Transcriptions of Dharma Talks

Chapter 2

Prev List Next

The venerable Shariputra continued speaking like that, but his accuser could bear it no longer. The other monk stood up and took away a piece of his sanghati robe to show his shoulder and bowed to the Buddha and joined his palms and he confessed, "Lord Buddha, I have violated the Precepts. I have born false witness against Shariputra. I confess that I had jealousy, anger, hatred in me. I confess my transgression before you and the entire community. I vow to observe my Precepts better in the future." The Buddha said, "It"s good that you have confessed your transgression before the community. We are very glad you have done that." Then Shariputra rose also and he touched the ground in front of the other monk. "I bear no hatred, no anger against my brother and I ask him to forgive anything I may have done to upset him in the past." And both of them practiced Beginning Anew in front of the Buddha. The community saw that Shariputra did really practice in order for his heart to expand like the earth, like the water, like the fire, like the air. No matter what people told him, how mean it was, no matter how cruel were all the things they did to him, he could accept all of that without rancor, without suffering. That is the practice of true love in Buddhism.

True love consisting of loving kindness-the desire to offer happiness; of compa.s.sion-the desire to remove the pain from the other person; the desire to practice mudita mudita-joy, to bring joy to people around; and upeksha upeksha-the desire to accept everything, not to discriminate. You love just because living beings need your love, not because he is your brother or sister, he belongs to your family, or your nation-no discrimination, that is upeksha.

[Bell]

If you still suffer, if you still believe that you are the victim of injustice, if you still think that they have wronged you, it means your heart is still not large enough, you have not become quite like air, or earth, or fire, or water. You still want to undo that injustice, to free yourself from injustice. You want the other person to be punished so that you will feel better because you have been the victim of terrible injustice. Injustice is the thing you see everywhere-a two year old child struck with cancer, a baby just born is already crippled, a couple of young people just married and have an accident that kills both. There are so many things like that happening around you. And you look at the sky and you say, "G.o.d is cruel. Where is justice? If G.o.d is love, if G.o.d is just, how could G.o.d allow these things to happen?" After having looked for justice from humankind, expecting the government, expecting the military, expecting the fellow human beings to repair the injustice done to you, and you don"t succeed, then you have to look at the sky and you cry out your injustice to G.o.d.

Lao Tzu, the author of Tao Te Ching Tao Te Ching, said, "Sky and earth are inhuman, they treat living beings like a straw dog." Straw dog-a dog made with straw, just a toy. When you look closely at things, at people, at living beings, you see so much suffering, you see so much injustice you cannot explain, and you blame sky and earth, you blame G.o.d, you blame the Creator. You see that there are so many people who are good-hearted and who continue to suffer so much and you ask why. Yet you can see many people who are very wicked, very mean, very cruel, unjustly enjoying very special treatment of society. And you revolt against this kind of thing.

In the Buddhist circle they used to explain this kind of injustice by the teaching of cause and effect, in the context of "three times." "Three times" means the past, present, and future. And they quoted this sentence: "If you want to know what kind of goal you have pursued in the past life, just look at yourself in the present life." If in the present life you suffer, it means in the former life you have done a lot of wicked things, cruel things. So if you suffer during this life, it"s because you were doing bad things in the former life. Even if in this life you are trying to do good, you still have to suffer because in a past life you have done bad things. If the other person is doing cruel things but is still enjoying his situation, his special treatment, it"s because in a former time in his past life he had done good things. That is why he enjoys the fruit of his good karma right now. To know the quality of your life in the future, you just look at the action you are doing in this life. If you are doing good things and if you are not happy yet, be sure that you will be happy in the future.

That is the way they explain in the Buddhist circle, in order to appease a little bit your tendency to revolt against injustice. Injustice, you can see it-a small nation occupied by a big nation for one thousand years; a nation destroyed by another nation with napalm, with defoliants. Millions of people die during a war. Think of the former Yugoslavia-a thousand people liquidated in the name of ethnic purification. The whole world community just stood by and allowed it to continue and continue and continue and continue. You want to revolt. You feel oppressed, you feel you have been the victim of injustice. You want to repair that and you think of military means, political means, because you think that only political means and military means can repair injustice. By trying to repair the situation you may cause a lot of injustice at the same time. Giai oan Giai oan is a Vietnamese term, "to undo injustice." is a Vietnamese term, "to undo injustice." Giai Giai means "to untie." Injustice is like a rope binding you tightly and you suffer, and you want to remove that rope, and you naturally think of military means, sheer violence. You want political means to repair injustice. According to the Buddhist practice, the only way to undo the injustice is to enlarge your heart. Because only compa.s.sion, only loving kindness, only understanding, can answer to ignorance, can answer violence, can answer injustice, can answer cruelty. means "to untie." Injustice is like a rope binding you tightly and you suffer, and you want to remove that rope, and you naturally think of military means, sheer violence. You want political means to repair injustice. According to the Buddhist practice, the only way to undo the injustice is to enlarge your heart. Because only compa.s.sion, only loving kindness, only understanding, can answer to ignorance, can answer violence, can answer injustice, can answer cruelty.

A child, a charming little boy, catches a b.u.t.terfly, and he takes the two wings of the b.u.t.terfly by four fingers and he just tears like that-and the b.u.t.terfly dies. The little boy laughs with joy. The little boy does not know that by doing that, he is destroying life. One day I saw a little boy doing like that, I told him, "My dear one, do you know that the b.u.t.terfly has a sister, a mother? Tonight if the b.u.t.terfly does not fly home, his parents will be very upset, you know that? Don"t you know that you are doing a very terrible thing to a b.u.t.terfly?" And the child understood. From that moment on, he no longer caught b.u.t.terflies. A few days later, when it was raining, he was collecting snails on the path and putting them back in the bushes, being afraid that if we step on the snails, the snails would not be able to go back to their fathers, their mothers, in the evening. "Lord, forgive him for what he is doing, because he does not know what he is doing." People are cruel, people are doing incredible things to other people because they are just ignorant. They don"t know that what they are doing makes themselves suffer, not only the others suffer. They are acting in the name of the future, of happiness-happiness of humankind, happiness of the nations.

