Thich Nhat Hanh | Take Care Of Our Thinking

Good afternoon, dear Sangha. In the teaching of Christianity, there is the Kingdom of God. In the teaching of Judaism, also in the teaching of Buddhism, we speak about the Buddha Land, the Buddha field, you might like to call it the Kingdom of the Buddha. It's okay. In Plum Village, we used to say that the Kingdom of God is now and ever. And that is our practice in Plum Village. The Kingdom of God, the Pure Land of the Buddha, is not just an idea. It's something that you can taste, you can touch, you can live in your daily. It is possible to recognize the Kingdom of God when it is there. It is possible to recognize the presence of the Kingdom of the Buddha where. When it is there. In the Buddhist tradition, they think of the Buddha land or the Pure Land as a practice center where the Buddha and the great bodhisattvas are teachers and all of us are practitioners. What is the purpose of practicing? To practice is to bring about more understanding and compassion and happiness would not be possible without understanding and compassion. And we know that if there is no understanding and compassion, that is not the Kingdom of God. My definition of the Kingdom of God is a place where there is understanding, there is compassion. And you might like to add that it is a place where all of us can learn to be more understanding and more compassionate. And of course, we all agree with each other that there is understanding, there is compassion in the Kingdom of God, in the Pure Land of the Buddha. The. But there is something that we should agree with each other also, as whether there is suffering in the Kingdom of God, there is suffering in the Pure Land of the Buddha. If we have the time to look deeply, we see that understanding and compassion arises from suffering. Understanding is the understanding of suffering, and compassion is. Compassion is the kind of energy that can take care of suffering. They can transform suffering. And if suffering is not there, we have no means in order to cultivate our understanding and our compassion. This is something quite simple to understand and to see. In a place where there is no suffering, there is no understanding and love either. In Plum Village, if you come in the summertime, you see many lotus flowers, and you know that without the mud, lotus flowers cannot grow. You cannot separate lotus flowers and the mud. Without the mud, no lotus can grow. It is the same with understanding and love. These are two kinds of flowers that grow on the ground of suffering. It is because of suffering. It is on the ground of suffering that the flower of understanding and love can grow. I wouldn't like to send my children to a place where there is no suffering, because I Know in advance that in such a place my children will have no chance to learn to develop their compassion and understanding. I don't know whether my friends who come from the background of Christianity and Judaism, can accept that in the Kingdom of God there is suffering. But in the Buddhist teachings, it is clear that suffering and happiness, they are without one, there cannot be the other. Where there is no suffering, there is no happiness either. And we know from our own experiences that it is impossible to cultivate more understanding and more compassion if suffering is not there. It is with the mud that we can make flowers. It is with the suffering that we can make compassion and understanding in the Pure Land of the Buddha. I can accept, and many friends of mine can accept, that there is suffering in the Pure Land, in the Buddha field, in the Buddha land, because we need suffering in order to cultivate our understanding and compassion, which is very essential for the Pure Land, for the Kingdom of God. We learn from suffering. And if we are capable of cultivating understanding, that's because of suffering. If we are able to cultivate compassion, that is because of the existence of suffering. I think it's very important to re examine our idea, our notion of the Kingdom of God, the Pure Land of the Buddha, and no longer think that the Kingdom of God is a place where there is absolutely no suffering. The Pure Land of the Buddha is a place there is no. Where there is absolutely no suffering. Logically, it is impossible. Many of us think of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of the Buddha, as something that belongs to the future after this life in terms of time and space. The Kingdom of God is away, is far away. I remember about 40 years ago when I first went to the United States to speak about the situation of war in Vietnam. I was invited by many groups. And I remember in a church in the vicinity of Philadelphia where the majority of practitioners were black people, I said that the Kingdom of God is right now, right here. You don't have to die in order to step into the Kingdom of God. In fact, you have to be very alive in order to step into it. And to be alive for me is to be mindful, to be concentrated, to be free. And that is the kind of passport that you need in order to be allowed to