Selective Watering and Total Relaxation

0:00:30 The practice we learn here is the practice of taking care of ourselves so that we can take care of the people, of the other people. Many of us are therapists, doctors, nurses, and many are in the helping professions. We should be able to take care of ourselves in order to be able to help other people. I know helping other people can bring a lot of joy to ourselves. But if we do not know how to take care of ourselves, we will burn out very quickly and we will not be able to go very far.

0:01:30 First of all, we have to learn how to rest. And the practice of stopping is so important. Because we are used to run. There is something that is always pushing us. to the future. You have the habit or energy of thinking that we still need some conditions to be really happy. Maybe intellectually, you know already that happiness can be possible in the present moment.

0:02:19 But in reality, the habit of running is still there. Unconsciously, we might believe that we still lack a number of conditions to be really happy. And that is in the future that we can get this. So we have to really practice stopping. And with the intellect, we cannot really stop. We have to practice stopping with our body and with our mind. And that is why practice like "I have arrived, I am home, in the here and the now" is very important. Because the first element of Buddhist meditation is stopping.

0:03:06 Unless you can stop, you cannot begin to look and touch deeply what is there in the present moment. In the sitting position, we can rest. Because many of us, still in a sitting position, struggle a lot. Struggle in order to obtain something. And we are very stiff when we sit. In the lying position, we still cannot rest. We don't know the art of surrender ourselves. so that we can obtain the state of restfulness.

0:04:03 We have learned total relaxation. And you should be able to do total relaxation in our daily life at least one time a day. You know that when you have 10 minutes of an hour, you can already practice total relaxation. Even in your office, you can find a blanket and light down and practice total relaxation. If you have a co-worker, you ask him to do it together with you. And both of you support each other. At home you may ask your little boy, your little girl to join you in doing total relaxation.

0:04:55 Taking care of our body is very important because the body is very much linked to our mind. The body is only an unacceptance of our mind. And the mind is the unacceptance of the body. We lay down and begin to smile, even in the dark. This is not a diplomatic smile. This smile is like an act of practice. Yoga, the yoga on the mouth.

0:05:41 Because on our faces, on our face, there are hundreds of muscles. And when you are worried, when you are afraid, when you are hungry, these muscles are very tense. That is why smiling is a wonderful practice. Smile and then you relax all the muscles on your face. You may ask, "Why do I have to smile when I do not have the joy within myself?" And this is not a matter of joy or not joy. This is a matter of practice. Just smile and allow the muscles and the face to relax. You smile and you see, there is a difference.

0:06:27 You think that the mind should take the initiative. But the body, it can take the initiative as well. Why do we discriminate? Why do we say that, "Unless I have joy, I cannot smile"? That's discrimination. Smile and you feel better, you feel relaxed. And then in practice, smile, smiling, make our smile into a mindful smile. The energy that empowers our smile You'll be able to help with other parts of the body. I'm breathing in, I'm aware of my eyes.

0:07:17 Let them out, I smile through my eyes. When you breathe in, you generate the energy of mindfulness. The whole in-breath, the whole time of the in-breath is used in order to generate mindfulness, mindfulness of breathing in. And in that period of breathing in, mindfulness is generated. Breathing out, I smile. Smiling is also the act of generating mindfulness.

0:08:07 And if with that mindfulness, you touch your eyes and you smile to your eyes, that is only an act of recognizing and loving. When you direct your mindfulness to your heart, and you smile to your heart, you are recognizing your heart as existing there, as important to you. You smile with loving kindness. That is a way of sending loving kindness to your heart.

0:08:52 In the Buddhist tradition, people are used to embrace all the parts of our body in that way, using a kind of energy, using a kind of being in order to touch different parts of our body. Usually we begin with the top of our tent and we go slowly until we reach the solar outfit. There are 36, 37 parts in our body. And every time we come to one part of the body, like the eyes or the brain, we become aware, fully aware of it.

0:09:38 And we nourish the awareness during the home, during the time of the evening and of the out-breath. Breathing in and breathing out, Sometimes you just generate the awareness, the mindfulness, and you embrace that part of your body, like your brain. Sometimes you do overwork your brain. Sometimes you ask your brain to do more than it can afford to do. So when you become aware of your brain, when you breathe in and breathe out and embrace your brain, you are showing your love, your kindness, your compassion, your understanding to your brain.

0:10:34 Because at that moment you don't think. Thinking is not much. Being is better. Therefore, we should practice so that the energy of mindfulness is available. Because that energy of mindfulness is what we need in order to do the work of healing and transform. So embrace your brain with mindfulness and smile to it. And one minute, two minutes later, You come down to your eyes, your nose, your tongue, etc. your lungs, your heart, your liver.

0:11:22 It is the practice of scanning, scanning your body. Not with laser, but with the energy of mindfulness. Because mindfulness is a kind of being, it's a kind of energy. Mindfulness is the energy that helps us to be aware of what is there, to recognize what is there, to embrace it and also to understand it. Because the energy of mindfulness possesses within itself the energy of concentration. When you are mindful of something, you are concentrated on that something.