You embrace an ideology, a superb, superb ideology, and you want all your friends, all people in your country to unite, to realize the golden world, the utopia, because you are motivated by the desire to make this world beautiful, perfect, with happiness for all people. You are ready to embrace that superb ideology for the sake of your own nation, for the sake of the world community, and you believe that this is the only way for humankind, because that ideology is the cream of human intelligence. You do it out of goodwill. You kill, you exile, you lock them into psychiatric hospitals, you liquidate them, you bury them collectively, by hundreds of people, because of your love of humanity, because of your aspiration for a better future for humanity. "Lord, forgive them, because they don"t know what they are doing."

Only when you practice understanding do compa.s.sion and loving kindness arise. Only when the nectar of compa.s.sion is born in your heart do you begin to stop suffering. There is no other way to undo injustice, except by the practice of deep looking in order to forgive, in order to accept. If your heart is small, it means that you have not practiced, you have not been able to see things. When you see that he, she, the other person, because of ignorance, has done that to you and your beloved one, you no longer blame.

[Bell]

Of course we have suffered, all of us. Not only the Bosnians, but also the Serbs. Not only the Palestinians, but also the Israelis. Both of us have suffered. But they continue to bear hatred, anger toward each other. They think that the only way to undo the injustice is to use political and military means, and they ask our friends to come and help us with these means-political and military forces. We don"t know that the way out is love, is compa.s.sion. Love and compa.s.sion, how could they be possible if we don"t open our heart, if we don"t open our eyes in order to see that just because we are ignorant we are making each other suffer? Where is the world community? Are you there in order to help us to understand each other? To help us produce the nectar of compa.s.sion in our heart? Or are you there in order to support one side against the other and to egg us on to continue the fighting? The interest is not the interest of one side, one nation, one party. The interest is the interest of both, because we inter-are.

In Vietnam we say, "The father eats a lot of salt and it is the son who has to drink a lot of water." What the father does, the son has to bear. We have to inherit the fruit of the actions of our fathers. Why? Is that injustice? Because we are caught in the idea of self. My father did that, not me, why do I have to bear the retribution? But in the light of non-self, you are your father, you are the continuation of your father. If you are a young person and if you suffer, you should learn that you suffer for the sake of your father, your ancestors, and also your society. You have to learn in order to look, and when you say, "I suffer," it"s okay: there should be someone who suffers for the sake of his father, for his grandfather, his countrymen. "I suffer, because I love. I suffer for all of them, because they did not know-that is why they have produced a lot of suffering. Now I suffer in order to redeem that kind of wrong doing." Suddenly you have enough courage in order to continue and to forbear the difficulties. Suddenly your heart opens and suffering is no longer unbearable for you because love is in you.

You know, what you do can make your father or your mother suffer. What you do can make your great-grandchild suffer in the future. That is why mindfulness helps us to stop causing suffering to the people we love and to ourselves. A child who at two years old gets a terrible sickness-who is responsible? You cannot say, "Dear little child, you suffer like that because in your former life you have done a terrible thing." You cannot say that. Who did the terrible thing so that the child has to suffer today? All of us-that is non-self. We belong to the same reality. There is a stream of life.

If you continue to sit there and to blame and to hate your parents, that means you have not practiced looking deeply. The better way is to sit down with your parents, to reconsider the situation, to look deeply in order to see how the suffering has come into being and how we can end the samsara samsara and the vicious circle of suffering for our sake and for the sake of our children and grandchildren. Understanding opens the door of the heart. Suddenly we are able to accept each other because our heart has grown large thanks to the practice of looking deeply. and the vicious circle of suffering for our sake and for the sake of our children and grandchildren. Understanding opens the door of the heart. Suddenly we are able to accept each other because our heart has grown large thanks to the practice of looking deeply.

Transcending Injustice: The Tale of Quan Am Thi Kinh

Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on July 28, 1996 in Plum Village, France.

Thich Nhat Hanh.

Dear friends.

Today is the twenty-eighth of July, 1996, we are in the Lower Hamlet and we are going to speak English.

There was a little girl whose name was Kinh, who was born in North Vietnam a long, long time ago. Her parents would have preferred a boy, but a girl was born to them, but they were still happy and they named her Kinh. Kinh means "respect, reverence." That is a very good name. You respect people, you respect animals, you respect life including the plants and the minerals. Reverence. Reverence for life, for what is there inside of you and around you. Kinh was a very beautiful child. As a little girl she was already very beautiful, like a flower. Kinh used to go the Buddhist temple in the village with her mother to offer lotus flowers to the Buddha and to listen to the Dharma talks given by the high monk. She loved the Dharma.

There was a very deep intention in her to become something like a monk, because she saw the monks living their lives very happily and helping so many people. She wished that she could become a monk, because practicing, living in the temple-everything-seemed to be very beautiful and calm. She loved the manner of the monks, going back and forth with gentleness, touching everything with reverence. She just loved the Dharma, even though she was very small. She inquired about the possibility of becoming a monk, and they said no, not for girls. Because Buddhism had just been introduced into Vietnam, there were only monasteries for monks; perhaps there were one or two temples for nuns, but they were very rare. In that time, there was no airplane, there was no bus, so she could not imagine that she could travel far. She was not happy at the idea that she could never become a monk because she was a girl. A kind of frustration was in her-she believed that as a girl one could also practice like a monk, living the Dharma happily like a monk.

She grew up into a beautiful girl and her parents wanted to marry her to someone in the neighborhood. In olden times, weddings were arranged by parents, and you had to obey them because they had their wisdom, they knew who was good for you. The deepest desire of parents was to see their daughter be wedded to a young man with a bright future. One morning they received a letter from the parents of a young man, asking whether they can marry her to their son. The young man"s name was Sung Tin-"scholar of goodness," "student of goodness." I don"t know how good he was, how bright a human he was, but it seemed that he was born into a family of outstanding tradition, a n.o.ble family. He seemed to have a bright future, because he was a good student and he might pa.s.s the examination and become a high official in the government. The dream of all students in the past was to pa.s.s the high exam and be selected by the king to be a minister, a chief of province, and so on.

Kinh had to obey them to become the wife of Sung Tin, although her love, her deepest desire, was to become a nun. There was no way at all; it was not like in our time. In our time, if a young lady wants to become a nun, she might pick up the telephone and inquire about the existence of nunneries. But in that time Kinh did not have any opportunity to do so. So she buried her desire deep inside and had to obey her parents and be wedded to that young man, Sung Tin. Of course the young wife had to support her husband in his studies. Nourishing the husband, supporting the husband so that the husband can succeed in his studies was the main task of a young wife of that time.