go into the Kingdom of God. Mindfulness, concentration, freedom. It was 40 years ago. If you are. If you belong to the population of the Kingdom of God, you are a practitioner because you are producing understanding and love in your daily life that make the Kingdom of God continue to be the Kingdom of God. If the population of The Kingdom does not practice understanding and love. They will lose the kingdom in one second or two seconds. Because the essential, the essence of the kingdom is understanding and love. It's very easy to visualize the Kingdom of the Buddha as a practice center where there are dharma teachers teaching us, helping us to cultivate understanding and compassion. And everyone enjoys the practice because as they produce more understanding and more compassion, they suffer less. They are capable of transforming suffering into. Into compassion, into understanding, into happiness. And the practice in Plum Village is to experiment, to experience the Kingdom of God in our daily life, the pure land of the Buddha in our daily life. Of course, we can say that the Kingdom is now, is here. But that's not enough. We have to help the kingdom to manifest. And without mindfulness, concentration, and a little bit of freedom, we cannot do so. We cannot make the kingdom manifest. The Kingdom of God is situated in our cerebral cortex. The Kingdom of God is found in our mind. And if we can touch the kingdom in our complex, in our mind, the kingdom manifests. Most of us have a computer, a desktop, a computer, a PC or Apple Macintosh. And most of us make use of our converter in a different way. And many of us just use our computer to do some work like word processing or to follow the situation of the stock market. But the average PC, the average Macintosh, can do much more than that. We use only about 10% of that capacity. And if we know how to make use of the other power, other capacities of the computer meter, we can do a lot of things. The same thing is true with our cerebral Coptics. The same thing is true with our mind, our spirit. If we know how to allow the powerful energy of understanding and compassion in us, and then we can process many difficult problems of our daily life. We don't allow these powerful elements to penetrate into our life. In order to help us process and solve difficult situations that we encounter in our daily life. There is a computer within, very powerful, and you should learn how to use that computer properly. In order for us to be able to deal with the daily suffering, the situations that make us suffer, the Buddha proposed that we practice. We live according to the Noble Eightfold Path. And if we follow his instruction to practice right view, right thinking, rice, fish, we'll be able to explore the vast territory of our mind and allow these wonderful, powerful powers to come and rescue us. In fact, we are limited. We limit ourselves in a very small circle. Our thinking, our view, are very narrow. And that is why we suffer much more than a bodhisattva, than a bodhisattva let us speak about thinking. We keep thinking all the time, and many of our thoughts are not very positive. Many thoughts of ours make us into a victim of negative thinking. When you say I am good for nothing, that is the kind of thought that has the power to make you suffer. I can never finish that. I cannot meditate, I cannot forgive, I am despaired. I never succeed in doing that. That kind of thinking, or he wants to destroy me. I am not loved by anyone. This kind of thinking is not what the Buddha call right thinking. And this kind of thought, they do not correspond to the reality. In us, there is that capacity of understanding and of loving. And because we are not capable of, we are not used to touch the ground of understanding and compassion. That is why we cannot propose, we cannot liberalize, produce wonderful, wonderful thoughts in the line of right thinking. Suppose your friend doesn't understand you. Suppose your brother, your sister, do not understand you. Suppose you think that your teacher does not love you, does not understand you, and you entertain that kind of thought and you suffer, and that thought may not correspond at all to reality. And you continue to ruminate that thought and other thoughts of the same kind. And very soon you fall into a state of depression because you are not practicing right thinking. My brother must have said something about me to my teacher. That is why this morning he did not look at me. You think like that, and your thinking may be totally wrong. And you have to be aware of the fact that your thought is just a thought, it is not the reality. And if you think like this, my teacher might misunderstand me, but I am capable of helping him to understand me. I go help him to understand me. That is a positive thought, and that's what you can do. You are no longer a victim. You no longer ruminate your thought in order to be depressed. The Buddha proposes the practice of right thinking during sitting meditation or during the time of working. Ideas like that, Thoughts like that might arise. And