0:12:13 And mindfulness and concentration always brings about some insight. Mindfulness, concentration, insight. The three things are all to be aware. When you are mindful of the person you love, you'll be concentrated on her, and very soon you'll see what is wrong with the person you love, or what is right with the person you love.

0:13:07 If the person you love suffers, you will understand the nature of the suffering. That person might suffer because of jealousy, of distress, of anger. So that is insight. When you have identified the cause of the suffering in the other person, you already have the insight. And you know what to do and what not to do in order to help her to work it out, work it out. You offer your support in order for her to be able to transform that suffering with her.

0:13:56 You can say, "Darvin, I may you suffer. I am here for you." The cause of your suffering is jealousy. And you should not wait until the situation around change in order to be happy. We have to work with our jealousy because jealousy is the real cause, is the main cause of our suffering. I will support you in this practice. Many of us, when we suffer, we blame on the outside, on the people around, and we tend to wait until there is a change in order to be happy.

0:14:52 But sometimes you have to wait for the whole of your life and nothing can change. That is not the attitude of a practitioner. When you suffer, when things are not ugly to your liking, you have to work it out. Because you have anger, you have despair, you have jealousy within yourself. And you have to change, to transform. And with mindfulness, with concentration, with understanding, we will understand the nature of our struggle, of our anger, of our distress, of our jealousy.

0:15:41 And it is that insight that liberates us from the suffering. It is like when the storm is coming, we cannot blame the storm. we know what to do and what not to do in order to be able to stay in the storm. Or when it is very hard or very cold, we know what to do and what not to do in order to suffer less. So when things are not to our liking, we will practice so that the thing will be more acceptable to us.

0:16:32 It depends on us. And mindfulness, concentration and insight is the only way out. We practice as an individual and we practice as a sangha because many people can support us in this practice. In a live position, you continue with your in-breath and out-breath because you want to continuously generate the image of mindfulness.

0:17:18 And you touch every part of your body with mindfulness and you send your loving smile to that. And we know that this is very, very important for the healing, for the relaxation. We have paid attention to many things, but maybe we are still essential to our body. We have to move back to our body, make peace with our body and show our love, understanding to our body. Breathing in, I am aware of my liver. Breathing out, I smile to my liver.

0:18:09 It is the first time you pay attention to your liver. because you are so preoccupied with many other things, your liver is not so important without it. And when I touch my liver deeply like that with mindfulness, when I am concentrated on my liver deeply like that, I might find out that my liver suffers. My liver might have been sending me a lot of messages for help. S-O-S-S-O-S.

0:18:56 But I have neglected it. I have never received the message from my liver. Of course, your body continuously sends you a message every day. But you are not mindful. You don't receive the message sent to you by your own body. And you continue to live, to act in such a way that makes your body suffer. So when you embrace your liver with mindfulness and send to it your loving smile.

0:19:46 You become concentrated on it, and suddenly you begin to understand, to see that your little self was. In the past, you had eaten, You have drunken, you have worked in such a way that it was not very helpful to your liver. We did not eat my food, we did not drink my food, we did not consume my food, that is why our liver has suffered.

0:20:34 And now, as I know by this insight that my liver suffers, my compassion arises. I know that I have to take care of my liver. I have to eat in such a way, I have to drink in such a way that might stop suffering. If I have been using so much drugs, I have the tendency to use drugs more than to use other ways.

0:21:25 Because it seems that to swallow a pill is easier than to practice total relaxation. Using tankualizers, four things. It's a matter of seconds. You have only to put a pill into your mouth and you take some water and you... Soil, and while total relaxation you need 20 minutes. You want everything to be instant. Instant coffee, instant everything.

0:22:13 And that is the reason why we have not helped our body properly. We want that relief, but we want a quick relief. That is why we are inclined to use drugs. Therapists should be able to apply this kind of discipline to themselves. not to abuse drugs, not to abuse our body, drugs.

0:23:13 We practice giving our body a chance to rest and to recover itself. We need to believe that our body has the power of healing itself, because in fact, our body has the power of healing itself. If we only know how to allow our body to diffuse, we have been standing on the way. We have not allowed our body to rest and to heal itself. We have to look more deeply into this matter. Therapists, doctors, nurses, people in the helping professionals, we should practice.

0:24:16 We should practice taking good care of ourselves in order to really practice taking care of other people. Every day, we should allow time for our body to rest, for our spirit, for our consciousness to rest. The practice of body scanning should be done daily. You can organize so that you can do it with a friend or circle friend.

0:25:04 And when the time comes, one of you says it's time for total relaxation. so you will do it. Students in the university, between two exams, if they know how to do the total relaxation, they will do much better. When I was a student and taking the exam, And I already knew how to do it. After one exam, I had 15 minutes or half an hour before the certain exam. I lay down on the grass and I practiced total realization.

0:25:52 Instead of sitting there and worrying about the subject, you had to discuss the question you had to answer in the next examination. If you stand there, if you sit there and continue to worry about the next exam, you are losing more of yourself, of your strength, of your freshness, and you will not be your best when you undertake the second exam. So our program may be... Originally, we program only one thing a day.

0:26:42 But when you come to the place, there will be other things presenting themselves, and you accept a second thing and sometimes a third thing. So there are two things to do. First of all, you have to learn to say no. It is very heartbreaking to say no to people when they meet you. I think you have already had that feeling as a therapist, as a doctor, as a nurse, as a member of the helping professionals. you know it.

