Transcript of Dharma Talk by
Bhikkhu Phap An in
Hong Kong
25 May 2008
Transcribed by Terence Chan
25 May, 2008
Respected brothers and sisters, I would like to invite everyone to sit straight and we will invite three sounds of the bell.
Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.
Breathing out, I know I am breathing out.
In, Out.
Breathing in, I am aware of my in-breath, from the beginning to the end.
Breathing out, I am aware of my out-breath, from the beginning to the end.
In, I follow the whole length of my in-breath.
Out, I follow the whole length of my out-breath.
Breathing in, I am listening to the rain.
Breathing out, I am feeling very peaceful.
In, listening to the rain.
Out, feeling very peaceful.
Respected brothers and sisters, it would have been nice to listen to the rain for two hours. Usually I am very lazy to talk. In reality, for Buddhist practice we just learn one or two practices and we just try and live with it for the rest of our lives. That is enough. Intellectual knowledge can be fulfilling from time to time, but in facing the reality of our dailies lives, it can sometimes be an obstacle.
On the day we left Hanoi to come to Hong Kong for this retreat we came to our teacher, Master Thich Nhat Hanh, we bow to him and say goodbye. He reminds me that in Plum Village tradition it is our practice that is more important. Perhaps he knows that I have a tendency to go to the intellectual realm. So he says stay with the practice, don’t talk about the history. And Sister Chan Kong was sitting nearby having breakfast with Thay and the sangha, and she says Thay Phap An gives a good dharma talk, but he sometimes gets too intellectual; sometimes he can be long unnecessarily. So in the next 4 or 5 days that we are together, if you listen to me and you need to fall asleep it is OK. The retreat is an opportunity for us to relax, to enjoy our time. If you have been sitting for too long or listening for too long and you feel tired, please feel free to just lie down and do the Total Relaxation exercise. Don’t worry about it. The most important time in the retreat is not in the dharma talk, but time outside. Outside the dharma talk we practice in a way that we can maintain our practice. We can return to our breath to enjoy the present moment that is the most important thing. Our training is continuous and persistent throughput the day, like we are cooking potatoes. We need to turn on the fire. After the water is boiled we turn down the fire and we allow the potatoes to simmer and allow it to be cooked. The most dharma talk can give you is to give you inspiration, just like turning on the high fire. You have to do the simmering for the whole day. For the next 4-5 days we try to cook our potatoes. Some of us enjoy happiness and that is very good. Some of us might have a little bit of difficulty in your heart and we practice in a way to turn our difficulties into happiness. The practice of Buddhism is the practice of being joyful of being happy. Learn to smile throughout the day and throughout the retreat. We have been in HK for a few days now. We had the chance to go out to the city. Many times I ask myself: is it possible for people in the street to practice mindfulness? When I was in the shopping mall or during the traffic jam I felt a high force of energy pushing me around. I was standing there and people hit me back and forth, and then I try to find the way. I was quite confused in the shopping mall and did not really know my direction anymore. In addition to that it is difficult to be in the market. We feel embarrassed because a monk shouldn’t go to the shopping mall. When people look at me I don’t know where to hide my face. I feel so much love for the people around who seem to rush in some direction into the future. Everyone is in such a hurry to go forward. I wonder where everyone is going? Some Zen master said people are hurrying to their graveyard. The fact is that our final destination is the graveyard. Everyone, whether 10, 20, 50 years from now … we all go the graveyard. He says why do we have to hurry to the graveyard. That is our final destination. It is more joyful to be here to be in the present, to stop. At the beginning of the dharma talk we were sitting here and everyone is able to sit peacefully to enjoy our breath, listening to the rain. It feels so peaceful. I am very happy. Before I continue I would like to ask: who among us are the first time in a Plum Village retreat. I ask so that I know that I can cover the basic practice for you all. In Plum Village one of Thay’s most important teaching is: I have arrived. He wrote a gatha called I Have Arrived, I Am Home, which together we have learnt to chant or sing in the last few days. I would like to invite everyone to sing that song and then I would like to talk about its meaning.
Singing the song in English and then Chinese.
