Bringing the Practice and the Pure Land to People in All Walks of Life

Over the past 30 years, Plum Village has offered many, many retreats to bring this portable Pure Land -- based on the practice of meditation techniques from original Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhist ideals of service, and concrete practices from Zen Buddhism -- to every corner of society. We are in the process of creating a new book about this work of engaged Buddhism, which we will summarize here.

Summer and other regular retreats

Every year, Plum Village organizes a four-week summer opening which attracts thousands of people -- old and young, couples, families with children, etc. -- from more than 40 countries to come and practice with us. The retreatants are required to stay for at least one week so they can really stop and calm themselves, for transformation to be possible. Every week, Thay, plus one other dharma teacher in rotation, each give one dharma talk each day, in languages that rotate between English, French, and Vietnamese with simultaneous translation into many languages including German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. People are guided in different practices like sitting meditation, listening to the bell, walking meditation, awareness of breathing, deep relaxation, touching the Earth (prostrations), listening to dharma talks, watering positive seeds in their alaya vijnana, recognizing and transforming negative habit energies, communicating compassionately with their loved ones, practicing Beginning Anew to express skillfully their difficulties with their beloved, stopping and looking deeply. (For more details on our more innovative practices such as listening to the bell, touching the Earth, Beginning Anew, and hugging meditation, see Appendix 7 for excerpts from our orientation booklet describing these practices.)

One of the strongest aspects of Plum Village practice is the dharma discussion, in which our lay friends meet in a smaller group and share their joys and their difficulties with other members of the sangha. We have learned that the power of deep listening by the sangha -- truly being there, present, in silence and allowing the person to share deeply from their heart -- brings a great deal of healing and deep transformation to our retreatants. We also have in each week a festival, in which retreatants can express themselves, enjoy the present moment, and recognize and cultivate the seeds of joy in themselves together with the community.  

The majority of new retreatants request formal transmission of the Five Mindfulness Trainings and commit themselves to bringing the practice back home with them. They are encouraged to come together to recite the precepts regularly to keep the practice growing. Many people begin to have the seeds of bodhisattvas flowering in them and join an existing local sangha, or start a new one.

In Plum Village, we offer our lay friends a considerable amount of contact to learn from our monastics. We do not hire staff to work for us; all the monks and nuns organize themselves and the lay retreatants into different working teams to make the retreat possible. Working alongside the monastics as they practice mindfully walking, working, listening deeply, and using loving speech, the lay people receive the dharma in a very natural way.   Monastics also offer consultations to lay friends who need more specific guidance in dealing with very difficult situations in their lives, such as divorce, conflict among family members, physical or sexual abuse, death, grief and severe depression.

In Plum Village, we believe that the dharma is not complicated; it can be easily accessible, even to children. In the first twenty minutes of each of his dharma talks in the summer, Thay introduces an aspect of practice to children in a very gentle and simple way that the children can understand. The children are seated in the very front rows of the Dharma hall, to help Thay give the most appropriate teachings by receiving their attention directly. We have seen that children are capable of receiving the Dharma even more naturally than adults, who come with a lot of their own knowledge and life experience which can prevent them from fully receiving the Buddha’s teachings.  

Later, in groups, we share with the children ways of implementing the teachings offered in the morning, through various activities. We usually share about the importance of fostering a sense of inclusiveness among the group of children, and a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood. We start with a “core” group of children who already have practiced in Plum Village for some years; they help guide the other children by playing the role of elders taking care of the younger ones. This helps create strong bonds among the members of the group, as well as mutual recognition of each other’s values and talents. Everyone is offered a space to express himself and to be listened to, thus recovering a sense of social integration often lacking among the children in the West. We always use stories and different kinds of play to convey the essence of the practice to the young ones.

The practice of the pebble meditation is a very effective one that is always introduced to the children in a Dharma talk. We go for a walk, searching for four nice pebbles for each person. These pebbles will represent, respectively, a flower, a mountain, water, and space. Each of these four elements symbolizes a quality that helps guide our sitting meditation and make it more vivid. The flower represents the capacity for freshness within us; the mountain, our solidity; water, the clear mirroring of every thing just as it is; and space, the freedom that we experience in meditation.

We also transmit the two trainings for children, also called the “Two Promises” (see Appendix 8). These are the two main precepts about developing understanding and compassion to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. At the beginning of the same weekly ceremony in which adults will receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings, children formally take refuge in the Three Jewels and receive the Two Promises in the presence of their parents, friends and the whole Sangha.

