.

[00:51:30]I like I should not have a thinking. I will fight with all my thinking.

[00:51:36]At the end of the session, I'm just exhausted.

[00:51:41]I want to fight with my sleepiness.

[00:51:45]I'm just suffering the whole sitting.

[00:51:48]So after I let go all my enemy when I give space to my sleepiness, give space to my thinking, I also have space for myself.

[00:52:05]And once I have peace with everything that is, then all my system my nervous system is also calm down because my nervous system know there's no enemy anyway.

[00:52:21]When my body is painful, I just help myself to move to change the posture. So we don't need to force ourself.

[00:52:35]So there's a few a few uh tips for sitting meditation.

[00:52:41]Pay attention to what enemy have you created and let that enemy free. Yeah.

[00:52:49]Because when the enemy feel hostile and you also feel hostile at the same time.

[00:53:00]And the other things that can help us to connect with ourself and the other people is the screen screen detox.

[00:53:10]Maybe this is a good time for us to do the screen detox electronic detox also.

[00:53:21]If it does not make you lose like uh a million dollars or euros per day and you see there's an opportunity to turn it off, you can do it.

[00:53:36]This is an invitation.

[00:53:40]Once you are able to do this this week, then you know you can copy it next time.

[00:53:48]So we don't want to say you have to not use phone but we invite you not to and you see what is necessary and you manage it as necessary and the most important thing is we not like you know having a phone call walking around with the headphone so we avoid that too so that we not trigger the other people to use the phone.

[00:54:15]So when we have something very important we can go to somewhere else.

[00:54:21]I don't want to tell you where you find your way. Upper hamlet is so big. Okay. Find your way. Do your business and support the SA as much as you can.

[00:54:35]If there's no choice, there's no choice.

[00:54:36]But if there's a choice, please choose, okay?

[00:54:41]To do your business as far as possible.

[00:54:47]But when you see some brothers like aspirant brothers or monastic brothers they may use phone in the dining hall.

[00:54:56]It's not because they want to trigger you.

[00:55:01]It's just because the the only connection place is in the dining hall.

[00:55:05]They may have to contact their family and other things. Okay.

[00:55:10]So please be compassionate with some of our novice brothers and aspirant brothers. Their phone has no connection.

[00:55:20]Yeah.

[00:55:22]Therefore they may have you may see them around there.

[00:55:28]But we practice every time we call or every time we do something on our phone or or our laptop, please sit down. Don't walk around.

[00:55:40]Yeah, this is also to help you to focus on what you're doing at the same time.

[00:55:47]So this is including like uh smoking. If anyone still attached to that smoking or even just electronic uh cigarette, please do it as far as possible so that it does not trigger the other people.

[00:56:03]Uh yeah, as far as we don't practice mindful breathing with the cigarette smell, uh we don't want to restrict anybody, but we also want to support the community. Yeah. So please find your own wisdom to support that.

[00:56:27]And when we eat every day is also a chance for us to really be there for our food.

[00:56:36]Eating is not just a daily activity.

[00:56:39]It's not just worldly activity.

[00:56:43]It can be very spiritual.

[00:56:48]So eating can be one of your spiritual uh ritual and this is something that you can bring home and therefore we can do it here in this week to train ourself and mindful eating. We don't need to have like a bunch of technique how to eat mindfully. We all know how to eat.

[00:57:13]We just need to be there with our food.

[00:57:17]Because sometime when we eat we have a lot of thinking and we don't even connect with our food.

[00:57:27]Maybe you remember the day when you have a lot of project and you have to eat and when you eat your project is going on and on and on and on.

[00:57:39]So use the food to help you to anchor yourself in the present moment. And that is the resistance that we can do.

[00:57:49]You take one spoon, put down your spoon and enjoy your chewing until you swallow the food. You take another one.

[00:58:06]And when we eat the food is not only ending in the toilets.

[00:58:14]The food is become our body.

[00:58:18]The food become our mind too.