0:27:24 When people need you and you have to say no, that is very heart-breaking. But we should know our limits. If you want to survive and to continue for a long time, you have to learn how to say no. People will understand. The second thing is that between activities you should give your body and your mind time to recover themselves. Do total relaxation, do mindful walking. After a Dhamma talk, I will always treat myself with a walking meditation.

0:28:20 It helps me to recover myself. Walking meditation is such a relaxing practice. You can release the negative energy, you can empower yourself with positive energies, you can get in more fresh air and renew your body. A deep breathing is wonderful. And as someone in a helping profession, a helping profession, you have to learn to do that.

0:29:10 Find time in your daily life to renew yourself. So, discuss this with your colleagues and ask your colleagues to join you in the practice of resting, of renovating, of renewing. This is very important. when you know that it would be too much pain. When you are a therapist, you have to sit there and to listen to the sorrow, the pain of other people.

0:30:13 And if you do that too much, you will have a negative effect on you. I know you have compassion, you have loving kindness, you want to help people to support us, yes. But you have to take care of yourself. When I listen I live with too much of the suffering of other people. I cannot eat. I have to do walking meditation a lot before I am able to eat something.

0:31:03 There are negative seeds in us, the seeds of sorrow, of sadness, of pain in us. And if we sit and listen hours and hours to the suffering of other people, these seeds in us will be touched, And they will grow. That is why we should be able to know our limits. This is very important.

0:31:50 So please use your intelligence to work out a kind of skill, a kind of principle which we have to abide to in order for us to be able to perfect ourselves. One of the ways for you to protect us... is to protect yourself. In a sutra, the Buddha talks about...

0:32:40 an akhobat and his disciples. The akhobat had a bamboo pole. He used to bring his disciples to the marketplace. He posed the bamboo pole on his head to keep the balance. Then the disciples would climb up the bamboo pole, and they practiced balance. People uploaded and gave money for both of them to live. So one day, the acrobat told his disciples: "Dear disciples, we have to learn how to protect each other.

0:33:33 I have to protect you, and you have to protect me, so that we will survive for a long time, and we will earn a living." And the disciples said: "My teacher, we should say it like this: Each one of us has to take care of himself. When I take care of myself, when I climb very mindfully, I am protecting you. And when you keep the pole in balance, you are protecting me. So by taking care of ourselves, we take care of each other. That's the teaching of the Buddha.

0:34:21 So if you, the doctor, the therapist, if you know how to protect yourself, to take care of yourself, you are protecting us. I don't know. We have to be able to meet our colleagues in a kind of Dawa discussion.

0:35:30 And we ask them the question as how extra people take care of themselves and protect themselves. And if we learn from our colleagues, then as we ourselves have practiced, we have something to say: "This is the way I take care of myself and I protect myself." Because I know the practice of taking care of self, protecting self is very crucial for helping other people, protecting other people, taking care of other people. So let us, in this retreat, come to small groups and discuss with each other how each one of us takes care of ourselves.

0:36:23 We share and we learn at the same time. The Buddha said several times that it is possible for us to live happily in the present moment. "Drishtha dharma sukhaviyaravi" That is the Sanskrit expression. "Drishtha dharma" means the present moment. "Sukhav" means happiness. "Sukhaviyari", living happily in the present moment. And he was aware that each of us still has blocks of suffering and sorrow.

0:37:12 And yet he said it is still possible to live happily in the present moment. In fact, we don't have to remove all our suffering, our sorrow, to take out of our body, our system, in order to be happy now. in the light of interbeing. Joy is made of non-joy elements. The sorrow of us has a role to play. It's like the compost in the garden has a role to play in breaking up the vegetables and the flowers.

0:38:05 so it's not a necessity to remove all the pain and the sound of Ragnas in order to be really happy. If you know how, then happiness may be possible in the here and the now. When you know how to practice mindfulness, the energy of mindfulness will help us to go back to the here and the now. And in the here and the now, we will get in touch with the positive reflection and healing of the earth. That is very important for us to be able to live happily in the present moment.

0:39:02 The homework I suggested yesterday is very important. If you have no doubt, please do it sometime later. Intellectually, remind now that there are positive elements. Intellectually, you may know that there are elements of happiness in the here and the now. But because we are always on the run, running, we do not have a chance to start and touch these elements of happiness.

0:39:50 The problem is how to create opportunities for us to recognize these elements and to profit from you. You have your intelligence. Why don't you use your intelligence? It's working out, to work out that kind of practice. When there is something that you don't like, you allow that something to overwhelm, so that you forget all the positive things. That is not a very wise attitude. When one or two trees in my garden are dying, I am aware of it, and I can be obsessed by the fact that a few trees in my garden are dying.

0:40:52 But if I take a look of the whole garden, I will see that many trees are still robust, healthy, great. And I have changed my idea. Hundreds of trees are still alive, beautiful. There are only a few trees that are dying. And I profit from the beauty of the trees that are beautiful in order to get the strength and to take care of the trees that are dying. Well, I may find a way to help these trees not to die.

