Reconciliation

0:00:30 Dear friends, you probably know [a young man]. He came to Plum Village during a winter retreat. So he is an American young man. And while he was in the upper hamlet, he gave him a homework to do. The homework was for everyone, not just for him, He thought that he could not do it. That is about to write a love letter to one's father. He could not do it.

0:01:14 Writing a love letter is a practice. And he told us that the fact of thinking about his father It makes him very unhappy already, not to say "sit down" and write a letter. Every time he thinks of, he thought of his father, the suffering just overwhelms him. And his father had already passed away, and yet he could not reconcile with him. So when I learned that he was in that situation, I offered him the exercise of the five-year-old boy.

0:02:16 I'm breathing in. I see myself as a five-year-old boy, breathing out. I smile to the small, to the five-year-old boy, that was myself. I asked him to practice that for a week, walking meditation, sitting meditation, doing things in the garden, in the kitchen and so on. When you breathe in and you see yourself as a five-year-old boy. You can touch the vulnerability, the fragility of yourself.

0:03:08 You are too fragile. A stern look from an adult can already create a wound within yourself. And when your father shout at you, Shut up! And then you got another deep wound within your heart. As a five-year-old boy, you already have your suffering, your difficulties. And sometimes you try to express that to your father or to your mother. But it seems that they are not patient enough to wait for you. You don't have enough words. You don't know how to speak yet.

0:03:54 And you try your best. And that irritated them, and they may shout at you. And if they shout at you like that, it is like a bucket of ice water pouring on your heart. And next time, you won't dare to do it again, to try to do it again. So you are very fragile, vulnerable as a five-year-old boy. And when breathing in, you see that a compassion will arise in you. Breathing out, I smile to the five-year-old boy who was me. You are notified the little boy in you.

0:04:40 And very soon, you realize that the little boy in you is always alive in you. and it needs you very much to take care of it. You have deserted him for a long time. You don't know that he is still there. He needs your true presence. He needs you to come back and take care of you. The little girl in you is always there, maybe deeply wounded. And if you don't go back to her, to talk to her, to embrace her, to try to help and heal her. And then she will remain wounded forever. So this practice should be done during the first week.

0:05:33 And then the next week, I gave him another exercise. Breathing in, I see my father as a five-year-old boy. I smiled to that father-year-old boy who had been my father. I said, "If you did it, you sent for a picture of your father as a father-year-old boy. The family album may have it. And perhaps you have not had an idea about how your father would look when he was fine. But it's very helpful to be able to visualize your father as a 5-year-old boy, as fragile as you were when you were 5, as vulnerable as you when you were 5.

0:06:28 And you need to see it by your visualization. Breathing in, I see my father as a 5-year-old boy. "Breathen out, I smiled to him to let him find you, old boy." Maybe this is the first time you can see your father as a vulnerable little child. And you begin to understand. Your father might have been a victim like you when he was five. He might have been abused by his father at that age. And he did not have a chance to meet a teacher, to be with a sangha in order to take care of his wounds.

0:07:18 That is why he allowed that seed of suffering to grow up in him. And he has transmitted that internal formation, that seed of suffering to you. And now, to get angry at him is unjust. He was to be helped and not to be punished. So breathing in, "I see my father as a five-year-old boy breathing out, I smile to you." That smile is already a smile of understanding and of compassion. The young man from America, He also got a picture of his father as a grown-up person.

0:08:13 And he placed that picture on his little table in his tiny room in the upper hamlet. Every time he was about to leave the room, he would stop at his table, turn on the light and look into the eyes of his father and practice mindful breathing. Breathe in, breathe in, breathe in. This is my father. Breathe in, I smile to my father. And every time he got into his room, he would practice the sin before he lay down on his bed. And I also offer him the meditation on the emptiness of transmission.

0:09:12 The emptiness of transmission, what does it mean? It has to do very much with the teaching of the filthy verses. Nothing can be by itself alone. Everything depends on everything else. In any transmission, there must be three kinds of components, elements. First, there must be a transmitter, and then there must be an object to be transmitted, and there must be a receiver of the transmission. Three elements. Every time you have a chance to take a shower, Look at your body, breathe in and out deeply, and look at your body as an object of transmission.

0:10:03 Who has transmitted this body to you? Your father, your mother. And you ask the question as what your parents have transmitted. What have they transmitted to you? And if you look deeply, you find out that they have transmitted something not less than themselves. They have transmitted themselves to you, nothing less. So the transmitter and the transmitted, are they two or one?

0:10:50 Two or one belong to another pair of opposites. You cannot say two, you cannot say one. Reality is like that. You cannot imprison reality in one or two of your concepts. Reality is free from concepts. That is the meaning of nirvana. Nirvana means the extinction of all concepts. And then there is still the element that is called the receiver of the transmission.

