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dhar ma TALK Mindfulness trainings, the fourth paramita, are characterized in the Eightfold Path by right speech, right action or conduct, and right livelihood. The first role of the mindfulness trainings is creating stability and safety in and around ourselves. You know, it is very difficult to reach tranquility and profound insight in sitting meditation if you’re constantly looking out the window to see if your neighbor is looking for you with a gun because you stole his chicken! [Laughter] The first function of virtue is to create stability in ourselves, so we can calm down. So the sand in the glass can settle at the bottom. Mindfulness trainings are the ground upon which awakening can occur. And they are also evidence of the awakening. They’re both. But it’s a journey. The first step in practicing the mindfulness trainings is to notice your own behavior. Not improving yourself. The first step is noticing yourself with gentleness, with compassion. And the second step is slowly beginning to try to shift the pattern. The third step is healing the pattern. And the fourth step is transforming the pattern. Most of us want to go from step one to step four. Be compassionate with yourself. The key is to continue to practice. Mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful eating. There’s also a secret of the Eightfold Path that’s not written down. It’s called right association. During a retreat last summer one of the children asked Thay, how did he get so peaceful And Thay said, “Well, first I wanted to be peaceful. Second, I had an image of what that might be like.” And he referred to a time when, as a young person he saw his first picture of the Buddha sitting mindfully on the grass. “Third, I surrounded myself with peaceful people. Fourth, I added to that an environment that would support my practice of peace.” Right association. Many of us want more peace, but our associations are not peaceful. We have to take charge, and create the environment that cares for us, that supports us, that will sustain us in becoming real human beings. We have to learn to set boundaries that protect our practice. We have to learn to protect ourselves from others with gentleness and kindness, with kind caring. Meditation is the fifth paramita that takes us to the other shore. And the other shore is always right here, right now. The practice of meditation is not an escape from life, it’s an escape into life. The classical description of meditation is the practice of stopping, calming, and achieving tranquility, stillness of mind, imperturbability. And the practice of deep seeing, deep looking into life, vipassanya, insight. This must occur for that to occur, and of course they inter-are, as Thay would say. But most of us want insight without stopping, without calming. For example it’s not that we aren’t smart enough to solve the problem of education in America, it’s that we haven’t meditated on it. We haven’t stopped long enough to settle down, to calm ourselves, and to look deeply into it. Sometimes at Plum Village Palestinians and Israelis gather together. Because the first part of the peace process is about peace with oneself, they’ll spend several days sitting and walking and eating mindfully, and only later will they start to talk about peace with each other. It’s only a political problem because it’s a spiritual problem. Einstein said the same level of consciousness that created a problem can’t solve the problem. You can only reinforce the problem with that kind of thinking. It’s astounding what can happen through spiritual practice, when, eye-to-eye across the table, father-to-father, son-to-son, daughter-to-daughter, mother-to-mother, all of a sudden we see each other’s children lying in the street and we get it! We get it in the very cells of our body, the possibility of being a real human being, and we know real human beings are not warmongers, that real human beings are not driven by revenge and prejudice. Revenge and prejudice and war are dark clouds floating across the sky of a real human being. Meditation: stopping and calming and looking deeply into life. Meditation: sitting and walking and eating and lying down. Meditation is more than stress reduction. The purpose of meditation is to transform the quality of our minds. We say we want peace in the world, but we don’t have minds capable of it. We wish people were more kind, but we don’t train our minds to be more kind. Master Tang Hoi from Vietnam used to say that meditation is the process, the practice, of eliminating those clouds in the blue sky that is our mind. Right view, right understanding, is paramita number six. The realization of perfect understanding is the bodhisattva’s only career. It’s very important that all these practices are done with wisdom. Generosity without wisdom, without understanding, is pity. Generosity without right understanding means you’ve died for the wrong cause. History’s full of examples of that tragedy. Right view is detachment from views. It doesn’t mean we don’t have views. It means when we have views we know that that’s what they are, just views. Opinions are easy to come by; most of us have opinions that are created by our culture. We have opinions created by our family, by our ancestors, about ourselves and about each other, and we think they are our own. Right view is insight. Right view, right understanding, is about moving from the shore of speculation into the shore of direct perception. To practice developing insight into life, our whole life long, The way of the bodhisattva is the way of the real human being. It is the way, as Thay would say, of walking with our Buddha feet, so that with every step we enjoy the miracle of being in the present moment. We touch the Pure Land of the Buddha, the Kingdom of God with every step–that’s where we live. With our Buddha eyes, everywhere we look we see wonder. 24 Summer 2004
dhar ma TALK “ Avalokiteshvara is a holy person, but holiness is not something we find only in certain persons. Everywhere that there is mindfulness, concentration, and insight there is the element of holiness. So when we take the qualities of Avalokiteshvara as the object of our mindfulness, then the element of holiness arises in us too. With Avalokiteshvara as “ our refuge and protection, we reach the shore of non-fear, no longer afraid of danger or suffering, no longer in fear of death. Thich Nhat Hanh, Opening the Heart of the Cosmos Violence is a dark cloud fl oating across the blue sky of a real human being. My mind is a clear blue sky The thoughts come, the thoughts go And my mind is a clear blue sky photo by Robert Sorrell the Mindfulness Bell 25
Page 1: Summer 2004 A Journal of the Art of
Page 4 and 5: ISSUE NO. 36 - SUMMER 2004 Contents
Page 6 and 7: dhar ma TALK photo by Suzanne Ander
Page 8 and 9: dhar ma TALK most—a set of ideas,
Page 10 and 11: dhar ma TALK was not kind to you an
Page 12 and 13: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT Fruit
Page 14 and 15: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT Deer
Page 16 and 17: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT The O
Page 18 and 19: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT Mindf
Page 20 and 21: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT Dixon
Page 22 and 23: dhar ma TALK The Path of the Bodhis
Page 24 and 25: dhar ma TALK Our practice is to wat
Page 28 and 29: dhar ma TALK Bodhisattvas in the Su
Page 30 and 31: going to war. We had just finished
Page 32 and 33: anger, and violence in you. The way
Page 34 and 35: young people’s PRACTICE Welcoming
Page 36 and 37: young people’s PRACTICE Teens, Yo
Page 38 and 39: lue SKY Cultivating Our Blue Sky Na
Page 40 and 41: lue SKY the moment. For some, tears
Page 42 and 43: sangha PRACTICE The Sound of the Be
Page 44 and 45: sangha PRACTICE Mentoring Reflectio
Page 46 and 47: sangha PRACTICE Our Father’s Day
Page 48 and 49: • We need skilled and unskilled l
Page 50 and 51: mindfulness BELL 48 Summer 2004

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