0:41:37 Or if they die, I will plant new trees on that tree. So in that case, you will not be overwhelmed by that spell. So, it is very important to be aware of what is not wrong, and not to let what is wrong to overwhelm us. This is a very important practice for the therapist. She has to apply the discipline to herself, and then to help the people in the same way. when a blind comes, of course, she is very eager to discuss what is wrong.

0:42:25 And there is a belief that if you are able to talk about what is wrong, you will suffer less. But you have to revise this. We were talking a lot about what is wrong. It's rehearsing our pain, helping our pain, the seed of pain in our stalker's eyes to grow. You have had the chance to talk about your suffering to one person. Why do you need to talk to 100% about the same kind of pain? Why do you have to talk to the same person a second time, a third time, a fourth time about your pain?

0:43:17 So that that person said, "I already know, I already know." That practice can be harmful. The alternative practice is to use the energy of mindfulness to touch the positive elements within us and with the other person. A therapist might propose something like I proposed yesterday: what positive elements are available in the ear and the mouth, how we can profit from them.

0:44:09 Imagine a therapist and a client to sit down and identify these positive elements. It's a joyful time spent together. And why don't you practice walking meditation together? Why don't we share the technique of mindful walking? Mindful walking can reduce the negative energy. Mindful walking can help us to touch the windows of life that are available in the here and the now. We know that if we know how to walk, the kingdom of God will be abandoned in here and now.

0:45:01 The wonders of the mind are there, very hopeless. This morning, when I was walking with you, I was not so sure that we had the right to walk on the bus. But I felt wonderful. I was able to bow firmly in the here and the now. And every step was bringing to me solidity, freedom and happiness. If that be still, if she knows how to enjoy her mindful walking, she is able to share it with her client.

0:46:01 And she may like to initiate her client to the practice of total relaxation. and train the client in the art of to-be. To-be and to-be-touching, when we touch something, we are one with that outline of touching. When you touch the blue sky deeply, we are one with the sky. When you touch the autumn deeply, we are one with the autumn. And when we touch something negative, we become one with that form song.

0:46:57 To be, to touch deeply what is there in the present moment, and redeem our thinking because we think too much. We're thinking. Anyway, a little bit too much. We are not able to delve in the present moment. The most ancient text, the most ancient scriptures that teaches you about the mindful living in the present moment is the Bhatti Karata Sutta. In the Paliya Kamen there are four or five sutras that deal with the art of learning in the present moment.

0:47:52 And in the Chinese Kamen there are also five or six equivalent texts. The sutra on how to live in solitude, to live alone. To live alone here means to doubt in the present moment. The word "solitude" may be misleading, may give you an idea that that person wants to be alone.

0:48:43 But "solitude" is a wonderful way of living. You have time for yourself, to be alone. All of us have that kind of need. Sometimes we very much need to be alone, to take care of ourselves. We just cannot be sharing with the people all the time, taking care of the people all the time. We need time to be with ourselves, to nurture ourselves, to renew ourselves, to enrich ourselves in our spiritual life.

0:49:39 If you spend all your time talking and doing things with other people, you will lose yourself. you become poorer and poorer in the inside. So monastic life is the kind of life where people have a lot of chance to be oneself, walking along, sitting along, and that is to cultivate our solidarity, our freedom, our inner joy, so that we have something to share with other people. Accepted meditation is a practice of renewing yourself, of enriching yourself, of cultivating solidity, freedom and job, freedom from afflictions, freedom from the tendency to run into the future or to be caught in the past.

0:50:48 walking meditation, sharing a sudden mood. All these things are in the context of the practice of living alone. And the monastic culture can be shared with the people who live in society. Because when we live in a society surrounded by so many people, having so many things to do, we also feel the need of being alone. So we should arrange so that, in our living life, we have the times and opportunities to live in society.

0:51:45 We should have the occasion to do mindful walking alone, mindful sitting alone, spend time alone, dwelling in the present moment, looking deeply. In that way, we can cultivate more solidity, more peace, more joy, more insight, and you have something to share with the people in love. A therapist, a helping professional, should be able to do so. Because we are very eager to share, we are very eager to help.

0:52:34 We are generous. But in order to give, yes, we've got to have something. That something must be our solidity, our freedom, our joy, our spirituality. The same thing is true with our sorrow, our pain. If we have a boat, we can carry our pain and our sorrow and we will not sink into the river of suffering.

0:53:23 And what is that boat? That boat is, first of all, the energy of mindfulness that you generate by your practice. That both is also the Sangha, the community of practice consisting of brothers and sisters in the Dharma and they are practicing exactly the same thing, generating the energy of mindfulness. And to that one who knows the practice well, the existence of the sangha is very cool, because there are moments when you are less than yourself.

0:54:27 There are moments when you are in need of a brother or a sister in order for you to restore the balance. There are moments when the sorrow, the pain overweigh the joy and the stability. And in these moments, you really need a Sangha. Your mindfulness is not strong enough to sustain you in these moments, and that is why you need the collective energy of mindfulness of your Sangha in order to sink into the ocean of sorrow.