Singing practice is another important and joyful aspect of our community, and it allows children to incorporate the practice easily through singing dharma songs about breathing in and out and seeing oneself as a fresh flower, a solid mountain, and so on.

We try to create opportunities for parents and children to implement the practice together, planting seeds for them to continue their practice back home. Practices such as inviting the bell to sound and listening deeply to the bell, walking meditation, eating in silence, juice & tea meditation, and Beginning Anew (“watering”  the  “flowers”  in  one  another), help families a great deal to recover and strengthen harmony and trust. In fact, we feel it is crucial to involve the parents in the program as much as possible.

At the beginning of their week in Plum Village, many children who have come for the first time are shocked and upset to be in a place with no television or electronic games. By the end of the week, many do not want to leave Plum Village at all, and they want to come back. Upon returning home, they often help their parents come back to their practice, e.g. by inviting a bell to sound when a difficult or tense situation arises in the family.

For teenagers, we encourage them to reflect, before and immediately after their arrival in Plum Village, about what they may be seeking in coming here and what is relevant and meaningful in their lives or in a path of practice. We do our best to help them feel at ease, such as by housing them together in a large room and/or special camping area reserved just for them. We invite them to join the Sangha’s work by  watering our small trees, bushes and flowers, working in small groups every evening after dinner. This helps them to have a sense of sisterhood/brotherhood, responsibility and solidarity, as well as a feeling that they are really at home and can help care for that home. In our contacts with teenagers and young adults, we have observed how much they need to feel responsible and trusted. Teens likewise appreciate being involved in decisions regarding the group. They like, for example, to help make decisions on the schedule they will be following for the retreat.  

Every morning after the first Dharma talk, teen boys and girls are together in one group. We play games, share dharma discussions, or go for a mindful walk. In the afternoons and evenings, teen boys and girls each practice and play in their own respective groups. We nurture our mindfulness and joy by doing artwork together, singing, and being out in nature. Artwork is especially appropriate at the end of the week as a way of encouraging teens to express the experiences and feelings that they had during their time in Plum Village. We call upon our adult retreatants with experience in art, theater, dance, music and many other endeavors, to come and share their skills with the teens. We also may like to share concrete practices for relating well with our parents and improving communication.

A few examples of activities we share with teens:

- Arranging a space together in a hut, making it our own by contributing decorations and artistic creations. We go out for a walk and pick up elements from Nature, then go back to the hut and sit down in a circle. We share what the piece of nature that we brought back means for us. We may invite each person to make a vow or wish or prayer associated with the gift that Mother Earth provided us, whether the vow is expressed silently inside of us, aloud, or written on a piece of paper. Then we place our sacred object on a table where there are flowers, fruits, candles and incense; the whole ensemble becomes an altar.

- “Dharma drama”: play-acting something that has been shared in the group or in the Dharma Talk concerning communication, deep listening, loving speech, etc. We could write down proposed themes on pieces of paper and then pass a basket containing the papers around the circle for everyone to pick a subject. Groups of at least three people may be formed for sharing a skit.

- An outing to a nearby lake is a very important time for teens to spend time together joyfully, outside the monastery. The group has an opportunity to relate to one another and especially to the staff in a very informal way. It is a good chance for teens to play together and then sit down for sharing, and the sharing may come from a deeper place with much sincerity. This is also a very appropriate time to practice “flower watering” in a Beginning Anew session towards the end of the week.

We have been relying  on  “seed  teens,” teenagers who are already strong in the practice and want to participate in the program as part of the staff. They are a very useful bridge between the monastery and the young people coming in from the world outside, promoting good communication and understanding within the group. They are like a kind of glue bonding the different participants in the program, since they are both teenagers and practitioners.

One of the main challenges to keeping a group unified is the language barrier. Affinity groups naturally do form around shared languages; but that doesn’t prevent  the possibility of interactions between these groups -- hence the importance of shared activities involving everyone at the same time, such as dharma discussion and mealtimes. It is crucial to provide as much translation as possible, because this is what helps the group to connect by sharing the same reality.

In addition to the large summer retreats, Plum Village offers ongoing opportunities for retreat throughout the year for lay friends to come and practice with us. Every two years, we offer a 21-day retreat with daily talks by Thay in English, going deeply into a particular area of teaching and practice. Many long-term, experienced practitioners, Dharma teachers and Order of Interbeing members come to these retreats. This coming June, Thay and the sangha will offer a 21-day  retreat,  “The  Breath  of  the  Buddha.”