[00:58:22]This morning you listen to me thanks to the porridge and thanks to the banana that you eat.

[00:58:29]Then you have energy to listen to me.

[00:58:35]So this is a trans a very clear transformation from matter to matter, matter to energy.

[00:58:45]And if your mindful breathing is also come the from the food that you eat and come from the collective mindfulness.

[00:58:56]And the next practice that we can help us in our daily life is the service, the daily work.

[00:59:07]That's how the engage Buddhism can be very boring. Why toilets actually I love cleaning toilets?

[00:59:18]Because this is the place that you can see the direct transformation in all the senses physically with the eyes with the nose. You can experience the transformation directly.

[00:59:38]>> Yeah.

[00:59:41]We are not just cleaning but after cleaning we also enjoy the transformation of the place.

[00:59:49]And every time we consume transformation, we also memorize that feeling of being different and transformed.

[01:00:02]Clean the ports, chopping the vegetable, we all have a chance to experience transformation.

[01:00:11]You will receive a lot of boxes of carrot.

[01:00:16]And after and 1 hour that carrots transform into different form.

[01:00:22]And then tomorrow the day after we eat that lunch you recognize this is a toilet the the carrot that I cut yesterday. Yeah. How wonderful.

[01:00:37]Yeah.

[01:00:40]So the service meditation each group has different uh responsibilities to offer and that's how we live one week.

[01:00:52]We enjoy serving each other.

[01:00:59]When we go to the toilets, we enjoy the toilet teams. We feel gratitude for the other team who clean the toilets. When we serve our food this lunch, we know that there is a group right now is cooking for us and when we wash the pots and we see the trays that we serve the food, we know there's another team who clean all of this.

[01:01:26]Somebody is sterilizing our cups and somebody is preparing the tea. all aspect and somebody is taking care. The compost, the trash, every single corner of the hamlet has love and care.

[01:01:49]And the question is, am I there to receive that care?

[01:01:55]Because sometime we still ask question, does the Sana care for me?

[01:02:02]Does the SA love me?

[01:02:06]It is there every everywhere. But if we are not there, we cannot receive that.

[01:02:13]When you walk on the grass, do you think the grass is always like this?

[01:02:20]No. Somebody is cutting it for hours the whole. So every time we walk on the grass, we feel very grateful.

[01:02:32]The walking path here we call it the brotherhood and sisterhood path just beside this meditation hall in 2009.

[01:02:44]It was built by brothers and sisters and all friends together in a very cold weather. I remember that day it's like super frozen and the the snow is so high and we walk on that path together.

[01:03:03]So every time I walk there I remember all the people in in that path.

[01:03:11]So this hamlet is come from love.

[01:03:17]Those who come for 20 years, you know already how many times you clean the toilets.

[01:03:23]or you cook or you chop vegetable.

[01:03:27]We are not very different until now. Let listen to one sound of the bell.

[01:04:19]And today we have a chance to practice a long noble silence.

[01:04:25]Is that true?

[01:04:30]I hope you enjoy it.

[01:04:32]So we will have a noble silence until the end of the walking today.

[01:04:40]We call it observe the noble silence.

[01:04:49]So it does not mean we are not only not talking but we observe the silence.

[01:05:00]I like to observe the silence even there is no noble silence time and sometime we think that oh pl we don't have enough silence I do not experience that because when I woke up in the morning I'm silent and I drink my tea in silence. too.

[01:05:28]And I go to the meditation hall, I have another 30 minutes of silence.

[01:05:33]And when I finish sitting meditation, I eat my breakfast in silence.

[01:05:42]If after breakfast, if I go to nap, I'm also napping in silence.

[01:05:51]And if I come to the dharma talk and you come to dharmatnet you are all practicing noble silent too it's only me who speak and then after the dharma talk we go for walking is also silence and after finish walking normally we go to the lunch and lunch is also silence for 20 minutes so there's a lot of silence and after lunch most of the brothers go to And I can enjoy the silence too.

[01:06:24]So there are many silence during the day and we can observe that silence.