0:55:17 Sangha building is so essential to the practice. Therapy, doctors, you have to self-yosanna in order to get the support you need. You have to provide each other with the opportunity to cut this together and to nourish your stability, your freedom, to allow transformation and healing to be possible every day. With a person who has stability and joy sitting next to you, you feel much better.

0:56:21 There are moments when you feel so loved that you are about to sink, to crack, and you remember you have a friend. But she is not there, she lives very far from here. And you wish so much that she'll be here sitting next to you so that you can restore the balance. And we know sitting next to a person that has stability and job, you can restore your models very quickly. That is why we need a sangha.

0:57:07 All of us need a sangha. I myself need a sangha. When the child finds himself in a nervous crisis, You can come and hold him in your arms.

0:57:55 You might like to take his hand and ask him, invite him to do walking meditation or to sit down. And you both practice meeting in with loud, paying attention to the rise and fall of your abdomen. And five or ten minutes later, your child will feel better. You are his sangha. You are an element of his sangha. He can profit from people like you, and he might profit from many people like you. And in the satrya, he can profit from every brother, every sister.

0:58:47 I know that in the therapy circle there is the practice with groups of people, group therapy. But those who come to therapy, they already have problems. And when you regroup... many people who have problems, it will be very difficult to handle. But when you regroup joyful people together, you have a lot of joy.

0:59:35 So, Sangha building, you have to select people. There must be people who have enough stability, freedom and joy. And then you can receive people who need the support. But to me, the percentage is important. You need at least two-thirds of the sangha to be the people having enough solidity, joy and freedom. If you bring into your sangha so many young people, so many suffering people, the few people who have solidity and joy will not be able to sustain that percentage.

1:00:32 In Plum Village, we have a Sankha of monks and nuns and lay people. And most of the monks and nuns and the lay people, they come here, they come there. It's not because they are sick, not because they have suffered so much That they want to avoid life. No. Most of the monks and nuns in Bluegrass, they are young people. There are those who are 16, 17, 18. And they are not abused by their parents.

1:01:20 They have a normal family. They have become monks and nuns because they have that heart of learning. They don't want to live a comfortable life. They think they will be happier if they can serve more people than just a few. Their intention is not to make the happiness of one, two, or three people. Their intention is to make the happiness of many people. and the energy within them is a bodhichitta, the mind of love. And if that energy is too strong, then you cannot resist becoming a monk or a monk.

1:02:13 That is a way by which you can help many people. It's like when you become a therapist, You are motivated by the idea of helping people. That is also the positive energy in you. That is also the body system. And many of you begin by being a client when you have suffered. And as you have experienced the healing, the transformation, You know therapy is very important. That is why you have decided to be a therapist yourself, to build relief to other people.

1:02:57 That is also the mind of love. The Sangha is a community, It's a beautiful community that practices joy, happiness. The joy and happiness is what we will share with other people. So it's Sangha. The practice of the Sangha is the practice of happiness.

1:03:42 Of course, the Sangha can practice healing and transforming. But the Sangha can practice happiness in the here and the now. The monks, the nuns, the lay people believe in them. They don't believe that fame and wealth and sex are the true foundation of happiness. They don't need to learn after these objects of craving. Because they know that running after these objects of craving can ruin you, can make you explore your body and your mind, can bring you a lot of suffering.

1:04:26 So they have decided not to run after the objects of craving. Instead, they want to go back to the heat and the now and touch the windows of your eyes. They are out of the world. They follow the teaching of the Buddha. It is possible to live in the here and the now with happiness and not to run after the objects of goodness. So then you can generate a smile. You can smile with your eyes. you can smile with your hand, and then your life will be a great service to other people.

1:05:15 There are those of us who have practiced only one year and two years as a monk, and yet we have already begun to make the happiness of other people. When you are able to walk mindfully, beautifully, peacefully, with joy, When people see you walking like that, they have confidence. They know that they can do like that. It may happen that they have lost their practice, they walk not mindfully, they are letting their worries or their project overwhelm them, but when they see a person walking like that, but they will come back to their practice.

1:06:07 They will be able to breathe in mindfully and without mindfully and smiling. So this time I feel wonderful because during retreats organized in California, New York, we have been able to offer the presence of many months and months. And having monks and nuns in the Sangha is a nice thing because these monks and nuns, they practice full-time in the village. Every day is a day of the opportunity.

1:06:57 And they are trained in order to have other people. They offer each other joy. They offer me a lot of joy. Of course, there are difficulties. But with the practice, with the Dharma, we are always able to overcome these difficulties and restore the harmony, the ease and the joy. We have faith in the Dharma because the Dharma has helped so much to restore harmony and peace and joy. When you build a Sangha, the Sangha may look like it's not a perfect Sangha.

1:07:51 But you have to stick to your Sangha. You have to use your balance in order to continue to improve the quality of the Sangha. Don't get angry with your Sangha. Don't run away from the Sangha. Building a Sangha, we need a lot of energy and time. You need to take care of expression. Who is a Sangha builder? We need to have a lot of love, a lot of good intention, a lot of tolerance in order to build a Saga.

1:08:35 A Saga, a good Saga, is a wonderful instrument for transformation and healing. The moment when you bring a patient, a suffering person into the Sangha, she can see that person may feel relief right away. There is a matter of sphere, there is the energy of joy, of harmony, that you can feel, and you feel better, actually, before the Sangha does anything without you.