This gatha is one important gatha. It summarises the whole teaching of Plum Village. It is the essence of Thay’s practice, after 60 years or so of practicing Buddhism. If we can learn this gatha and put into our practice, into our daily life, it would be good enough. The practice of Buddhism is to bring the body and mind together. Most of the time we suffer in our daily life because our body and our mind are separate. And the more they are separated, the more suffering or ill we will be. Some people who are quite sick cannot be in touch with their body anymore. Their mind is continuous occupied. Some people might develop halucination as they are not able to be in touch with their body at all. And some how it is a natural process for humans that when we grow older our mind becomes more separate from our body. As we grow older it is more difficult to live in the present moment. We are continuously pulled towards the past; we occupy our mind with the past and worry about the future. We cannot be in the present moment. For the children somehow they are able to be in the preset moment more than we do. Usually a retreat is organized for the older people. The children just play in the yard. Our practice is to turn ourselves into children again. In Christianity there is a saying that you have to be a child in order to enter the kingdom of god. So don’t be serious in your practice, thinking I am a serious practitioner, I am a serious meditation practitioner. Don’t be so serious. Just relax and be a kid in your practice and you will be better. Thay used to teach us that our mind is like our left arm and our body is like our right arm. As we grow older our arms begin to separate like this, and our body and mind just continue to diverse from each other. When we practice we do the reverse process: we bring our mind and body together. With the help of our breathing, we are aware of our breathing and we are able to bring our mind and body closer together. With one mindful breath you can do that, and slowly the more you do the more your body and mind begin to unify with each other. The original state of our mind is full. That is why it is called mindful. That is our original state of mind. The moment we live our daily life, we begin to have relationships with our environment, with ourselves, or with our friends, our brothers our sisters, our son, our daughter. With all those relationships our mind begin to bifurcate. It begins to split it is not full anymore. Our practice is to reverse the process to make our mind full. Mind-fullness. With each breath that your are aware. Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out. You help to bring the mind back to the natural state where our body is not different from our mind. Our body is a continuation of our mind. Our mind is a continuation of our body. The moment we bring our mind back to the here and now, our body can also restore its balance. Our body can return to its natural state to being relaxed and well. Let us experience our breath for a moment and see whether we can bring our mind to the here and now.
How is your mind doing? Are you able to bring it to the present or is it wandering in different direction? The practice is simple but very difficult to do. It will require a lot of training for us to return to the present moment, our mind continuously bifurcates from itself. Our mind disperses very quickly. Just in a few minutes we can think of several things. It is quite difficult to just sit there and be aware of our breath. Our mind continues to pull our attention away from our breath. Just be with our breath for that short and we think about something else for that long. Our practice is not to force our breath in anyway. It is to sit there and to observe our breath as it is, without any effort, any struggle. The moment we return to our breath, we get the reaction of our mind to try to grasp it or to reject it. That is very natural tendency we have in our daily life. When we are in a situation, we either say we like him or we do not like him, I like this or I don’t like this. The moment we have contact with any object of our perception, right away our feeling begin to come in. We either like it and grasp it, or dislike it and reject it. The moment we return to our breath, we being to be aware of our breath. Our mind begins to grasp it. But since our breath has nothing for our mind to grasp, it is not very interesting. So our mind cannot grasp it. So it grasps something else. It begins to think of something else. That is how our mind begins to diverse. Our mind as the tendency to grasp onto something exciting, onto an action, like catching a movie, playing a video game, watching television or reading a book. Our mind has a tendency to be with these things for so many years that it is difficult to just sit there to observe our breath. We suffer, we are sick because we try to grasp or to deny things when we have contact. So our practice is to be aware of things as they are without grasping or denying and we will heal ourselves. So the first line of the gatha is I have arrived, I am home in every situation that you confront, you have arrived and you are home. You learn not to grasp it or to deny it. You are neither attached to it nor averse to it. Master Linji in his Linji record says Hu (a tribe that invaded ancient China) comes, Hu manifests; Han (the largest indigenous tribe in China) comes, Han manifests. The new version of this saying is: I have arrived, I am home. Whatever comes to our daily life in this moment, I am happy with it. We learn to accept it the way it is. And do not reject it or grasp it. This embodies the spirit of Mahayana Buddhism. There is no enlightenment to be attained. It is there already for us. The question is whether we are there for it. The moment we allow ourselves to be enlightened we are enlightened. When we do not grasp or deny anything, our natural state is enlightenment. I have arrived I am home. Home is not a statement for arrival. Home is here and now. That is talking about the space and the time. But time and space are constructions of our mind. Being in the here and now means we have returned to the moment. We do not allow ourselves to be carried to the past and the future. This moment is the most wonderful moment that we can be in. The way we practice is like this:
Breathing in, I have arrived.