you don't allow yourself to be victims of this thought, even if they are negative. You just allow them to come and you recognize them. This is a thought, and this is. This thought is just a thought. It's not a reality. And you may like to record that. And later on, you might write it down on a piece of paper and you have a look on it. When you are capable of recognizing your thoughts, you are no longer a victim of it. You are yourself. Even if these thoughts are of a negative nature, a thought does not arise from nothing. There is a ground for it to arise in Our mind, there is fear, anger, worries, misunderstanding, and our thought might arise from these territories. But in our mind there is the vast territory of compassion, of understanding. You may get in touch with the Kingdom of the Buddha, the Kingdom of God in your mind, and if you can, get in touch, and then these territories will give rise to many wonderful thoughts in the line of right thinking. So when you recognize a thought, you might like to smile to it and to ask the question on what ground this thought has been produced. You don't have to work hard, you just smile to hear your thought, and you now recognize that the thought has arisen from the territory of wrong perception, fear or anger or jealousy. When you are able to produce a thought that goes in the direction of understanding and love, in the direction of right thinking, that thought will have an immediate effect on your health, physical health and mental health. Right thinking, thinking in the direction of the Kingdom of God, thinking in the direction of understanding and love. That thought has an effect right away on your mental and your physical health. And at the same time, it has an effect on the health of the world. When you produce a thought that is negative, that has arising from your fear, your anger, your pessimism, like, I'm not worth anything, I cannot do anything, my life is a failure. That kind of thought will have a very bad effect on your health, mental and physical. And the practice offered by the Buddha is not to suppress this negative thought, but just to not to be aware of them. This is a negative thought. I allow it to be recognized. And when you are able to recognize that thought, you reach a degree of freedom because you are no longer a victim of that thought. But if you are not a practitioner, you allow this kind of thought to get you. You continue to ruminate about the negative situation, and that will make you fall into a state of depression. To recognize the presence of a thought, to recognize the presence of a feeling is very important, and that is the basic practice of practitioner of meditation. You do not try to suppress the feelings and the thoughts. You allow your feelings and your thought to manifest, but you have to be there in order to recognize the presence. In that case, you are cultivating your freedom. In our daily life, we may allow these thoughts and feelings to appear, to be born, to stay, to go away, to go back. And we are not capable of recognizing their presence. And because of that, we become the victim of these thoughts and feelings and emotions. It lost in the realm of feelings and thoughts and perceptions, we become victim of our thoughts, our feelings and our perceptions because we are not truly present the practice is to stay present in the here and the now and to witness, to examine, to be aware of what is going on. And that is the practice of freedom you are used to, to allow our mind to chase after the pleasant and to try to avoid the unpleasant. And our thoughts follow their habits, their patterns of thinking. And these patterns follow that principle, running, following, searching for the pleasant and trying to run away, avoiding the unpleasant. And because of that we lose all our freedom. Because we are running, we are avoiding, but we do not know, we are running after something and we are trying to avoid something. We are carried away by our thoughts, our feelings, our perceptions. Imagine an airplane on automatic piloting. They don't need a person in the airplane, and the plane can go very well to the destination, can do the things that has been asked to do, and there is no man, no human being on the plane. Very often we behave like that. We are on automatic piloting, we are not there in order to witness to what is happening. And the practice that is proposed by the Buddha is to be there, to stay present, to be truly alive. When you are truly there, truly present, you can be fully alive. At the same time, you know what is going on and you know the value of each thought, of each feeling and of perceptions. You know that there are territories that you have not discovered within yourself. You don't allow, you don't allow yourself to be carried away. You want to be yourself, you don't want to be on automatic piloting, you want to be there by yourself. And every time there is a thought, there is a feeling that is, is an emotion that arise. You want to be there in order to control the situation. You don't want to be carried away. You allow yourself