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As we come in touch with the newly blooming flowers and the rising bird-song of Spring, Sr. Từ Nghiêm guides us in inquiring: how may we offer Spring cleaning and renewal to our body, and to our mind? In this warm and image-rich talk, our elder sister shares practical and deep guidance about how to care for and refresh ourselves, and how to develop our compassion and our understanding as we walk the Bodhisattva path: the path of an “awakening being” who is learning to be of service to all life. She begins with the invitation to “stop”: to rest our body and mind, in order to touch the wonders of life and to be able to look deeply and see reality clearly. She offers us this haiku by Basho, which resonates with this moment of the year, and the spirit of her talk: Sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. She encourages us to see difficulties as an opportunity to grow our love, and our capacity– and not to lose sight of the beautiful and wondrous things that are still present inside us and around us. She gently reminds us, “the birds are still singing” You can support us by donating: https://plumvillage.org/support

In this Dharma talk offered on 17th January 2021, Sister Boi Nghiem (Sister True Pearl) teases apart the light and shadow constructs of ‘normality’. By looking deeply at the Vietnamese words, bình thường (normal), we can see the light elements of bình as peace (bình an), calm (bình tĩnh) or recovery (bình phục) and the shadow elements of thường as abnormal (bất thường), strange (lạ thường) or low (tầm thường). Observing our patterned way of thinking can awaken us to these contrasting elements that we define as normal. This awareness can challenge us when normality leads to fear, e.g. systemic racism, or leads to recovery, e.g. witnessing the daily miracles of life. When Thay teaches us about Right Thinking in his book, “The Heart of the Buddha’s Thinking”, he asks us to pose the question, “Are You Sure”, when observing our mental formations. In this way, we can tease apart the elements of ‘normal’ and do a course correction if we are normalizing the abnormal. This can mindfully return us to the bình side of normal….to a place of clarity and peace. Through Sister Boi Nghiem’s intimate, poignant and delightful personal stories, we can learn to embrace our normal, ordinary, daily occurrences and transform them into present-moment miracles. We can then be careful of our conclusions of others and see the Buddha in everyone. The video version of this talk is available on the Plum Village YouTube Channel. You can support us by donating: https://plumvillage.org/support

“For me, hope is right now. We can realize the virtue of hope by dwelling in the present moment.” In this talk, offered on the eve of New Year’s Day 2021, Sister Chân Đức shares about the path of True Love, with the four elements of lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness. This is a great gift which we offer to ourselves, our relationships and community, and Mother Earth. By cultivating the seeds of True Love that are available to us in the present moment, we can ensure a beautiful future. Sr. Chân Đức is a senior Dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition. https://plumvillage.org/monastics/dharma-teachers/sr-chan-duc/ *** You can support us by donating: https://plumvillage.org/support

This talk was offered on 3rd December 2020. Where can we go to be truly safe in the most difficult moments? Do we know how to come back to that safe place and dwell there whenever we need? In the “Discourse on Taking Refuge in Oneself”, the Buddha encouraged his students to “return to yourself in order to take refuge in the Dharma, and not to take refuge in any other island or thing.” (https://wkup.org/discourse-on-taking-refuge-in-oneself/) In this clear, timely, and powerful talk, our respected elder sister Chân Đức explores how we cultivate such an island of safety within ourselves so that it is available to us whenever we need it. We often look outside ourselves to find a refuge, she says, but if we are not stable and solid in ourselves, nothing outside of us can offer that solidity to us. Sr. Chân Đức describes how, like a turtle retracting its four limbs, its head and its tail, we can guard our six sense doors (five physical senses and mind) and come back to mindfulness of our breathing and our body. Doing this, our mind is protected and concentrated. She shares how, with concentration, we can train to see the impermanent and “signless” nature of all phenomena (everything we can perceive), including our own joy and pain. In this way we no longer take refuge in false views of ourselves and the world, and our direct contact with reality (insight) returns us to our inner island of true freedom and solidity. * * Registration is open now for end-of-the-year Online Retreats: www.plumvillage.org/retreats You can support us by: donating: https://plumvillage.org/support

How can we be sovereign in our own life? How can we be free, & free from discrimination? Community life can be uncomfortable, and impossible to control: so why do we choose it? How can we help a loved one navigate the process of dying? How can community help? In this panel sharing from December 6th 2020, three Plum Village Dharma teachers share from their heart about their practice during the past 10 weeks of the 2020 Autumn Rains Retreat. They reflect what it’s like to live in community, especially during difficult times. They share insightfully and engagingly on a number of topics, including: — How they practice to arrive in the present moment, to be available to the wonders of life. And how they establish their sovereignty, to be able to respond to life from intentionality and wisdom. — How they practice to embrace and look deeply into suffering, within them and around them. — What they find most helpful about living in a community that lives in simplicity and mindfulness. — How they practice to stop building “castles in the sky”, projecting into the future to try to construct a desired identity and a space of control and comfort. — The nature of true freedom, and the role of social “pressures”, expectations and norms, in society and in an intentional community. — How our perceptions, and language itself, lie at the root of our tendency to discriminate. How we can begin to unravel this in our daily life, such as the way we read news. — How to find common ground in order to be able to understand and accept the differing views and visions of others

Sister Tuệ Nghiêm offered a Live Dharma Talk on Sunday, 29 November, the second-to-last of our 3-month Autumn Rains Retreat, 2020.