1:09:28 That is why part of our time and life should be devoted to Sangha building. In the Buddhist tradition, we say, "I take refuge in the Sangha." Taking refuge in the Sangha is very important. Not less important than taking refuge in the Buddha and in the Dhamma. Because the Sangha contains in itself the energy of the Buddha and the Dharma. If everyone in the Sangha practices, and then mindfulness is there. And mindfulness is the energy of the Buddha.

1:10:13 And mindfulness is the substance of the Dharma. So taking refuge in the Sangha means to abide by the Sangha, to seek support from the Sangha, to get the energy from the Sangha. Taken daily in the Sangha is not a matter of faith, of belief. It is a matter of practice. To practice in order to build the Sangha, to improve the quality of the Sangha. The first thing, the basic thing, to have the Sangha, to build the Sangha, is to transform ourselves into a good element of the Sangha.

1:11:03 Loving, understanding. And you can make your loving and understanding existing in other members of your son. One day, the King Prasamaji of the Gosha kingdom met the Buddha. He was a disciple of the Buddha and also a friend of the Buddha. They were born in the same year. And in that year, they were both Uti. And they came to look at the Buddha and said this: "Lord Buddha, anytime I see your Sangha, I have a medicine in you." Because the Sangha is the work is the flower tree.

1:12:07 The Buddha was an excellent Sangha building, and he had excellent assistants like the venerable Shariputra. They spent a lot of time really building the Sangha because the Sangha is a wonderful thing for helping people to transform and to heal. That is why any therapist should build his or her own Sangha in order to get the support, the energy, and in order to have an instrument for helping other people to heal.

1:12:57 In this aspect, there are a lot of things you can learn from the ancient Buddhist tradition. The practice within Buddhism is the practice of crossing over to the other shore. From the shore of Yubi, I'm close to the soft shore of well-being. I mean, from the shore of hunger, I cross to the shore of non-hunger. And every time I find myself standing on this shore, I would do something not to cross over. I don't allow myself to be caught on this shore.

1:13:44 That is the practice. And sometimes, crossing over to the other shore is very quick. If you have a minor irritation, don't let the minor irritation to become a real irritation. Just by breathing in and breathing out, and smile at what is there. It's not that important. It should not spoil young days, young peanuts. And only a few in-breath and out-breath can help evaporate your irritation. If you are able to switch the way of looking, the kind of discontentment, the kind of irritation you can just evaporate very easily.

1:14:46 And by doing so, you are cultivating your compassion, your understanding. The other person, because of his lack of skillfulness, of the energy of anger and suffering in him, he can let other people out of him suffer. And if you understand that you will not suffer, Instead, we can try to help you in the presence. So with the energy of mindfulness generated in your daily life, thanks to your practice, and with the sangha that is always there to support you, you have the boat.

1:16:00 You have the boat that will keep you from sinking into the river of satra. And it is perfectly possible that you enjoy living happily in a present moment, because all the wonders of life are there, available to you in this moment. We know that there will be a time when we lie on our bed, about to die. All our force will be living in us.

1:16:49 And in that moment, even if we want very much, we would not be able to stand up and to do work on meditation even for ourselves. You have sin in that body. No matter what you can do, you cannot remind that person and help him to stand up and to do work in meditation. And now your feet are strong, Your eyes are bright, are clear, in good condition. Your lungs are good.

1:17:39 It's wonderful that you can enjoy walking. Every step helps you to go back to your true mood, the healing and the love. At each step like that, it can be very nourishing and helpful. Why don't we create opportunities for us to do that every day? Why don't we invite our friends to do that every day? So the therapist can very well invite his current and maybe another child, not one child, to join in the walking meditation. It may be better than just to sit down and to think of and to touch and to talk about what is our.

1:18:35 I think we have to go back a little bit to our verses. I think we have read together the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth. Now we come to the noun. All manifestations bear the marks of both the individual and the collective. The maturation of Alaya functions in the same way in its participation in the different stages and realms of being. All manifestations from Alaya.

1:19:23 Alaya manifests itself into, first of all, the bent of formations. Alaya manifests itself into formations like eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind. Alaya manifests itself as an object of five senses like a form, sound, smell, touch, etc. Manifestations as formations like the realm of things in themselves, the realm of representations, the realms of mere images.

1:20:14 The realms of mere images is the world in which we live during our dream or our imagination. The realm of representation is the realm where we live our daily life because we are caught in a way of thinking that is against the principle of non-duality and inter-being. And the realm of things in themselves is what we can touch every time we have the insight of inter-being and non-duality, impermanence, and non-self.

1:21:03 And all these manifestations are They are the marks of the individual and the collective. My emptiness is not only mine. Thank you. Thank you.

1:22:37 One day I said, "The brain in our school is not an individual thing." the way it thinks, the way it perceives, the way it creates or reflects the collective thinking. If I find the dress beautiful, not because I find it beautiful, but because all of you find it beautiful, that is why I feel it beautiful.