Breathing out I am home.
Shorten it:
Breathing in, arrive;
Breathing out, home.
Breathing in, in the here; Breathing out, in the now.
In, here;
Out, now.
Let’s practice with the bell.
Do you feel happy and joyful when you enjoy your breath? If you are not happy and joyful when you are with your breath, then something is not correct. Our index or measurement is our joy and happiness. If you practice, and the more you feel light in your heart, the more joyful in your heart, the more happy in your heart, the more you feel relaxed in your shoulders and your back; if you don’t have tension, then you are practicing in the right way. But don’t worry when you have back pain or tension and you’re not so happy because your mind and your body have been constructing a habit that you are trying to reverse. That is why there can be tension and unhappiness in your mind. Our practice is to learn to recognize it without judgment. Learn to accept your self. Just like we are running on the highway at 75 mph. Suddenly there is something and you have a brake, the car slows down. Right now in our daily life we are rushing around in the mall and in the jam. Now we are in a retreat there is a brake and your mind and body begin to have a new judgment. That is why you feel uncomfortable at the beginning/ Just allow it to be so and it will go away in a few days. In some tradition, like in the Myanmar and the Theravada, just about this much is enough for instruction. And you will practice this for a few days, sitting 3 or 10 hrs a day just to learn to be with your breath and allow yourself to be. and it is enough for 2-3 days of practice already. But in the Plum Village tradition Thay created Engaged Buddhism, where we are not satisfied with closing our eyes and sitting for 10 hours everyday. We try to bring the practice into our daily lives, trying our best to be aware of our breath, while at the same time, we have all our daily contact. This practice can be a bit more natural than sitting for 3 or 10 hrs to calm your mind. But then there is a positive in one tradition and positive in another tradition. After we have sat there to learn to be with our breath and allow our mind to settle in, in one or two days we become very peaceful. Once we return to the outside we become easily disturbed. In Plum Village you learn to be aware with your breath and allow yourself the daily activity. You cannot spend 100% of your time to be with your breath. So to be with your breath is a lot more difficult than just sitting there to observe it completely. When you practice in the Plum Village tradition you go out and you feel natural and there is not much difference between your practice and your daily activities. But to be in Plum Village practice perhaps you need a much longer time to develop a habit. You have to be very determined to make the practice continuously throughout the day for many months and years for it to take form. Otherwise it is not very good. So you must think of the practice of sitting 3 or 10 hours a day is like a vertical line you go deep down. The practice of Plum Village is like a horizontal line, spread out in time. The vertical and horizontal have been the different directions in Buddhism for practice and philosophy for many centuries. When you try to go vertical and very deep it has the tendency toward ontological ground. The horizontal direction is the epistemological direction. The ontological direction is where people try to go deeper into their being to find out the fundamental essence or existence beneath the phenomena. The epistemological direction is where we are concerned about the way of our perception. In the horizontal direction we are concerned with whether our perception is valid; how we know it is valid; what is the means to knowledge, the means to perception; how we come to know about things; how we know that what we perceive is valid. This is the epistemological direction. We do not need to pursue the final nirvana. Nirvana is the way we perceive things. If we perceive the right way we are in nirvana. If we do not perceive the right way we are not in nirvana. In the vertical direction nirvana is something that needs to be attained. In this retreat we will spend some time to talk about Buddhist psychology.