0:11:34 Who is he? Is he distinct from the object transmitted and the transmitter? that body that has been transmitted, is it one with you or two? So if you look deeply in the nature of your body, into the nature of transmission, you'll see that there is the emptiness of transmission. Although we think that there are three elements, But the three elements cannot be separated, neither the same nor the different.

0:12:17 That is the training. We have to learn how to look at things like that in order to begin to perceive the realm of things in themselves. [a young man], when he was young, he was very bold. He had declared like this: "I do not want to have anything to do with my father." He was very sincere. "But is it possible for us not to have anything to do with our father?" "Can you take your father out of yourself?" If looking deeply, you see that you are the continuation of your father. You are your father.

0:13:04 There is no escape. So if you declare that you don't want to have anything to do with your father, that is only your anger, your wish. In reality, that is impossible because you are your father. It's better to reconcile with your father within you. It is better to reconcile you with yourself. One day, after crying a lot, he sat down and began to write a love letter to his father. Because the insight he had brought, he cried a lot.

0:13:59 He was able to see the suffering of his father. He was able to see that his own ignorance. I had told him that if you don't practice, you will transmit that suffering to your children and your grandchildren. So you practice for your parents, for your father, and for your children and their children. When you are able to make a peaceful step, you do it for all your ancestors, and you do it for all your children and future generations. That's it.

0:14:41 Peaceful step is not only for you alone. When you are able to smile, all the ancestors in you are able to smile at the same time. It's very important. That is why you need a Sangha to support you for that smile to become possible. You may think that a smile is nothing, but it is a lot to smile. You make all generations of ancestors in your smile. It is liberation. It is transformation. Every mindful in-breath, every mindful out-breath, every peaceful step, every smile is an act of liberation.

0:15:33 You reclaim your liberty and you offer liberty to your ancestors and to your children. Thank you. [a young man] is there, sitting very close to you, please do help him, or [a young man] may be yourself.

0:16:47 also came from North America. During that winter retreat, he was asked, together with other students in the upper 100, to list down, to write down the wholesome qualities of his father and his mother. That is a very easy exercise. helping you to see all the values, all the jewels possessed by the father and the mother that you have. For [the second young man], it's not difficult to write down all the qualities of his father.

0:17:39 Because his father was wonderful. He has a lot of qualities. So, there is no problem concerning the home work related to his father. But for his mother, it's difficult. It does not seem that his mother had a lot of qualities. So he was a little bit skeptical. But because he had been asked, and he had to do. He practiced walking, mindful walking, mindful eating, mindful sitting, mindful working like any other practitioners. And that day, he sat down and began to look deeply to see what are really the qualities of his mind.

0:18:42 And after a few hours of work, he was very surprised. He thought that the maximum lines he could write down was three. But he has listed the qualities of his mother almost two full pages. It turned out that he had some resentment with his mother. One time he got a great difficulty with his mother. And that suffering was overwhelming. And that suffering has prevented him to see many other qualities of his mother.

0:19:35 And he had been sure that the qualities of his mother were very limited. So during a few days of the practice, he really discovered a new mother, and it made him cry of joy. Yes, because of some anger, some resentment, you are not capable of seeing all the values of the people, of the person you love. That's the unjust. You may have been unjust, very unjust to the person you love. This exercise will help you to repair the injustice you have done to the person you love.

0:20:32 And after having done the homework, he sat down and wrote a letter to his mother as instructed. Writing a letter is also a deep practice. In his letter, he said that thanks to this meditation, he has discovered a new mother, and he is very proud of her. He is very happy. He feels like the happiest person on earth because he now has realized that he has a mother a mother with so many qualities. And guess what was the reaction of the mother when she received the letter?

0:21:29 Her son had never written to her like that, with that kind of language. The letter struck her, and it's like an arrow that can save, at the same time, two birds. The arrow struck the branch, and two birds fly away. The letter helped the mother to discover a new son because his son had never talked to her like that before.

0:22:18 Only a letter that can reveal two treasures: a new son and a new mother. She cried a lot. She cried happily because of this new covering. But at the end, she felt some bitterness, some suffering. And it turns out that she wanted very much herself to write a letter like that to her own mother. because in the lifetime of her own mother, she had not had the chance to write such a letter to his mother.

0:23:08 Now his mother, the grandma of [the second young man], was already dead. So she telephoned her daughter-in-law and she told her about that. My daughter, your husband just wrote me a letter, a lovely letter. I am the happiest mother on earth because I received such a mother. And I desire so much to write such a letter to my mother. Unfortunately, my mother is only dead.

0:23:53 And the daughter-in-law telephoned [the second young man] in Plum Village. [the second young man] wrote another letter. He said, "Mother, my teacher said that my grandma has never died. She's still alive in you. If you practice breathing in and out deeply, you'll find her still alive in you. "You are my grandma, so write the letter anyway. I'm sure that my grandma will read it." The insight has been transmitted to the sun, and the sun transmit the insight to the mother.