to smile to your thinking, to smile to your feelings, to smile to your emotions. You don't want to react right away to the thought, to the feelings, to the perceptions, because that is the habit energy in you that try, that push you to respond right away to the feeling, to the emotion, to the thought that just arise. And this is extremely important. You tell yourself that, well, this is a thought, this is a feeling, this is emotion. I know they are in me, but I am not just that thought, that feelings, that emotions. I am much more than that. I have a treasure of understanding, compassion, love, wisdom in me. And I want this element to come in order to help me, to sort out, to help me to be on the right path. You give yourself the time to breathe in and out. You don't hurry, to react, to take action. And while you are breathing in and out. You give a chance to the wonderful positive elements within yourself to intervene. There is a computer within, and the computer has a lot of power. And if you know how to make use of these powers, you can transform the situation. You can bring a lot of light, a lot of joy, a lot of compassion into the situation by being there, by not allowing yourself to be carried away, to react right away, you give yourself an alternative perspective from which you can see things more clearly. You are not in a hurry to react, to jump to a conclusion that you have to do this, you have to do that. You just notice, you just become aware of the situation, of what is going on, what is manifesting in you and around you. And the practice of mindful breathing, mindful walking allows you to have space, and that space is for the positive elements to intervene. You allow the Buddha essence, you allow the Kingdom of God, of the Buddha in you to have essence. Within ourselves that there is a territory of depression, a territory of hell. And our negative thinking and emotions, they spring out from these territories. But we know that in ourselves there is the territory of the Kingdom of God, there is the territory of the Buddha land, and there is the seed, powerful seed, of compassion and wisdom in us. And if we give them a chance, they will come in order for us to be rescued. It. We have the power to recognize our thought, we have the power to recognize our feelings, our emotions, our perceptions. We don't have to suppress them, but we want to have the time, the space, in order to look at them, to recognize them as they are. This is the basic practice. And in order to do that, we have to stay present, to be there in the here and the now. Very often our body is there, but our mind is elsewhere. And our children do not feel that we are truly present. When you come to a house or you want to meet someone in the house, you ask, is anyone home? And if someone said yes, and then you'll be happy, you don't want to go to a house where there is no one. But very often we leave ourselves without us. We are not home. We are lost in our thinking, in our worries, in our projects, in our anxiety, in our fear. We are completely lost. We are not there in order to be aware of what is going on. And that is why the practice that is offered to us by the Buddha is not to be on automatic piloting, but on conscious living, the practice of mindful living. If you have a depression, or if you are afraid that you will fall back into depression, this is the way out. If you can stay present, if you can identify the kind of feelings and thoughts that are responsible for your depression, and then you can be free. You know that this kind of thinking, this kind of feeling will cause a relapse. And that is the beginning of the healing, the beginning of your freedom to be there and to be aware of your thinking, of your feeling, the feeling that you get in your body, the feeling that you get when you remember something. You are not afraid. If you are truly there, you can allow the difficult materials to come for you to recognize before they go, and you can do something in order to invite the wonderful materials to come for you to recognize. And you might like to ask these wonderful materials of the mind to stay with you, to help you to process the documents that you need to process. The Kingdom of God is not an idea, it is a reality. Every time we are mindful, every time we are concentrated, every time we get a little bit of freedom, and then we can get in touch with the Kingdom of God for our transformation and healing. Of course, hell is there in the present moment, but there is. The Kingdom of God is also there in the present moment. And we have to select, we have to choose between the two. A few days ago, I said that may many of us, many people who are born in France have not seen, have not been able, have not had a chance to see all the beauties of France as a country. But many of us who come from other countries, we have the chance to contemplate and to enjoy the beauty of France. The fact is that the territory of wisdom, the territory of compassion, the Kingdom of God, the pure line of Buddha, is available. But since we are too concerned with our