1:23:29 That is why fashion comes to being. So the value of the power depends on the collective fear, the collective enthusiasm. So everything is of the nature. of the collective and individual. The maturation of Aya functions in the same way in its participation in the different stages and realms of being.

1:24:16 Maturation means ripening. An act needs some time in order to rap, to be rap. Like an orange. The orange blossom produces an orange, and that orange needs time and conditions in order to be an orange that you can eat. So our actions, our karma, means action. Like what we say, what we think, and what we do, are the kind of actions we perform every day.

1:25:11 And they need some time to mature. and they will be manifested. And when they manifest, they manifest in participation with other consciousness. Suppose we look deeply into this retreat. This retreat is a manifestation of our collective consciousness.

1:25:58 Why do we have this kind of retreat? Because each of you have planted into your Aranya Vishnana, It's the seed of the practice. You have read a book. You have heard about something about mindfulness practice. You have the desire to cultivate more insight into the art of healing and transformation. All these things have happened some time ago. And now conditions are enough for us to come together and have this church.

1:26:47 And the participation of each one of us depends on the act that we have committed, we have performed in the past. Why other people have not come to our retreat? because they did not share the same kind of interests of sin. So why have you come to give us? Something has been determined before that we will come together to give us today. That has been written down in our Alaya Visjana, collectively and individually.

1:27:34 That is the law called the law of affinity. And people of the same affinity, they always come together. There is the realms of the gods, the realms of the hungry spirits, the realms of hells, the six destinations, the gods, the humans, the hells, the hungry ghosts, the asuras, and the animals.

1:28:39 The asuras means... it becomes spiritual but always very angry. Asuras. And each of us has the six realms in us. we have a god within, we have a human being within, we have a hungry ghost within, we have an animal within, we have a help within, we have an asura within. And up to you to choose. If you continue to water the seed of hungry ghost in yourself every day, and then you become a hungry ghost.

1:29:27 And you look for another hungry ghost, and you come together. That is participation. In the Buddhist tradition, it would be weird that there are hungry ghosts. And this is the way we picture these hungry ghosts, having a very big belly, very hungry, And a very tiny throat, as small as a needle. And that is why you can't ever satisfy your heart, because your throat is small. And every year, in Buddhist countries, they make offering to the hungry ghost, that is the full moon day of the 8th month, the lunar calendar month, the 7th month.

1:30:31 That day, you make an offer and place on the altar of your ancestors. And you are happy that your ancestors have a place to come home. They are not hungry, they have children, they have a home. so they feel very comfortable. But you know that there are plenty of agricultors wandering around. They don't have a home to come, to return. That is why you have to make offerings in the front yard. You offer rice, cake, water, and so on. In our tradition, during the ceremony of offering to the hungry birds, you have to pronounce a magic formula, a mantra, so that you can bring the signs of the truth of the hungry birds to know.

1:31:45 There is a mantra, called a mantra of bringing back the truth of the hundred gods to normal signs. And you pronounce it twice. And then you send the Hatha Sutra, you invite the hundred gods to eat. and you recite the name of the Buddha Amitabha so that the Buddha Amitabha will bring all of them to the pure earth. That is a popular belief in Buddhism. But as we practice, looking deeply, we see that hungry ghosts are everywhere around us, especially younger ones, among the younger generations.

1:32:40 They are hungry of understanding of love. They suspect everything. They don't believe in family. They don't believe in society. They don't believe in church. They don't believe in their tradition. They have rejected everything and they are looking for something to be lived in. From time to time, they come to a Zen center, a practice center, and really can recognize them very easily the way they walk, the way they look.

1:33:24 It's the way of the hungry. They are very suspicious. Even if you have understanding in Lattu offer, they stay suspect, escape. In order to help a hunker those, you have to be very patient. You have to earn that trust before you can help. There are people without roots, no roots in religion, no roots in society, there are no looks in the family.

1:34:06 Because in the family, the mother and the father did not prove that happiness in the family is possible. In the church also, they did not feel they are understood. There are four simple things that they don't understand, they cannot accept. And our society is organized in such a way Maybe we create hundreds of thousands of people every day. And if you look back here around us, you see plenty of hundreds. They are looking for something really beautiful, really good, really true to believe in.

1:34:59 Their truth is very tiny because they suspect everything. They are not ready to believe in anything. And even if you have love and care to offer, they still can absorb their truth. It's very small. And hungry ghosts, they like to come together. The people in hell also, all of us have been in hell. We know what is hell.

1:35:44 And hell is not very far away, hell is right here. And the maturation of another operates according to this law of affinity. If we have a lot of seeds of hungry ghosts, we will come with other hungry ghosts, and we will form a society of hungry ghosts. So it is already determined within our area that in what direction, in what destination, overworld.

1:36:44 The six destinations: dogs, men, Asura, hungry ghosts, hell, and animals. The mass donation of Alaya functions in the same way in its participation in different stages and realms of beings. The other day, I said that there are ten stages, but in fact, there are nine stages. And these nine sages are found in the three worlds: the world of craving, the world of form, and the world of no-faults.

1:37:46 I hope the ninth verses will let us come to the ten: Hope, unobstructed and indeterminate, Alaya is continuously flowing and changing. At the same time, it is endowed with the five universal mental properties this we have discussed yesterday. Unobstructed because Alaya has the capacity of being transformed and acquired the absolute clarity.