This talk was given on the 12th of September, 2020 in Solidity Hamlet at Deer Park Monastery. You can support us by donating at https://plumvillage.org/support.

In this clear and memorable Dharma talk, our elder sister explores the nature of truth and asks, What can we rely on? She examines racism and misinformation, and identifies a vaccine: ‘deep looking’ into the reality of interbeing, which is present in our own bodies in a wonderful way. Sr. Thuận Nghiêm shares teachings on the ‘Two Levels of truth’, ‘The Four Criteria’ (or ‘Standards of Truth’, siddhantha), and ‘The Four Reliances’. She applies them to the challenges we face in our daily lives and in our society. How can we love and understand ourselves and others, recognizing our deep interdependence? How can we take in news in a way that informs and nourishes us? This morning’s Dharma Talk references a few paragraphs of this article, by British-American journalist Nick Bryant.

This talk was given at Deer Park Monastery at the start of the annual 90-Day Retreat.

Which actions in our daily life nourish lasting happiness? Which of them contain seeds of suffering for ourselves and others? How can we understand this more clearly, and what does this have to do with the deepest fruit of mindfulness practice, Right View? In this talk, our respected elder Sr. Chân Đức carefully explains the Four Noble Truths. She helps us understand the relationship between “collective” and “individual” suffering as well as their roots. She draws on the “Discourse on Right View” (Majjhima Nikaya 9) to illuminate the connection between Right View, the actions of our daily life, and the suffering and happiness which they bring about. In this Discourse, the Buddha’s chief disciple Venerable Sariputra shares that “Right View is to understand the roots of the wholesome and the unwholesome”. Sr. Chân Đức explains that “wholesome” and “unwholesome” here can be understood in terms of the Five Mindfulness Trainings (https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/the-5-mindfulness-trainings/), whose essence can be found with surprising universality across many faith traditions from both East and West. She shares that to “understand” means to be truly “aware of the suffering [or happiness] caused by” particular actions. With this kind of understanding, we aren’t caught in black-and-white moral categories, to which we assign different actions. Rather, we are able to see deeply and clearly the effect of an action in its full context and complexity. Sr. Chân Đức tells us that when Sariputra was asked to share further about Right View, he explained that “Right View is to understand the Four Nutriments”: namely, edible food, sense impressions, volition, and [collective] consciousness. Our sister invites us to reflect carefully on which aspects of our daily lives nourish our happiness, and which bring about suffering. She shares her own experience of “storing up wood for the winter”: by being in touch with the wonders of life available in the present moment, we create a reserve of happy memories which can nourish and sustain us later in difficult moments. Sr. Chân Đức offers us the words to a song she composed based on the Avatamsaka Sutra, in which she likens the mind to a painter that paints our world. She shares that for her, rather than making life less wondrous, the awareness that the world comes mostly from our mind actually deepens her appreciation and enjoyment of its mystery and beauty. She shares how this awareness has empowered her to take care of her own periods of episodic depression, by recognizing both the triggers of the depression and its roots in her own way of perceiving and responding to those triggers. She explains further how listening deeply with this kind of compassionate understanding can help us heal our relationships, and contribute to broader healing in our society. To conclude, she sings for us this simple and touching song: “The mind is painting a picture The mind is painting a picture of sunshine and showers The mind is painting a picture of days and hours The mind is painting The mind is enjoying The mind is painting a picture of living and dying The mind is painting a picture of laughing and crying The mind is painting The mind is enjoying And all is here in this moment A fleeting lifetime encapsulating thousands and thousands of ages We touch the Earth We reach the sky”

Brother Pháp Hữu’s name means “Dharma friend”. In this live talk, the first of our 3-month Autumn Rains Retreat, Brother Pháp Hữu speaks to us about how to be a true friend, and how to live in harmony with those around us in our family and community. He shares that as monks and nuns in the monastic community, we learn how to live as a drop of water flowing with the river of the community. He reminds us that every drop of water is important: the elders at the front show the way, but the young drops also offer their fresh energy from behind to help the river move forward. Brother Pháp Hữu shares several intimate and funny stories about his time as an attendant of Thầy (Thich Nhat Hanh) and as a young vice-abbott and abbott of Upper Hamlet. We learn about Thầy’s work to renew Buddhism, to make it simpler and more relevant to our times– and why Thầy says the work is not done. And from Brother Pháp Hữu’s story about being a vice-abbott at the age of only 20, we learn the importance of mindful breathing to develop our solidity, whether we are leading an important meeting or simply being there for ourselves or offering our presence for our loved ones.