The family of Sung Tin was rich, so Kinh did not have to work very hard to support her husband. There were, however, many young wives who had to sell rice in a market or carry rice in the heat of the summertime in order to earn enough money to support their husbands to continue their studies. This was not the case of Kinh because her in-law family was very rich. So she only took care of the housework, cleaned, cooked, sewed his clothes, and so on. Kinh was trained very thoroughly as a housekeeper by her parents. One day while she was mending some cloth, her husband Sung Tin was studying beside her and fell asleep. Students want to study as much as possible, they want to stuff in as many books and as much knowledge as possible. So he was trying to do the same thing. He studied day and night, and that day, reading a book close to his wife, he fell asleep.

When Kinh looked at Sung Tin, she saw that a few moustache hairs were not cut evenly. So out of her love and care she used a pair of scissors, trying to trim those three or four hairs. But suddenly her husband woke up. And in that kind of state of being, he thought that she was trying to kill him! So he shouted, he screamed. He screamed. I don"t know how deep their love was, how much they understood each other, but this is what happened. So his parents came and asked, "Why are you screaming like that?" He said, "Well, I was dozing. When I woke up, I saw her using a pair of scissors like that. So I don"t know." His parents said, "It does happen that wives who are not faithful may kill their husband, because it"s in their mind to have other desires, other men. So we don"t want you any more as a daughter-in-law. We"d like to send you back to your home." Kinh tried to explain, but the parents did not want to accept.

When I practiced looking deeply into this, I saw that the cause of her being dismissed as a daughter-in-law was not suspicion, but jealousy. Since the time the young man married he spent all of his time with his wife, and the parents felt that they had lost their son. This new woman who came to their home monopolized entirely their son so they acted on this kind of jealousy without even knowing it. So they wrote a letter to her parents and asked them to come and take back their daughter. Imagine how great was the suffering undergone by that family. To them their daughter was perfect, their daughter was very true, very faithful. It was a kind of injustice. And that was the first injustice that Kinh had to suffer, to bear, to accept. So they brought her home. Her parents believed her that she did not have the intention to kill her husband. It was just a misfortune, and the three of them suffered.

[Bell]

But Kinh had learned something from the conjugal life. She saw that people are full of wrong perceptions. Even in that wealthy family, they made each other suffer very much. The love that she felt in that family was not enough to make her happy, to make her bloom like a flower. That kind of love, that kind of life, did not satisfy her deepest need. So the idea of becoming a nun suddenly re-emerged. She spent many nights thinking of how to become a monk in order to practice in a Buddhist temple, so that she would be able to embrace the Dharma entirely and devote her life to the practice of the Dharma.

One night she decided that she would disguise herself as a young man and try to be accepted by a monastery. She did not think that she should go to a temple close to her family, because people would recognize her and her parents would not allow her to go. She decided to go far away because there were temples everywhere. She had to walk something like one hundred miles in order to go so far that even her parents would not know where she was. And she did not tell her friends that she wanted to become a monk. Because if she did, her parents would go looking for her in the temples and would very soon discover her. She kept her desire very secret.

One day she just disappeared with some of her belongings and left behind a letter that said, "Dear Mother, dear Father, I have something I love very much I want to accomplish. So please forgive me for not being able to be home to take care of you, because this desire in me is so big." You know that desire was bodhicitta bodhicitta-the desire to practice the Dharma and to bring happiness to many people, because people suffer so much everywhere and are caught up in their wrong perceptions; they do injustices to each other every day. She didn"t want to repeat that kind of life again, she wanted to become a monk. So after having walked more than one hundred miles, she found a temple-a temple named Phap Van, Dharma Cloud, not very far from Hanoi.

When she came to the temple disguised as a young man, as a student, she asked to see the abbot. She attended the Dharma talk and was so moved that she waited until the people all went home, approached the monk, and asked to be ordained as a novice monk. The monk asked her to sit down and he said, "Young man, why do you want to become a monk?" And she said, "Dear teacher, I have seen that everything is impermanent, that nothing can last forever. Everything is like a dream, everything is like the flash of lightning. When I looked at a cloud in the sky, first I saw the cloud having the form of a dog, and in no time at all, the form of dog is transformed. I saw the cloud now in the form of a shirt. Everyone is trying to get fame and profit and money in the world and they don"t seem to be really happy. I want to have true happiness, and I believe that only in the Dharma could I find peace and happiness." After having said that, she stayed quiet and the monk congratulated her, "Young man, you have understood the teaching of impermanence and I hope you succeed in the practice as a monk." So he allowed her to stay in the temple, and three months later she was ordained as a novice monk.

Her Dharma name was Kinh Tam. He retained the name Kinh, "reverence," and he added the name Tam is "the heart." Reverence of the Heart or The Heart of Reverence. My students all bear the Dharma name "heart." "Source of the heart," "Door of the heart," everything is "of the heart." So they share some of the new novice"s name.

Kinh Tam practiced very well, very diligently. She was very intelligent. She studied, she learned the sutras very quickly and she enjoyed very much the life of a young monk. Her teacher loved her very much and he always believed that this was a young man. The young novice was very handsome. Although she was disguised as a young man, although she did not wear anything-gold or perfume and things like that-she was still very handsome as a young "monk," and that drew a danger to her. Because down in the village there was the daughter of the wealthiest family, who would come to the temple every fortnight to offer incense, flowers, and so on, with her mother. The first time she saw the young monk, she fell in love with him right away.

I don"t think that it was because of his face; his face was beautiful, yes. But there was something more than the appearance of a young man. The young monk practiced mindfulness very well-we have to call her "he"-he practiced walking mindfully, drinking mindfully, doing everything mindfully. And that is why he looked very beautiful. Because people in society are not that beautiful; they are always in a hurry, they only run, they only do things quickly, they don"t have that freedom, that relaxation, that kind of peace that is expressed through the way you look, through the way you do things, through the way you sit down, through the way you walk. And that is why the young lady fell in love with the young monk right away.