narrow territory of success and failure of daily life, anger, worries, despair, you have not had a chance to unlock the door of the Kingdom of God. In order to unlock the door of happiness, the door of the kingdom, the door of compassion and love, we need a key. And that key, according to the teaching of the Buddha, is the triple training on mindfulness, concentration and insight. It is possible to cultivate insight and compassion. The Kingdom of God is a place where we can cultivate rehabilitation, to cultivate understanding and compassion. And we may like to do that together with other people who are of the same concern and desire. When you grow corn, you have corn to eat. When you grow wheat, you have wheat to eat. When you grow understanding and compassion, you have compassion and understanding, the ground of your own peace and freedom and happiness. And in order to grow, to cultivate understanding and compassion, we have to be there understanding Suffering, understanding anger, understanding depression. To be aware of them and to understand them is very important. Because to be aware of suffering and to understand suffering is the door to penetrate into the domain of happiness. Unless you understand the nature of suffering, the cause of suffering, you see no path leading to the transformation of suffering to happiness. The Buddha spoke about the four Noble Truths. And the first one is you being suffering. To be aware of your being, to recognize yu being as ill being, and to look deeply into the nature of your being. And you find the second noble truth, the lack of understanding, the lack of compassion. And because we have been practicing wrong thinking, wrong view, wrong speech. And that is why suffering continues to be there. And we know that if we stop producing wrong thinking, wrong view, wrong speech, wrong action, if we practice right thinking, right view, right action, and then there is a transformation of suffering into happiness, into well being. There is a path leading to suffering. That is the ignoble path of wrong view, wrong thinking, wrong speech, wrong action. There is a path that leads to happiness, the cessation of suffering. That is the path of right thinking, right view, right speech and right action. And we are capable of stopping, of leaving the path of suffering and begin to take up the path of happiness. All of us are capable of producing, of practicing right thinking. Suppose you look at a brother or a sister and you just had that thought, but that maybe this brother or that sister has told something to Thay. That is why thay does not look at you this morning. And you know that kind of thinking brings suffering because it is wrong thinking. But if you are aware that this kind of thinking is the kind of thinking that can lead to anger, to despair, to hate, you are free. You tell yourself, I have to produce another thought that is worth a practitioner. Thay may heavy brown perception on me, but because he is my teacher, I need to help him. In the case he has a wrong perception on me, I think I can help my teacher. The truth may be that the teacher has not misunderstood you. In the case you said in the case, he misunderstand you and then you don't mind because he is your teacher, you can help him to correct his perception. And with that you have peace, you have love, and that kind of thinking brings you happiness. You are not with him of your thinking. If we learn to look at people and to think like that, you suffer less right away. Your partner, your son, your daughter, your father. If you look at him, look at her with the eyes of compassion and understanding. And even if you see shortcoming in that person, if you if that person, even if that person has said something or has done something that makes you suffer, you say that, well, he or she is victim of some wrong perceptions and I need to help him, I need to help her. That kind of thinking will free you from your suffering. And you know that with the practice of deep listening, with the practice of loving speech, you can very well help him or her to correct his or her perception to suffer less. And right thinking is always possible. In the beginning of the talk, I said that right thinking, thinking in the direction of understanding and compassion have a good effect on your health, physical and mental, and will have a good effect on the health of the world. And all of us are capable of producing right thinking. Maybe the resolution that we would like to make today, on the last day of the year 2005, is I decide next year, from tomorrow, I will learn to produce positive thought, practice right thinking. I want my thinking to go in the direction of understanding and compassion. Even if the person in front of me, around me is not happy, he's still acting and speaking on the ground of suffering. I am still capable of producing thoughts in the line of right thinking. When you make such a resolution, you are making it on the ground of your right view. Because right view is the foundation of right thinking. What is right view? Right view is that everyone has