Stretching exercise
The other line of the gatha: I am solid; I am free. In the ultimate I dwell. We practice like this: Breathing in, I am solid. Breathing out I am free. With each of our breath, we feel we are solid and we are free. It will take some time for us to develop new habit energy. The moment we wake up in the morning. You might want to practice. Lying on your bed, you open your eyes and you can practice the gatha already. Breathing in, I have arrived. Breathing out, I m home. Breathing in the here, breathing out the now. While practicing, one way to help you is to listen with your ears. Somehow sound is helpful in our practice. If you can listen continuously to the rain or the sound of silence in the room, it can be very helpful to maintain because with the auditory perception, we don’t construct so much image. It is much easier for our practice. Listening deeply to the sound surrounding you, and at the same time practice the gatha, can be very helpful. You might want to sit in the room or outside listening to the bird chanting or to the sound of … or to the sound of rain or the air conditioner buzzing. They are useful tools for practice. The key point is to gently turn the awareness towards your self, to bring it back from the outside. In the Plum Village tradition we use the sound of the bell. Instead you can use the sound of the mobile phone, the clock, the chime, to return to the practice of awareness of breathing. The key point is to find some tool, some technique, some reminder so you can return to your breathing all the time.
You can install the Mindfulness Bell. Every 15 minutes or half an hour, you can return to the practice. When you are driving you can use the red traffic light as your reminder. If you use the perfume called “I will return” or “forget me not”, whenever you put it on, return to your breath. Combine it with walking meditation. Walking meditation is one of the most important practice in Plum Village. When you walk you are aware of the contact between the feet and the ground. That is the first exercise. Once you are able to develop that awareness, you can enlarge your awareness. The next exercise you might want to do is to combine the awareness of your steps with your breath. Breathing in, you do two steps: I have arrived; I have arrived. Breathing out, you do two steps: I am home; I am home.
Demonstration
You might want to practice throughout the day. Even in the few steps between your bathroom and your bedroom. Throughout the retreat, try not to lose one step of mindfulness. Is it possible? It is a challenge anyway. It is difficult, but we try. If you find it difficult, lower your goal a little bit. In the distance from this hall to the road, you promise yourself that every time you walk, you practice mindful walking. If you lose one step, you go back to the beginning. Be there half an hour before. Know your limitation and make the goal attainable. The longer you have practiced, you can make the distance longer. Remember that with Plum Village practice, you bear the fruit many years away, although we get peace and joy right away. It is because we have habit energy. The problem with many lay and even monastic practitioners is that they think they already know the practice. The first or second year they practice wholeheartedly, but then in the forth, fifth, sixth year. They say the Plum Village practice does not work. Plum Village is too soft. I need to go to the Theravada or Tibetan tradition. The fact is that Plum Village is not too soft. The Theravada or Tibetan practice is not too strong. The fact is that we do not practice. Throughout the 4-5 days try your best to enjoy each step. Plan your time carefully. The brothers and sisters have organised the retreat carefully so you have enough time. If you have free time outside the group practice, learn to practice walking meditation on your own. The more we practice, the more we can bring our body and mind together. The moment we can bring them together, we attain the fruit called unification of body and mind. The most miraculous thing is that when they unify we begin to understand ourselves deeply. In our daily lives we are too busy. We don’t know the condition of our lives and that of those we live with. We have a lot of assumptions about ourselves and other people. With the unification of body and mind, we begin to direct our attention toward ourselves and we begin to discover different things. We will see there are both good qualities and shortcomings within ourselves. We learn to recognise the good qualities and identify the qualities that need to be improved. That is the beginning of the practice. We make up an inventory. Everyday we have to see what we are good at and cultivate, and what we need to transform. As practitioner, we need to do this everyday. There is a practice called the Kung Fu sheet. Make a table on the sheet like this. This is useful for both beginners and advanced practitioners. In Plum Village from time to time we ask the novice to report the Kung Fu sheet to their mentors. On the sheet, we have walking meditation, eating meditation, sitting meditation, loving speech, listening deeply, etc. Be creative in creating the list. Whatever practice you are committed to in this retreat, put it down. Try not to be too ambitious. Choose a few we can do and do them well. Don’t try to do 20 practices and turn yourself into a machine of mindfulness. Not too loose but not too tense. Find the middle way and stick to that. After committing to a practice for a few days your practice will deepen and you will enjoy it.
Insert sample sheet.
Besides this Kung Fu sheet you can do an inventory of your body and mind. Have a list for different organs in your body. Scan them and see, for example, how is the heart. Is it in good condition? Does it need medical help? Same with the liver. What is your drinking, eating, sleeping or exercise habit? You can have a sheet for the body and grade your organs.