Her name is Mau. Mau means "color." What color, I don"t know. I don"t blame her. I don"t blame her because the monk was very beautiful. You can call him "handsome," but he was more than handsome, he was beautiful because he had peace within him. So if there is a lady who falls in love with a monk, that is not something extraordinary, that does happen. I remember there was one time a man who came to Plum Village and who asked Sister Jina, "You are such a beautiful lady, why have you become a nun? That is a pity, that is a loss." After some silence Sister Jina said, "If you see me as beautiful, it is because I have become a nun. If I had not become a nun, I would not be as agreeable, as pleasant as you may see."

That is true, when you become a monk or a nun, you become much more beautiful. You adorn yourself with peace, with mindfulness, with the practice of the Dharma, and that is why you emanate that kind of beauty that is rare in society. So I really don"t blame Mau at all. If I was Mau, I would fall in love with the young novice also. She tried to talk to him, tried to find opportunities to be alone with the young monk, Kinh Tam. But Kinh Tam always seemed to avoid her; it was very frustrating. Sometimes she tried to guess in advance the way the young monk would go, and run to wait for him, but when he saw her, he would turn and go into another direction. She tried several times to express her love to the young monk, but he was very determined to continue practicing as a monk.

She was very frustrated. She did not know how to transform her love. She did not understand the Dharma. She only practiced Buddhism in a very shallow way-going to the temple, offering a lot of bananas, sweet rice, and flowers and doing a lot of prostrations. She did not know how to practice in order to take care of her desire, her anger, and so on. When you go to the temple, you have to learn the Dharma. You have to change yourself in the practice of the Dharma and not do like Mau. Her love for him was so deep, and she was deeply frustrated. That is why, one day, when her parents were not home, she called into her room the young man who worked as a servant, an attendant, in the family. He took care of the garden and the housework, and during the night-I think it was a full moon night-she could not bear her love any more. So she called him in and she allowed him to have s.e.xual intercourse with her, and during the act she imagined the young man as the young novice. It was stated in the story very clearly that in that state of being half awake, she imagined the young man as the beautiful novice.

The accident happened. And a few months later she felt that she was pregnant. She tried to hide it from her father and mother, but it became more and more apparent. The parents asked, "Why are you like that my daughter? You don"t want to eat anything, you refuse eating rice, you eat only very sour things." She said, "No, I am perfectly all right, my parents. I just don"t feel well enough in my body, that"s all. Maybe my blood needs purification." But in a few days, she was summoned by the council of the village together with her parents, because in the village they had noticed that the young lady without a husband had become pregnant. They set up a kind of court and asked her to tell them with whom she had slept in order to become pregnant like that.

So she thought for a long time: "The young man was already chased away. Even if I tell the truth, people wouldn"t believe me. The head of the village said that I should tell them the truth, and if I name the young man, I will have the opportunity to have him as an official husband. Why don"t I tell them that the man who slept with me is the novice Kinh Tam practicing in the Phap Van temple?" So she said, "Respected elders, I used to go to the temple and I fell in love with the young novice Kinh Tam over there. And both of us could not bear our love not being fulfilled, that is why we have made the mistake. So please forgive us."

The head of the village sent someone to summon the family of the temple: the monk, the novice, and a few other people from the temple. When Kinh Tam arrived, she was told that Mau had declared that "he" had slept with her and made her pregnant, and the head of council said, "Kinh Tam, young novice, you have already decided to become a monk, why didn"t you practice the precepts? You have slept with a young woman in the village. What do you have to say?" And the young monk said, "No, I practiced my precept. I never slept with anyone in the village. Please reconsider. This is injustice. Please be understanding. Please have compa.s.sion. I have not done anything like that." But when the head of the village turned toward Mau, she continued to confirm that it was the young monk who had slept with her and caused her to be pregnant. And the young novice firmly denied this. "No, as a young monk I practice deeply my precepts. I have never done that. The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha are witness to my honesty."

Finally, they had to use whips. "You have to tell the truth, otherwise you will be beaten with a whip thirty times. You have to confess that you have slept with Mau." Then they tied her up to a pillar and they ordered her to be beaten thirty times by the whip. That is the kind of punishment used in the past. The whipping was very, very strong and the blood began to penetrate, to come out into the cloth of the young monk. But "he" did not give in. "He" said, "No, I am innocent, please reconsider." And after Mau saw that, she said, "Please, thirty lashes are enough." She felt pity for the young novice. Because she was the daughter of a wealthy family, her request had some weight. So they allowed the novice to go home. When they went back to the temple, other people wanted to take care of the young novice but the young novice said, "No I will take care of myself. I can make the bandage, I will take care of the wound on my body," because she did not want others to discover the fact that she was not a young man.

After taking care of the wounds inflicted on her by the whips, she presented herself to her teacher, and her teacher said, "My son, I don"t know, I"m not sure. I don"t know whether you have done it or not. I really don"t know. If you have done it, then I wish you would practice deeply the practice of Beginning Anew every day. And if you have not done it, please also practice forbearance-shanti-paramita-and try to find the joy in the practice." That was all of his teaching. And because of that, she was requested by other people in the temple to move into the gate of the temple and stay there, and not to stay together with other monks. You know, every temple has a triple gate, and the tower bell was very close to the triple gate, and now Kinh Tam was ordered to go and live alone in the triple gate so that the population of the village could not blame the sangha, because there was already suspicion.

I don"t know whether if I was the teacher of Kinh Tam I would allow her to continue to stay with me in the compound of the sangha. I don"t know, because my time is different and that was a very old time and people were still full of prejudices, and so on. And I would have had enough wisdom to know whether my student had done it or not because I always try to practice good communication with my students and with my insight, with my mindfulness, I would know that he has done it or not. Because I am not there to blame my student, I am there only to help him or her. So she would tell me the truth. When the baby was born, Mau did not know what to do. She did not want at all to tell people that this was a child coming from a servant. That would be very bad for the reputation of her n.o.ble family. To die was preferable to saying that she has slept with a servant. That was something she could not bear, and her family could not bear. You have made a mistake, you have done something wrong, but you have no courage to admit your wrongness and you blame other people-that is something that happens every day. So finally she brought the baby to the novice. She brought the baby to the triple gate of the temple and said, "Novice, this is your child. Why don"t you receive it?" Then she put it on the steps and she went away. When the baby started to cry, the novice said, "Well, now the child is abandoned. If I don"t take him, who will take him? I am practicing compa.s.sion and understanding. If I don"t take him and try to protect him, who will?" So he said, "Leave it to me!" And he picked up the baby.