1:38:37 Indeterminate means that it is neither wholesome or unwholesome. so it depends on our way of life. Alanya is continuously flowing and changing. In fact, the original is like this. Alanya is both continuous and changing. Hanging. Continuous because it operates. It is not discontinued like this, like the mental consciousness. It is not discontinued like the eye consciousness or the ear consciousness.

1:39:31 Because the eye consciousness operates during the death, and when you sleep, it stops operating. Mental consciousness also stopped operating in some of the cases. But manas and alayas, they operate continuously in the natsa. But it does not mean that it is permanent, continuous. It does not mean permanent. It is always changing. because all that sits within alayla is evolving day from night. So there is a chance for us to do something that starts from the beginning.

1:40:19 At the same time, it is endowed with the five universal mental properties, the five universal we have listed yesterday on the board. and tomorrow afternoon, extravasa will have a shift with all the 50-armed mental formations. Although impermanent and without a separate self, Anya contains within itself all dhammas in the Dharma Directive, conditioned and unconditioned. "Dhama" here means "things," "phenomena." A flower is a dharma, our anger is a dharma, space is a dharma, time is a dharma.

1:41:29 Dharmadhatu means the realm of all the Dharmans. Establish themselves in the nature of Nirvana, of no birth and no death. And with your deluded mind, you can only picture Dharmans in the realm of birth and death. And there are dharmas that are called conditioned, and there are dharmas that are called unconditioned. The original mind, the nirvana, are dhammas that you can term as "unconditioned." Vor-vip, conditioned dhammas, always undergo change, birth and death.

1:42:43 But unconditioned dhammas do not undergo birth and death. This is only a distinction for beginners. Because if we continue to look deeply into every Dharma, we find that the true nature of all Dharma is different. Everything has been neutralized since the beginning. The Dhyana Sutra, the Prajnaparamita Sutra are the teachings that help us to touch deeply the nature of all dharma, the nature of no birth and no death.

1:43:42 We have a chance to go back to it later on. Seeds can produce seeds. Seeds can produce formations. Formations can produce seeds. Formations can produce formations. So, let's take a look at this.

1:44:40 Suppose anger is a seat within our consciousness. When someone says something, or does something, he touches the seat of anger, And the energy of anger is a manifestation of the seed. And the energy of anger that produces itself in mental consciousness is a formation. The seed is down there, the formation is up here. And if you entertain the anger for five minutes, this anger will help the seed down there to grow.

1:45:44 Any seed can help to produce another seed. And up here, the formation can produce another formation. Like a seed of corn can produce a plant of corn, a plant of corn can produce a year of corn. There is something I would like to say concerning anger. When we are irritated, when we are angry, we suffer.

1:46:34 And we believe that if we do something, like expressing our anger, or telling the other person, that he is not kind, he has done a terrible thing, or to punish him or her. We think that if we do so, we will get a relief. But as all of us have experienced this, The anger, the irritation might be multiplied by 3 times or 10 times if you express.

1:47:29 Yes, because you give it a push. So it's very important to learn how to embrace your irritation, your anger And not to practice the so-called ventilation in that way. When you ventilate, you suffer more. Of course, you don't do anything to suppress it. You have to recognize it. You have to allow it to be. But you have to take good care of it.

1:48:13 And unless you have some energy of mindfulness, you cannot take good care of your anger. Breathing, smiling, mindful walking is very helpful in taking good care of your anger. There are therapists who tell us that we can do like this. We go into our room, we lock our room, and we beat, we pound on a pillar. That is safer. Yes, but it is not entirely safe. We know that if we beat the other person, it is very dangerous.

1:49:04 That is why we lock the door and we pound on our pillow. And we may call it getting in touch with our anger, or getting it out of our system. But in the light of this practice, this is not a very wise thing to do. Because when you hit the pillow, you are rehearsing your anger, you help the seat of anger down there to the ground.

1:49:59 And some time later, while getting angry, you don't have a room to go to and to lock the door and you will be tempted to hit the person directly. Of course, we have to touch our anger, we have to recognize our anger, we have to allow our anger to be. But with which, with what, we can touch our anger? With what, we can recognize our anger as it is?

1:50:50 With what can we embrace our anger? That is the question. And the answer is that the image of Wifefulness is the only kind of energy that can help To help us to touch our anger, to recognize our anger and to take care of our anger. That is why the time for solitude, the time of practice is very important for us to generate that kind of energy for touching, for recognizing, for embracing. When you beat your pillow, you are not really touching your anger.

1:52:01 You are not in touch with your anger, pretty. You let yourself to be overwhelmed by anger. That's all. That's what really is happening. You are not even in touch with the pillow. Because if you are really in touch with the pillow, you would know that this is only a pillow. And if you have that kind of enlightenment, this is only a pillow you'd have no heart to pound it like that. That is why going back to our daily practice is very important.

1:52:49 Mindful walking, mindful breathing, embracing the mental formations that manifest in ourselves. Recognize them. And every time a negative formation is recognized, it will lose some strength. And go down to the deeper level of consciousness, a little bit weaker. Tomorrow I will continue.