[01:06:32]When we go to the bathroom, we also practice silence. So that's why we have this practice of mindfulness of using the bathroom.

[01:06:42]So we are doing our best not to have a koki during shower.

[01:06:49]So that we can enjoy being silenced and get in touch with our body to know that our my body is coming from my ancestors instead of singing love song for example.

[01:07:03]So we have we can take benefit from the activity of showering.

[01:07:09]We go to the bathroom is the same.

[01:07:13]We can be there with about our body instead of looking at the screen in the toilets for example.

[01:07:22]Is this these are all a new habit that we want to resist and take it as a practice and we avoid also making jokes in the toilets and screaming with each other.

[01:07:36]So this is something that we want to it's not a a football club the toilets there the bathroom so we can make the bathroom as a practice center practice space and this hall is the meditation hall uh is also a place where we can be quiet so that when the the hall is free we can just come here and just enjoy the silent and sitting Quietly and when we enter to the meditation hall it's good to you know the real activity is you put out your shoes and then you go to sit.

[01:08:24]So that is one flow.

[01:08:28]But if you want to be more mindful you cut it into several pieces.

[01:08:34]cut it into segments.

[01:08:37]So taking out the shoes is one segment.

[01:08:42]So you can be you can be mindful over there. You enter the door the other segment you open the door mindfully.

[01:08:51]And when you enter to the hall don't come in directly. So you stop in front of the door or the side join your palm and bow.

[01:09:01]And that's help us to remind oursel that I'm going to sitting so that you can manage your step. You walk mindfully to the cushion and when you arrive to the cushion don't sit directly. So you cut another segment and you join your palm and you bow to the cushion and then you can sit mindfully quietly.

[01:09:30]So this cutting of the segment can help us to be reminded to be mindful in many times of reminder.

[01:09:42]So you will see some of our practitioner our aspiran our brother monastic brothers or our o members uh even our long-term practitioner you can see them they enter they stop they bow and then they walk mindfully to the cushion and then they bow to the cushion and then they sit down and it's good to fill up from the the furthest spot so that we can we easily find our space for the cushion. Yeah.

[01:10:18]So coming back to the noble silence and this is a place we want to practice is the meditation hall. Uh during the free times keep it as a noble silence area. So we don't do conversation in the meditation hall uh when it is no activity. Yeah.

[01:10:41]And also the dining hall can be the next one especially when we serve our food.

[01:10:49]Every meal even is a picnic meal.

[01:10:54]Uh we queue in silence and we serve our food in silence.

[01:11:00]This is not only good for being mindful.

[01:11:04]It's also good to not have a rain in the food because when you speak in the line, you also get some rain in the food. This is also for hygiene reason. Yeah. So, it's good to practice noble silent and serve our food.

[01:11:24]In Plum Village, we also have a practice called hugging meditation. And sometime we are very excited to hug somebody that we know that we don't meet for many years.

[01:11:36]Hugging for us is not just a cultural gesture. For us it's a practice.

[01:11:44]We want to recognize the person in front of us. I saw you. I see you. We join our palm and we bow to that person.

[01:11:54]And when we hug that person, we are not only hugging one body but we hug the whole ancestor of this person.

[01:12:06]And as we know the star consciousness of this person has wholesome and unh wholesome seat too.

[01:12:14]And when we hug this person, we want to hug all the good quality of this person and all the shortcoming of this person and we give them a hug.

[01:12:27]And before we do that, we should ask consent.

[01:12:31]We should ask, can I give you a hug?

[01:12:34]And we say yes. Okay. Then we we can hug each other. So consent is very important in our practice to connect with each other. Especially when it come to touching any hugging. So it's good to ask question. Can I hug you? May I hug you?

[01:12:54]And we have that consent so that we can practice uh the hugging meditation and as a sana you know the now your number is more than monastic.

[01:13:12]So the safety and the enjoyment of being together cannot be provided by monastic community. We have to build it together as a big community as every single person. So we need to contribute collective safety. So everyone uh are invited to be present in all activity to support each other.