[Bell]

The baby was hungry and the novice did not have milk. So she took the baby and went into the hamlet and tried to beg for some milk. Every day she had to go to the village and ask for some milk for her baby. There were people who were moved by the act of the young novice, but there were many people who said, "Well, how could he practice as a monk if he does things like this-sleeping with a woman and when the woman gave him the baby, accepting it, and now trying to raise the baby as a father. How can someone practice the Dharma in that way?" The novice felt that people didn"t understand her, and yet she continued to practice forbearance because she was able to feel the peace and the joy of living with the Dharma.

If she wanted to get rid of that injustice, it would not be very difficult-just declare to the village council and to her teacher that she is a girl. And a few minutes later she would be free from that kind of blaming, from that kind of suffering. Why hadn"t she done it? Because she loved the Dharma so much, she wanted so much to continue as a monk, that is why she did not give up. When you are in love with something very deeply, when you feel so much happiness with that object of your love, then you have the courage to bear all kinds of injustice. So being beaten, being misunderstood, being blamed by many people, she could still go on because she had the pleasure, the happiness, of being a monk, of practicing the Dharma.

In our days, there are people who live in the Sangha and who encounter some difficulties and think of leaving the Sangha. They don"t have that kind of forbearance. They cannot bear little injustices inflicted on them because their desire, their happiness is not large enough. Therefore the key is whether you love it a lot, you treasure it a lot, you want it a lot, whether your heart is huge or not. If your heart is small, then you cannot bear injustice inflicted on you. Understanding and love are what help your heart to grow bigger and bigger. That is the practice of the four unmeasurable hearts-loving kindness, compa.s.sion, joy, and equanimity. Because your heart can grow as big as the cosmos; the growth of your heart can never end. If you are like a big river, you can receive any amount of dirt-it will not affect you, and you are able to transform the dirt very easily.

In the Dharma talk in English preceding this one, I used that image offered by the Buddha. If you put an amount of dirt in a small container of water, then that water has to be thrown away, people cannot drink it. But if you throw that amount of dirt into a huge river, people in the city continue to drink from the river, because the river is so immense. There does not have to suffering because of that amount of dirt. Overnight that dirt will be transformed by the water, by the mud within the heart of the river. So if your heart is big as the river, you can receive any amount of injustice and still live with happiness, and you can transform overnight the injustices inflicted on you. If you still suffer, it means that your heart is still not large enough. That is the teaching of forbearance in Buddhism. You don"t try to bear, you don"t to suppress your suffering. You only practice in order for your heart to expand as big as a river. Then you don"t have to bear, you don"t have to suffer.

There are ways to make your heart big. That is the practice of looking deeply in order for you to understand. The moment when you understand, your compa.s.sion arises. And that compa.s.sion will allow you to go on, allow you not to suffer, not to look at other people with the eyes of irritation and hatred. That is the real practice of forbearance-you don"t have to suffer. Forbearance in the context of the Buddhist teaching is not to try to swallow the injustice, or to suppress the injustice, but to embrace it entirely with your big heart. So every morning you have to go to your heart, touch it, and ask, "My heart, my darling, have you grown overnight a little bit bigger?" We have to visit our heart every day in order to see whether our heart still continues to grow unlimited, to grow great. "Growing great" is the term used by Buddha while he was teaching about the four unmeasurable minds. Your heart of compa.s.sion becomes larger. It grows great all the time, your heart of loving kindness, your heart of joy, your heart of equanimity. OThat is why paramita paramita is sometimes translated by the term is sometimes translated by the term "[ph: vo que]." "[ph: vo que]." [Thay writes on blackboard] It means "the highest point, the limit." [Thay writes on blackboard] It means "the highest point, the limit." [ph: vo que] [ph: vo que] means "no point all highest or limit." "[ph: Que]" means extreme, like a means "no point all highest or limit." "[ph: Que]" means extreme, like a [ph: Ba kuk] [ph: Ba kuk], the northernmost or the southernmost tip of the earth called [ph: Ba kuk] [ph: Ba kuk]-north pole. It is an extreme, this is the limit. But how ur compa.s.sion, our loving kindness, our joy, our equanimity knows no limit-that is why these four minds are called "unmeasurable minds" because they always grow and grow, without stopping. They grow into a river, and then they grow into an ocean, and they continue. The more your heart becomes bigger and bigger, the easier you can bear, or accept, injustice without suffering.

A few days after the young monk received the baby and adopted him and tried to nourish him, he was summoned by his teacher: "My child, why have you done that? You have not slept with the lady, it is not your baby, but why have you received it? It does not seem that this is making a good reputation for our Sangha." I do not know whether, if I were the teacher I would do like him, very afraid of my prestige. But Kinh Tam bowed to him and said, "My dear teacher, I have learned in a sutra that if you build a stupa of seven stories, and if you build one thousand of them, the merit would not be as important as the merit of saving the life of a living being. That is why I have accepted this baby and try to bring it up." That is what the young monk told his teacher.

The novice learned to sing lullabies. So in the village they heard sometimes the big bell and the gatha, "Listen, listen, this wonderful sound brings me back to my true self. May the sound of this bell penetrate deep into the cosmos . . . ," and so on. And sometimes they could hear, "Sleep well, sleep well, my baby . . . . " These two things mingled with each other. I believe that the novice practiced well, singing the lullaby as well as the gatha, because both of them have the flavor of the Dharma in them.

When the little boy was grown up, Kinh Tam became very sick, and she knew that she would die in a few days. So she wrote a letter to her parents and she wrote down their exact address, and she told the boy that after her pa.s.sing away, he had to try his best to go back to her original village and present this letter to her mother and father. She also wrote a letter to her teacher. Two letters. After she pa.s.sed away, the boy did as he had been told. He went to the teacher and submitted the letter of his "father" and also he asked for the permission to depart in order to go to the original village of his "father." After reading the letter, the monk was very surprised so he asked two nuns to come to examine and all the nuns reported that the young novice was not a boy, but a girl. Then everyone was very surprised, and the monk sent a messenger to the head of the village. The head of the village was very surprised, also. So he convened a meeting and sent a delegation to the temple for the verification of the fact. After having verified that, he announced to the whole village the truth and asked the family of Mau, Color, to come and answer their questions.

