Full talk’s original title: “Kinh Thương Yêu [CPNĐSNC 7A] | TS Thích Nhất Hạnh(18-12-1997, Xóm Mới, Làng Mai)”

Full talk originally posted by: Làng Mai (Plum Village’s Vietnamese YouTube Channel) https://youtu.be/Y8kJQl-6zp0, on Mar 8, 2023

Full talk given: on December 18, 1997, in New Hamlet, Plum Village, during the Winter Retreat 1997-1998

Excerpt’s length: 09 minutes 42 seconds

This is an excerpt from a Dharma talk on The Discourse on Love which is part 7A of the Dharma talk series “Daily training gets the thousand-petalled lotus to burst open,” given by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh during the Winter Retreat 1997-1998 in the New Hamlet, Plum Village France, on December 18, 1997.

Note: This Dharma talk series were given by the Zen master during the 1997-1999 period. Due to technological limitations in this period, audiovisual quality is not very good. The Plum Village Editorial Team hopes for your kind understanding.

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Transcript

In Saṃyutta Nikāya (Tương Ưng Bộ), Lord Buddha said, “Practicing love, we attain beauty.” When we turn to the Chinese translation of this sentence, we see that some venerables translated it as, “Practicing love, we attain peace and quiet.” That’s incorrectly translated.

Lord Buddha very clearly said, “Practicing love, we attain beauty.” So, loving-kindness or love is the most beautiful thing in life. If, in our heart, there’s no loving-kindness, we have nothing beautiful to dedicate to ourselves and others.

That’s why the Buddha’s path is the path of love. The path of understanding. The path of love. But in order to love, there has to be understanding.

The person in whom the substance of love has already dried up is someone who lives in great pain and suffers great loneliness. Look around us and see for ourselves. We’ll see that those who suffer the most are those in whom the stream of love has already dried up.

They deserve much compassion. The only way to help them is to revive that substance of loving-kindness in them, making it spring up. Only then, can they experience happiness.

And if we see that in us the stream of love dries up a little bit, we have to be quickly informed. Because when we don’t have the stream of love, when that nectar runs out, when it no longer flows, that’s when we have a lot of pain and suffering.

That’s why, practicing loving-kindness means practicing happiness. Loving someone, helping someone, and making someone happy, we think only that person benefits from it. The fact is, when love is revived in one’s heart, when there’s only the wish to love, very naturally there’s already a sense of well-being and lightness in one’s being.

One has yet to do anything or say anything. But with only a fervent wish to relieve someone from their suffering and make them happy, that wish has already been an energy that brings lightness, well-being, and happiness to our heart.

That’s why, well wishes are important. For someone who doesn’t have the energy of love inside, it feels extremely lonely. They feel cut off from everything in life. To them, loneliness is a hell. Because they can only live by themselves. They cannot establish communication with anyone. Because they’re unable to understand and love anyone.

Because of that, we need to know that love is a substance that helps us establish connections with other people, and with other beings, other species. We can establish connections with the human species. We can establish connections with other beings like animals, plants, and minerals.

At that moment, we’ll come to see that we and those beings share the same life. With that, the way we treat them will be that of nonviolence, non-harming, and love. We no longer think about using violence, we no longer think about killing. Instead, we’ll think about protecting.

We have a gatha to recite when looking in the mirror.

“Awareness is a mirror
reflecting the four elements.
Beauty is a heart that generates love
and a mind that is open.”

Because “a mind that is open” brings about inclusiveness and acceptance. It brings about true love. And true love is the most beautiful thing in life. A famous artwork or a well-known piece of music is beautiful without a doubt. But compared to true love, they mean nothing. Beauty is a heart that generates love.

“Awareness is a mirror
reflecting the four elements.
Beauty is a heart that generates love
and a mind that is open.”

So, every morning, when we hold the toothbrush brushing our teeth, look at ourselves in the mirror for just a moment. We have time. Look at ourselves for just a moment. We see our four-element body. Smile a bit. Just smile gently to ourselves. We bestow on ourselves a gentle smile so that our face can relax. That’s already love.

“Awareness is a mirror,
reflecting the four elements.
Beauty is a heart that generates love.”

In us, is there a flowing stream of love? What have we done today for this stream of love to flow in us?

We really need to practice looking at all beings with “a mind that is open.” It means, the eyes of loving-kindness & compassion. In Sino-Vietnamese, “từ nhãn thị chúng sanh.”

The Buddha taught us to practice looking with the eyes of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. Because Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva knows how to look with the eyes of Great Compassion.

Now, first off, while brushing our teeth, learn to look at ourselves in the mirror to see that we need to love ourselves, that we need to smile at ourselves. We have to make the stream of love in us spring up and flow. And we need to look at our Dharma siblings with a mind that is open.

When we can do that, there’s inner peace and lightness in ourselves. And our siblings will feel the same. Because that look is one of all-embracingness and inclusiveness. Not of fault-finding or criticalness. It’s rather a look of forgiveness, of all-encompassingness. The kind of look that a mother has at their own child.

If we want to advance in our daily practice, we should use a notebook — a pocket notebook, to note down everything. Because a day given to us to learn and practice mindfulness is a very precious day. We have a whole day to practice, a day which we can make good use of, to progress in our practice.

So why do we take our day for granted? 24 hours are given to us to learn and practice living mindfully. So why don’t we give it our all?

When we give a Day of Mindfulness, we plan out very well how the day will go. Who will give Dharma talk. Who will lead the mindful walk. Who will give the guided sitting meditation. And who will read out loud the Five Contemplations Before Eating at mealtime. We’re very good at planning a Day of Mindfulness. It should be the same with a day spent in the monastery.

We should be wise drawing up an agenda for that day. Don’t let the day float by like water-hyacinths floating pointlessly on a river. We have to claim sovereignty over our day, making a day of practice into one filled with meanings, where each moment of the day is an opportunity to grow love and compassion in our heart.

We have a pocket notebook and a pen, so why don’t we do this? When we sit in meditation in the morning, why don’t we use that time to look deeply into our day and see how we’re going about our day so it can be a truly precious gift from us to ourselves, and from us to other people? Why do we sit and long for the time of sitting meditation to be over?

The time we sit in meditation can be used to do that, i.e. to contemplate. No one stops us from bringing a pocket notebook to the sitting meditation session. Of course, the whole time we sit in meditation, we don’t let our mind wander. We don’t use the time for sitting meditation to do anything else.

However, if during our sitting there’s an insight, or something insightful about ourselves or our community, we’re allowed to write it down. That insight will help us succeed in our practice.

With that, we turn that day into a happy day. Because we should know that if that day we have happiness, those who practice in the same community with us will also have happiness.

🌷

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Relevant materials

1. [Song] Awareness Is A Mirror (from “A Basket of Plum” album, with link to downloadable mp3)

https://web.plumvillage.app/item/awareness-is-a-mirror

2. [Short teaching] Meditation Is Not A Luxury by Thich Nhat Hanh, published by the Plum Village App

“We did not speak about compassion… We tried to do the work of compassion.” Thich Nhat Hanh

In this compelling 20 minute clip, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the work he and his colleagues did to help refugees in the 1970s and how meditation was essential to sustain them: https://youtu.be/-_qBTjIifwk

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