Insert sample sheet
Having looked deeply you need to take action. Beware of what you eat. There is a saying in Vietnam that illnesses come from our food; and trouble comes from our mouth. Watch what food our body can digest and what it cannot. Your body can tell you within a few minutes you take the food. If you can’t take it, you will get a headache or get dizzy. My health is not good. When I first went to Plum Village in 1992 I had back pain often. I had tried to treat for many years. Then in 1997 I sneezed all the time and my back really bothers my sitting meditation and practice. At one point I wanted to go home and practice. I asked Thay for permission to leave. Thay said you don’t go anywhere. You practice I have arrived, I am home. If you’re sick do your treatment in Plum Village. Don’t go anywhere. One time we went to Paris in 98. I received the treatment of embedded needles. I had 72 needles embedded along my spinal cord. I already knew my problem can be cured with eating by reading books on microbiotics. I learnt new ways, but had no opportunity to try. My condition got worse and by 2000, I couldn’t walk at one retreat. When I woke up, my right leg couldn’t move. I saw many doctors. I received acupuncture, massage. Nothing was working. In 2006 I went to a doctor in HK. He said I had dried up liver and kidney. I need to spend 2-3 months in a hospital in Guangzhou. To cut the story short, on the US tour half of my brain hurt when I tried to think or when I experienced emotions. Now it is better. Then half my body was numb. From time to time I could not walk. When I was walking I would fall. During those years, Plum Village was growing quickly. So I spent all my time working and did not take care of my body so much. Last December I went back to the microbiotic food guide and decided to follow that and asked the community for permission to do so. I chose Dec 24 to start the new diet. I cooked my own food very simply with a pressure cooker and brown rice, and eat it with sesame seed. Slowly my health has been getting back. Just by eating, I am curing myself. In the Thai trip this year, I shared my diet there. So I do it here today, so that if you feel sick and want to give a try, at least you have the formula. Or u can wait 10 years like I did. In a small bowl put one portion of brown rice and 2 portions of water. Soak overnight. In the morning, cook it in the pressure cooker with steam. Turn on the high fire at 160 degrees Celsius. When the cooker makes a “sh” noise, I start to count 15 minutes before turning down the fire by one notch to 140 Celsius. Then I cook it for 15 minutes. Then I leave it in the pot for 30 minutes before taking it out. That is the food for lunch and dinner. I took half for lunch and the other half for dinner. With my smaller breakfast bowl, I put in more water to make porridge. As for the sesame seeds, I roast them to light brown. Then I put them in a bowl of rice and cover the bowl with a towel to preserve the qi until the seeds cool down. Then I mix 12 portions of seeds with one portion of natural sea salt. When I take them out to eat, I grind them, not pound them. I eat that with brown rice and chew it carefully until it becomes juice so that saliva can mix well with the food. If you have more time, chew more. If you have less time, chew less. Don’t become too dogmatic about the chewing. The point is that the more you chew, the more saliva is secreted to digest the brown rice. That way your digestive system does not have to do a lot of work. With this kind of food you do not get thirsty. During the day you do not drink much. You just drink when you feel thirsty. If you have any kind of disease, you can eat this for two weeks to a month. It can slow down your illness. There are many cancer patients who have been declared by the hospital to die in 3 months and managed to prolong their lives for 10-20 years. This is proven. You can transform your illness together with practicing qigong. If you don’t do both, it doesn’t work. When you eat like this your loved ones and relatives will feel sad because you’re sacrificing yourselves. So you need strong motivation not to be tempted to eat the good food they offer you. With this inventory you know you have to do it now before it is too late. After 2 wks of eating like this you will lose 5 kilos. If you eat for a month, you will lose 7 kilos. You will become much more healthy. After 2 wks or a month, you can add some different types of beans to have protein. So in the first period you eat brown rice and sesame seeds to turn the condition of your cells so they do not produce toxins. Slowly you can eat more vegetables, steamed vegetables and fruits. Build it up slowly. Bad news is when you begin to eat normally you gain your 5-7 kilos back.
Tomorrow we talk about the inventory of our mind. Then we move on to the Buddha’s enlightenment.
End