And Mau"s wealthy family had to pay a very heavy kind of tax to the village, and they had to pay all the expenses of the funeral organized by the temple. In the Vietnamese poem written about the story we have the full text of the letter. Kinh Tam requested the forgiveness of her father and mother, saying that she had not told them where she had been because she desired so much to practice as a monk. She said that she practiced like that not only for herself, but for the whole family and for many living beings, and she hoped that they would understand and forgive her, and receive this young man as someone very close to the family although he is only an adopted child. Her parents cried a lot. It had been so many years without hearing anything from their daughter and suddenly this morning they received a letter announcing that she was no longer alive. So they cried a lot, and they set out for the Phap Van temple. They also told the former husband, Mr. Sung Tin, to come along. They spent many days traveling; and when they arrived at the temple, they saw the banner bearing their daughter"s name, and a very long procession. All the people in the village came to attend the funeral service. They were so moved, and many people were crying.

If you practice, you have to practice like that. That is the absolutely perfect way to practice. Even if injustices are inflicted on you, you continue to have a lot of energy, you continue the Way. You don"t blame anyone for your suffering. Practicing like that is real practice. When her family arrived, they partic.i.p.ated in the funeral service and were received as distinguished guests by the temple and the village. After that, the whole village organized a ceremony to transfer all the merits to Kinh Tam and to practice giai oan giai oan. Giai oan means "untie the injustice." And it was said at the end of the story that the Buddha appeared and announced that Kinh Tam had arrived in a state of enlightenment, and she was now acting as one manifested body of Avalokiteshvara. Her name is Quan Am Thi Kinh. She is a Vietnamese Avalokiteshvara and the story is known by everyone. In the temple, many people know the poem by heart and it is the perfect model for the practice of forbearance.

All of us feel at times that we are victims of injustice. We suffer so much injustice, even from the people we love. And we want to repair that injustice, we want to cry out. We want to practice untying the injustice that we have borne for so long in the past. That is why we are always ready to talk to other people about our suffering and the injustice we have suffered. Maybe deep in our heart, we want justice to be done by any kind of means. Maybe we want a military solution. Sometimes you want to use a gun. Sometimes you want to use a stick. Sometimes you want to use an army. As a nation, if you feel that you are a victim of injustice, you are tempted to use a military solution. But if you are not a nation, you are inclined to use other kinds of revenge-using sticks, hiring someone to beat the other person, using a gun, or you want to manipulate the situation, you want to use political means in order to repair your injustice.

But according to the teaching of the Buddha, you can only repair that injustice in you, you can only transcend it, by transforming it. The only way is to practice the four immeasurable minds-maitri, which is loving kindness; karuna karuna, which is compa.s.sion; mudita mudita, joy; and upeksha upeksha, equanimity. And in order to cultivate these four qualities, you have to use the practice of looking deeply, namely, calming and looking-samatha and and vipasyana vipasyana . You do your best to remain calm, to remain concentrated. You do your best to look deeply into the nature of your suffering, and suddenly understanding comes and your heart begins to expand. Suddenly you feel that you have the power to bear that injustice; you can survive with that, you can live with that, and you even can transform it. . You do your best to remain calm, to remain concentrated. You do your best to look deeply into the nature of your suffering, and suddenly understanding comes and your heart begins to expand. Suddenly you feel that you have the power to bear that injustice; you can survive with that, you can live with that, and you even can transform it.

The Buddha said that when you are struck by one arrow, you suffer. But if a second arrow comes exactly to the same spot, you suffer not twice, but maybe thirty times more. When you suffer something and you get angry, your suffering will be not only doubled, but thirty times more intense. You amplify your suffering by your ignorance, your anger, your frustration, your hatred. Why do you have to suffer that much? In fact, why do you have to receive the second arrow? With one arrow, and with some understanding and practice, you would not suffer much and you would be able to remove the arrow very soon. But because of our ignorance, our lack of practice, we become angry, we let hatred and despair overcome us-that is why our suffering has become unbearable. This is the teaching of the Buddha in the Samyutta Nikaya (Samyutta Nikaya: 4, 210) about the first arrow and the second arrow. The second arrow is ignorance. 4, 210) about the first arrow and the second arrow. The second arrow is ignorance.

The other day we used the image of a little child tearing apart a b.u.t.terfly. The little child does not know that doing that is inflicting a lot of injustice and suffering on the little insect. The little child just wants to play. He doesn"t know that tearing apart a b.u.t.terfly like this is making a living being suffer. The little child is doing it out of ignorance. When we tell the little child, "My darling, do you know that tonight the little b.u.t.terfly cannot go home to his parents? What if you cannot go back tonight to your parents? They would suffer a lot." If you tell a child that, the next time she will not tear a b.u.t.terfly with her two hands. She will be able to protect life. "Lord, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing." People make each other suffer, and they don"t know it. They act out of anger or hatred; they don"t have happiness within themselves. They are overwhelmed with ignorance, with hatred, with anger, and that is why they have made people around them suffer. And we may be doing the same thing, but we don"t know it.

[Bell].

It happens from time to time everywhere that a person will use a gun to kill people in a market place; suddenly in a high school someone with a gun just appears like that and kills three, four, five students without any reason at all. Your daughter, your son, goes to school as usual. And that morning it happens that it is your daughter who was killed by that crazy man. That is a form of injustice. And you might bear a lot of hatred toward that man. But if you look into that man and look deeply, you see that that man is full of craziness, that man is full of ignorance, that man is full of hatred, of alienation. When a man holds a gun and shoots at people like that without reason, there must be a reason. And people like him or like her, they do exist in the world. How could a man become like he is? How was his family, how was his society, how was his education? Did anyone take care of him at all? Of course, if we were there we would try our best to prevent him from continuing to kill other people. We are urged to act right away, put him in a situation where he cannot continue to harm people, even to lock him into a prison cell; we have to do that. But we have to do that with wisdom and compa.s.sion. We don"t do that with anger and hatred. We don"t do it out of the will to punish the man, because the man has been suffering a lot.