suffering. And if that person doesn't know how to handle his or her suffering, they will speak, they could say something, or they will do something that make people around suffer. But as a practitioner, you don't have to suffer even if the action or the speech of that person is negative, and if you are capable of touching compassion and right within you, you wouldn't suffer. You said, well, I have to help him. I don't want to punish him, I want to help him. That is right thinking. And right thinking makes you feel much, much better. It has a positive effect on your health and the health of the world. So I make the bow. I have decided that tomorrow, the beginning of the year 2006, I do my best in order to practice my thinking. Right thinking bring to you consolidate your right view. Right speech also help you consolidate right view. And what is right view? When you are fully present in the here and the now and observe your thought, observe your feelings, observe your emotions. You recognize that they are thought, they are feelings, they are emotions, and they are not reality. And you are not sucked into it, you retain your freedom. And that is very important. Even if a positive, a negative thought arise, a negative feeling and emotion arise, and if you are fully present in the here and the now. And if you remember that your thought is just a thought, it's not reality, that enough will keep you free and allow your wisdom, your compassion to come into action in order to help you. Madness, concentration, insight, bring you freedom. Mindfulness help you. The purpose of mindfulness help you to live your life. I want to live my life. I don't want a victim. I don't want to be a victim of my negative thinking, my negative perceptions. And this is possible with the practice of mindfulness. If we can touch, if mindfulness allows us to touch, to recognize the negative things and to touch the positive things. And if we can open the door of the kingdom of God in us and then we can get in touch with many wonders of the kingdom that are available in our daily life. It is possible for us to walk all day in the kingdom of God. It is possible for us to get in touch with the wonders of the Kingdom of God all day. And the door and the key of the kingdom is there to stay alive, to stay present in the here and the now. And to allow ourselves the time to recognize, to get in touch deeply and not to respond right away, not to react right away in the way we used to do in the past. There are very concrete things that I like to do, that we like to do. And these concrete things may bring us a lot of happiness and freedom. Whenever I walk, I need to work. I shall work in such a way that each step can bring me freedom. I don't lose myself in working. I don't lose myself in the past or in the future or in my projects. While working. While working. I want to taste, to get in touch with the wonders of life. Life, the wonders of the Kingdom of God. That those of us who are capable of working like that while breathing, whether in a sitting position or standing position, we may breathe in such a way that help us to recognize the fact that we are alive, we are present. We can get in touch with the wonders of life while eating. We know that we are there, fully present. It is us who do the work of eating and not the machine. We are not on automatic piloting. We are on consciousness, conscious living. We are on mindful living. The greatest success, the most meaningful kind of success that you can get is freedom. We have to fight for our freedom. It's not by going somewhere or in the future that we have freedom. It is right in the here and now that you can get freedom. And the beginning is to stay present, to stay alive, to be yourself in every moment when you brush your teeth. For instance, you may choose to brush your teeth in such a way that freedom is possible. Let joy be possible, happiness be possible. You can be in the Kingdom of God brushing your teeth, or you may be in hell brushing your teeth. It depends on our way of living our life. And freedom is the ground of happiness. The way of freedom is the way of mindfulness. And mindfulness as it is. The practice of mindfulness, as it is presented in Plumlish, is to learn how to live mindfully each moment of our daily life, to be always present. And that kind of training should continue if you don't want to fall into the abyss of suffering, depression, and so on. And as we have a Sangha that is practicing mindfulness, mindful living, we are supported by the Sangha and the Sangha. A Sangha that is practicing mindfulness, concentration and freedom. That Sangha carries within herself the presence of the Buddha and the presence of the Kingdom of the Buddha, or the Pure Land of the Buddha, the Kingdom of God. As we gather together on this New Year eve, we become aware that the Sangha is always there for us. We can take refuge in the Sangha. Taking refuge in the Sangha means to take refuge in a Buddha, in a Dharma, to be always living in the Kingdom of the Buddha, in the Pure Land of the Buddha, in the Kingdom of God.