[01:13:37]That's our all invitation and we allow everyone to be who they are. I know that in our community now we have a very diverse community. People come from all different background culture and we all want to coexist.

[01:13:58]We have all different gender identity.

[01:14:01]We have all everyone different political view. We have everyone who has different sexual orientation and we want everyone to have space in this sa.

[01:14:15]We don't have to agree with each other but we can listen to each other and this is our practice.

[01:14:26]I hope that the walking meditation will be explained during the walking meditation.

[01:14:32]So please enjoy your mindful step in the hamlet.

[01:14:36]Uh be aware of upper hamlet is not a bus station or train station. So you don't need to rush when you walk. You can enjoy every step in peace.

[01:14:48]Be harmony with the nature.

[01:14:51]If you zoom out beautiful nature and somebody is walking in rushing, it's not very beautiful.

[01:14:58]If you zoom out, you see someone is walking peacefully in the beautiful nature. It's a very beautiful image. So keep yourself your body be harmony with the nature around. Enjoy every step that you walk because every step can be a healing.

[01:15:16]A healing for our ignorance.

[01:15:19]A healing for our craving.

[01:15:22]A healing for all our anxiety and a healing for mother earth.

[01:15:36]In plum village. We accept and embrace the suffering that we have.

[01:15:45]We are not trying to push away.

[01:15:49]We are not hurry to fix things.

[01:15:52]But we want to embrace in order to have insight and to be able to look deeply into our suffering.

[01:16:04]And sometime we need to smile when we suffer because as we know that when we have sun and the rain something more beautiful will come out. The sun is beautiful the rain is beautiful but when they both come together what it become?

[01:16:25]>> It become rainbow. Rainbow wonderful.

[01:16:32]So smile to our suffering sometime is a good practice. Uh enjoying the beauty is a good practice to embrace our suffering too. So sometime we don't have to find the solution right away. Take our time and I hope that you enjoy this week uh to be who you are. Be kind to yourself.

[01:16:53]Be gentle with yourself. All the activities are invitation and your presence is very precious for the collective mindfulness.

[01:17:03]But if you are really really exhausted, please be compassionate to yourself too.

[01:17:10]I would like to invite brother uh brother Nan uh to help me to play piano keyboard so that I can offer a song to the SA to end the session.

[01:17:31]So this song is inspired by our teacher Thai uh with the question with the children and the child asked Tai, "What should I do if I cry and feel sad and Tai say don't forget to smile because when you smile and you can cry at the same time and this is like the sun and the rain that become rainbow. Yeah. So this is this song is about that.

[01:19:15]I am here for you.

[01:19:19]There's one together with you.

[01:19:31]in silence.

[01:19:35]Keep moving on.

[01:19:38]You will see.

[01:19:41]You will see.

[01:19:49]The sun is always there behind the dark sky.

[01:20:03]Your smile is still there behind the ground.

[01:20:17]My friend, when you cry, don't forget to because the rain and the sunshine make the rainbow in the sky.

[01:20:48]Let us smile.

[01:20:50]Let us continue to smile.

[01:21:01]Flowers to blow.

[01:21:04]Rain still fall.

[01:21:08]The birds are singing in the tree.

[01:21:31]Oo.

[01:21:51]My friend, when you cry, don't forget to smile because the rain And the sunshine in the rainbow in the sky.

[01:22:20]Let us smile.

[01:22:23]Let us smile.

[01:22:27]Continue to smile.

[01:22:33]Flowers that bloom, rain still fall.

[01:22:40]The birds are singing in the trees.

[01:22:50]Let us smile.

[01:22:52]Let us smile.

[01:22:56]Continue to smile.

[01:23:02]Flowers the blow, rain to fall.

[01:23:09]The birds are singing in the tree.

[01:23:21]I am here for you.

[01:23:25]I am here for you.

[01:23:29]I am here.

[01:23:33]for you.

[01:24:51]Now we would like