The Art of Healing Ourselves

Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on July 30, 1996 in Plum Village, France.

Thich Nhat Hanh.

Good Morning Dear Friends, Today is the thirtieth of July, 1996 and we are in the Upper Hamlet. Today is also the full moon day. Tonight I hope that the full moon will be there for all of us. If the sky is clear, I will be happy to invite you to sit with me on the platform of my hut under the moon.

We have been talking to the children about the twenty-first century. We want to prepare ourselves to be ready for the twenty-first century. We have been talking about how to make our home comfortable for the twenty-first century. We talked about a room in which we can practice peace, reconciliation with ourselves, where we can restore ourselves, where we can take refuge. We talked about a local park taken care of by twenty or thirty houses. We discussed how to make that park into a center of peace and joy for children and for adults.

I would like to continue, because it is our duty to practice looking deeply in order to make life more pleasant for ourselves and for those we love. I want to talk about a day of mindfulness-a day for each family and from time to time, for many families at the same time.

In Plum Village we have been doing things that are very exciting. We are preparing the chanting book for the twenty-first century. We have nearly finished it. We will have it printed just two years before the twenty-first century. We have also prepared a book of practice for the young novice of the twenty-first century. We have been preparing a lot and we do it with a lot of joy. So this matter of taking care of the twenty-first century, it has to be the job of everyone because we only have four years before the new century starts. And we have decided to climb the hill of the twenty-first century together in peace, with a lot of happiness.

[Bell]

One of the things we have talked about concerning the preparation for the new century is how to handle our garbage. Because during this twentieth century we have produced a lot of garbage, a lot of suffering. We have created a lot of war, created a lot of suffering, a lot of discrimination, a lot of death. If we don"t know how to take care of that garbage, the twenty-first century will not be pleasant. And we have only four years left to take care of our garbage. How to pile it up, how to transform it into compost, so that the flowers of the twenty-first century would have a chance to bloom? This is a big job and we have to do it together. We have to come together and practice looking deeply concerning how to handle the garbage we have produced. One person cannot do much.

[Bell]

Personally, I want the twenty-first century to be called the century of love. Because we desperately need love. The kind of love that will not produce suffering. There is a Buddha that is supposed to be born to us. His name is Maitreya. Maitri means love. So, Maitreya means Mr. Love. In order to prepare for that Buddha to come, we need time. We need to coordinate our efforts. Several times I have said that the new Buddha may not be in the form of one person. The new Buddha may take the form of a Sangha. The Sangha means community, community of practice. Naturally I myself and all my friends are working hard in order for the Buddha to come in the form of the community, Buddha as a Sangha.

The first element of love is maitri maitri, the willingness to bring happiness to the person we love, the people we love, and therefore to ourselves. Because we know that if the other person is happy then we will be happy also. The Buddha said when you wake up in the morning you ask yourself this question, "What can I do today to make my Sangha happy?" This is a good practice. What can I do today to make him happy? What can I do today to make her happy? What can I do today to make them happy? To make my Sangha happy? That is the first question we have to ask in the morning.

I would like to say something about this question. Because I think that to do something may bring happiness, but just to not do something is equally important. If you are able to refrain from doing something you can make many people happy. So the question might be put like this, "What can I refrain from doing today in order to make my Sangha happy?" Because in our daily life we might do things that make our beloved one suffer. Therefore just not to do it is good enough to make them happy. What can I do today to make the Sangha happy? What can I refrain from doing today in order to make my Sangha happy? This is a very good question. You have the willingness to love and to make people happy. You know that you"ll be happy if the other people are happy. No one questions your good will-you really want to love, you want to make people happy. So, you want to make it not only a wish but a reality. So you try to do something, or you try to not do something, in order for happiness to be possible.

The day of mindfulness we organize each week in our family may be a very good opportunity for us to learn to do this. A day of mindfulness is like a breathing room in our home. It"s something that a civilized family should practice. In the old time, people didn"t work on Sunday-I hope they still practice that. Sunday is not the day for you to work. In Plum Village we call Sat.u.r.day "lazy day." To be lazy, that"s not easy. You have to learn how to do it. On lazy days I used to ask people this question: "Dear friend, are you lazy enough?" To practice a lazy day is not easy, therefore we have to support each other in making it a real lazy day. Because we have the tendency to work hard, to be busy. A day of mindfulness, or maybe half a day of mindfulness, is what we have to do to increase the happiness in our family, in our society.

The question is how to organize that half-day or day of mindfulness so that everyone can enjoy it. It should not be hard practice. Because I don"t really like the word "hard" practice or "intensive" practice-I don"t know what it means, "intensive practice of meditation." When I drink a gla.s.s of water in mindfulness, I practice mindfulness of drinking, and I get a lot of joy and peace during the time of drinking a gla.s.s of water. But can I drink my gla.s.s of water intensively? No. It does not mean anything to me. To drink water you just drink it with mindfulness. The more you are mindful, the more the drinking becomes a pleasure. The problem is whether you drink it in mindfulness or not. The problem is not whether you drink it intensively or not intensively. The same thing is true with walking meditation. If you walk with mindfulness, your steps will bring you a lot of joy and peace. If you don"t, then there"s no joy and peace. It is not a matter of being intensive or not intensive.

So we need the intelligence of everyone in the family to make the day of mindfulness a very pleasant day. And a day of mindfulness, according to me, is a day when we practice what we can do for the happiness of our beloved ones. It is very crucial that everyone in the family, everyone in the community, practices together; otherwise it would be very difficult. Imagine a family of five people. Only one person wants to practice mindfulness. It is possible, but it is extremely difficult. So, if you are in a family where everyone agrees on the practice of a day of mindfulness, you are a very lucky person. And you have to use all your intelligence. You have to tell your father, your mother, your brothers and your sisters, how you would like to organize a day of mindfulness. I repeat, a day of mindfulness a week is something very civilized. Because we know that without peace, without calm, happiness would not be possible.

A day of mindfulness is a time when we practice and enjoy peace. Enjoy calm. Enjoy communication. It is not because you can talk a lot that you can communicate. It is because you are peaceful, calm-you have the capacity to listen deeply to the other person-that you can communicate. Therefore, in the day of mindfulness you don"t talk much. You practice listening deeply with your calm, with your peace and everyone is like that. That does not mean that joy will be diminished. In a day of mindfulness, even when people don"t talk a lot to each other, they communicate more with each other by many ways. It can be a very joyful and happy day. I think you will all agree with me that the lazy day each week here is a very nice day. Although we practice silence, this silence is very helpful. It helps communication. It is not oppressive.