What actions can we take to help bring about healing within ourselves and around us? How do we regain our sovereignty in moments of difficulty? (5:05 – ~10:00) Do we see a craving inside of ourselves for normalcy? How can we take this moment as an opportunity to realign our sense of ‘normal’? (12:50 – ~18:00) Sister Lang Nghiem shares her own experiences, challenges, and practice living in community in recent months, and offers us several models for acting with insight, compassion, and courage, especially in times of turbulence, uncertainty, and challenge. She shares about each of the five bodhisattvas represented in a sutra called “Invoking the Bodhisattva’s Names”. (Introduction at 25:30, Invocation begins at 33:00 ) The Bodhisattvas embody energies present in each of us, which we can cultivate and call up in the midst of the challenges of our daily life: Compassion– Avalokiteshvara Understanding– Manjushri Action– Samantabhadra Aspiration– Kshitigarba Reverence — Sadhaparibhuta You can support us by: – donating: https://plumvillage.org/support – helping to caption & translate: https://amara.org/en/profiles/videos/plumvillage/ or http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_panel?tab=2&c=UCcv7KJIAsiddB2YRegvrF7g Help us caption & translate this video! https://amara.org/v/C13qA/

How do we engage with the present moment with both clear-eyed awareness and open-hearted kindness? What kind of mindfulness practice brings us understanding, and has the capacity to relieve suffering in ourselves and others? Brother Hue Truc playfully refers to his talk as a User Manual for mindfulness practice, with a long Troubleshooting section. At the same time, he says, all that practical guidance is offered with acknowledgment of the mystery and uncertainties we meet along the journey to understanding, and an invitation to relate to our experience with openness, curiosity, and responsive flexibility. Brother Hue Truc structures his talk along the lines of the Four Establishments of Mindfulness taught by the Buddha in the foundational “Sattipatthana Sutra”. With humility and kindness, he describes his own experiences and challenges as he has practiced mindfulness, and some of the questions and trainings that he uses to anchor and direct himself. “What is practice and what is not?” “Where does this state of mind lead?” “How does this feel?” He invites us to be aware both of the felt experience of the moment, and how we are relating to it. He shares that when he pays attention to what is right in front of him, and allows himself to feel it, his body and mind seem to learn from such experience, even if that learning is subconscious. Therefore much of our work as practitioners is to take care of our mental attitude, continually returning to kindness, openness, and responsiveness to what we find– and trusting in the capacity of our own mind and body to learn. “How do I come in contact with this experience in this moment, allow it to be, and learn something out of it?”

Brother Ngo Khong shares about habit energies, strong emotions and how to transform them.

“Even if you don’t call yourself an environmentalist but you take good care of your body, then you are taking good care of Mother Earth. Some people say that they lose trust in their body when they become sick, but I gain trust in my body when I become sick. It is a chance for me to come back and look deeply into my body. Now we are going through a pandemic, which certainly has something to do with how we are living on the Earth. Will we change the way we live on the Earth?” Sr. Chân Đức speaks about accepting unpleasant feelings as part of life, how everything is always in a wondrous state of change, and how we can practice in moments of uncertainty to see that we already have more than enough conditions to be happy.

These days, our attention is focused on the tightening restrictions to our daily lives, or on the people working the frontlines and putting their lives at risk. In doing so, we have forgotten another life-changing event that is about to happen for teenagers across the country, and around the world: high school graduation. In this talk, we explore how – even in the midst of great uncertainty and upheaval – you can still be the people you planned to be after graduating – you can still change the world for the better. There are new ways, undiscovered ways, to implement the diplomas you will soon receive. And you don’t have to walk across a stage to get your diploma, or dance it out at prom to feel the culmination of growing up together. There are ways that you can shine that you may not have anticipated, and society itself didn’t see coming – but now is the time to shine brightly and for the benefit of everyone around you. You as a generation have been through crisis not once but many times. In fact, you are already strong – stronger than you think you are. And this moment is an opportunity to build on that strength that is already a part of you, to add to it a soft and kind-hearted awareness that this is a new kind of togetherness that we now have the opportunity to embrace. History will remember you as heroes or sheroes for your strength and resilience, for cherishing what is most important and making a future possible.

This talk was given to a monastic audience on a day of mindfulness closed due to coronavirus. Guided meditation from Joanna Macy’s “World as Lover, World as Self”.

“Buddha field: a field of awakening, the country of the present moment. When we think about Plum Village we feel joyful already. Even if we are not physically here—maybe we’re watching this online—but we feel like we’re getting in touch with the ‘Buddha ksetra’: a kind of field of awakening. It’s not only the words of the talk, or that particular monk or nun who is giving the talk, but it is rather feeling connected to a field of awakening, a place where this is understanding and compassion, where people smile to each another, people have hope and understanding—the kind of place where I think we would all like to live. When we think about Plum Village we think about a place like that, and that place is already there in our heart. The possibility of removing the dagger in our heart is suddenly manifested, because we see that happiness is possible, joy is possible.”