What can I do to make the people I love happy? That is our practice in the day of mindfulness. To me, to make another person happy you have to practice being there. To practice being there that is the essence of Buddhist meditation. But perhaps during the week you are not there with the people you love. You are always absent, even if you are eating with them or watching television with them. You are not really there for them. You have not made your presence true and available to the people you love. To me to love means to be there for the person you love. It is very simple, but it is a very deep practice. In Buddhist meditation we learn how to breathe, how to walk, how to smile so that we be there entirely with our true presence, because that is the most precious thing that we can give to the people we love. When you go to your mother and you sit quietly close to her, and you look at her and you say, "Mommy, I am really here for you," you are practicing meditation, because you are truly there with the person you love.

[Bell]

The day of mindfulness therefore must be a day where members of the same family have to be really there for each other. That is the principle. How to do it? I rely on you to tell me. So we need to sit together and discover. The television companies who publicize their products say, "We bring people together." They mean that things like video tapes and television programs bring people together. I don"t believe this much because, as I see it, people who spend the day apart from each other and come home very tired don"t have time to be with each other. They turn on the television set and just get lost in that. So television does not bring people together.

What then can bring people together? I think a day of mindfulness. They practice being there for each other. This is very important. This is a kind of answer to the suffering of our time-to practice being there for ourselves and for the people we love; it is very important. In a meditation center like Plum Village we should learn methods of producing our true presence for ourselves and for the people we love. Practice mindful breathing. Practice quiet sitting, smiling. Practice walking meditation. Practice drinking a gla.s.s of water in mindfulness. Practice eating your lunch in mindfulness. All these are to produce your true presence. It is very important. Because that is the essence of love, to be there, available, for the people you love.

What can I do to make them happy? We"re talking about what we can do. But we don"t talk about how we can be. To do maybe is less important than to be. To be there, fresh and calm and loving. I think that is the foundation of love. What you can do is just of secondary importance. Therefore, to be there-calm, loving, fresh, is a very important practice. If meditation cannot help you to be there, to be calm, to be fresh for your beloved one, don"t practice meditation. It does not help. So practice meditation in such a way that you can be there really, with some calm, some peace, some freshness, and you know that your meditation practice is good meditation, good practice. That is the whole process of learning. If you have succeeded to some extent, you tell your brother and sister how you have done meditation-that you become more quiet, more released from your suffering, more present for your beloved one. I think that my discussion has to be focused on these practical methods.

I trust that you know how to share breakfast together in mindfulness, in joy. I know that there are people in the morning before starting off to work who eat their breakfast like everyone else. But, they don"t practice being there for the people who will be also away for the day. And whom they cannot see for many hours, maybe eight or ten hours. Instead of drinking their tea or their coffee mindfully and smiling to that person sitting across the table, they hold a newspaper like this and hide themselves behind the piece of paper. It is not very wise. It"s not very nice. So in a day of mindfulness we won"t do things like that. We won"t turn our television set on. We turn everything off, except one thing, our presence.

We turn our presence on, and beginning in the morning, when we wake up, we think: "What can I do to make them happy? What should I refrain from doing in order to make them happy?" Please answer these questions in detail, then you will know how to organize a beautiful day of mindfulness. Having breakfast together, that is an art. How to prepare your breakfast and how to sit down and enjoy breakfast together, I need many sessions of Dharma discussions in order to find it out. We would profit a lot from your collective deep looking, your knowledge, your experience about how to organize a breakfast where joy and peace and love can be possible. Give us a Dharma talk, give us a report, give us a Dharma discussion that helps us to learn how to do it. There are those of us who prepare our breakfast while following our in-breath and our out-breath, smiling to the bread, the milk, the muesli, and so on, and who are full of love in the heart. "I am making this breakfast for my Sangha. I am nourishing my Sangha because my Sangha is my body, the Sangha body." Even if the other brothers and sisters don"t contribute to making the breakfast, I would not be angry because I am preparing breakfast with love. So there"s no jealousy, there"s no rancor in my heart. During the time I prepare my breakfast, I am nourished with love. My Sangha is me, my Sangha is my body, therefore I prepare my breakfast with joy.

You may like to make a little bit of preparation beforehand. Tomorrow will be the day of mindfulness. Today you might already enjoy making a few preparations so that tomorrow would be wonderful. Maybe a few flowers for tomorrow, maybe a special tablecloth, maybe a loaf of special bread for tomorrow. You are motivated by the idea, by the desire, to be happy and to make your beloved one happy. Eating breakfast in such a way that happiness and love can be present. Then you may enjoy walking meditation in a park or just in the front yard. Everyone in the family should know how to walk in order to generate peace and joy and togetherness by walking. You don"t have to walk very long, you just walk the time you want to walk. And each step like that can bring you a lot of joy and peace and happiness.

If you want to invite a child from another family or a friend to join your day of mindfulness, please do it. Because you are motivated by the desire to make him or her happy with your mindfulness day. Many, many years ago-I think about twenty-five or thirty years ago-I wrote a little book where I proposed a day of mindfulness every week. A day when we have really the opportunity to practice attention, mindfulness, love, and care to ourselves and to the people we love. I think in the twenty-first century, to hold a day of mindfulness a week is a very civilized thing to do. Not only for the Buddhists, but for everyone. They may not call it a "day of mindfulness," but it must be of the same essence: cultivating peace, cultivating togetherness, cultivating the present moment. It is very important for our happiness.

Before the children go out and play, I would like to remind of them of the practice of visiting the Buddha that I have proposed to children in Holland-they love it. And if the adults want to practice, it"s okay also. Visiting the Buddha. The Buddha is within yourself, the real Buddha. The Buddha you see in the garden is a Buddha, but made with plaster, it"s not a real Buddha. When you bow to that Buddha, if you bow correctly, you touch the Buddha within. A real Buddha is not made of copper or gold or plaster-a real Buddha is made with mindfulness. Mindfulness carries understanding, peace, and l

Prev List Next