0:24:40 And that goes perfectly with the teaching that you find in the 50 verses. And in fact, the mother had practiced just because she has a son practicing in Bangladesh. Sitting in her own country, she also has a chance to practice. And there she was, sitting and writing a letter to her own mother because she was convinced She sees that her mother is still alive in her. And this is about something to imagine.

0:25:25 This is the truth. If we are able to tap into the ground of our being, we will touch the realm of no birth and no death. Nothing has lost. Everything needs to be recovered. Everything is still there, intact. If you know how to establish yourself deeply in the present moment, and look deeply into what is there. So the practice is wonderful.

0:26:13 the power of liberating, of restoring non-fear, peace, and joy. *Bang* And then we feel that we have They have been abused.

0:27:50 When people have treated us with violence and hatred of discrimination, the block of suffering is in us. the negative energy is in us. And if we do not know how to handle and transform the violence in us, that violence is going to destroy us and destroy the people we love. When children are treated by parents with violence, they do not have the right to use violence back because of their position as children.

0:28:54 So that violence penetrates deeply into their inner self and begins to destroy them. They don't have any means in order to return the violence. And even if they can return the violence, it does not mean that that violence can disappear. In the prisons, we see a lot of criminals. And these people, especially the young ones, they are there because they have not been helped by anyone in the art of taking care of the violence within and transform it.

0:30:04 the terrorists are those who have suffered a lot because of violence. The violence in them is very strong. And because they don't know how to transform that violence, they have to do violence back to society. They use bombs, they use guns, they use fire to burn. In France, they burn a lot of forest, just because they wanted to destroy, to retaliate.

0:30:58 And they don't know how to and who to punish. So whatever they can do in order to destroy, they do it. Sometimes they destroy thousands, tens of thousands of acres of forests. It's very easy to do that during summertime. And they are not aware that by burning the forest, they are burning themselves. They don't know why placing a bomb to kill the people in the birth or in the market. they are killing themselves at the same time.

0:31:58 But because violence is there, if you don't know how to handle it, it will have to manifest itself in one or other way. Sometimes you commit suicide, you kill yourself. You kill yourself in order to punish your parents, to punish the people who have a wrong view. I have seen a daughter-in-law. In the Confucian tradition, a daughter-in-law, when she suffers, she doesn't have the right to say something unkind to the in-law or parents-in-law or to her husband.

0:32:50 So she just throw herself on the street, and she roll, roll, and roll, she beat herself. She destroyed herself because she cannot destroy the people she hates. Violence, if it cannot be used on the people you hate, will be turned to destroy yourself. And when a young person kills himself or herself, that is also to punish their parents, to punish their society, and not just to seek the end of suffering.

0:33:36 That is why we have to learn how to handle the violence in us, how to help the people around us to handle the violence in them and to transform them. And in school, we don't learn things like that. People don't tell us how to deal with our anger, how to take care of our anger, how to deal with our violence, how to transform our violence. In the prison, not only the inmates, the prisoners suffer, But the prison guards also suffer.

0:34:22 The prisoners are very violent, and the prison guards are also violent, and violent against violence. And both of them suffer. The same thing is true in school. The students, the people are violent. Maybe they have been suppressed by their parents, by their social society. So in school, they try to get a relief, and they take it on their teachers. The teachers suffer very much. And if the teachers don't know how to handle their violence, they will become violent to their students.

0:35:13 And both students and teachers suffer. That is why you should be able to help both the students and the teachers. And also the police who try to preserve peace on the streets and the gangsters. The gangsters are violent, and the police, the policemen, they do have a lot of violence in them also, because they have suffered a lot also.

0:36:04 The policemen are full of fear. Every morning, when they are ready to go out for the two, we don't know what will happen to them. Because they may be killed or wounded by gangsters and other people who hate the police. So the policemen are motivated by their own fear, their desire to remain alive. And they are also inclined to suppress the other side with violence. So we should be able to help not only the gangsters, but also the police.

0:37:01 Mindfulness practice can help us first to transform the violence within us, to nourish the compassion in us, the willingness to help change the society. And then we have to work out and apply the techniques of the practice in every environment, every kind of environment. That is why mindfulness practice must be offered to society. In Plum Village, we have meditated more than a year now as how to offer mindfulness practice as a non-sectarian a non-religious practice that can be applied in schools, in hospitals, in prisons, in society.

0:38:12 Because according to our experience, it is perfectly possible to practice mindfulness as a non-religious thing, a non-sectarian thing. Instead of saying, "I take refuge in the Buddha," you can say, you can transmit, "I have confidence in my own capacity of waking up, in understanding and loving." That kind of language should be accepted by every religious tradition. That is why I have asked a number of friends in Europe and in America to set up an organization called the Association of Mindfulness Practice Centers.

0:39:09 And we hope that in the future, there will be at least one center like that in Exha City. And today, I'd like to invite you to join us in looking deeply to find out ways in order to realize this kind of program. In Mindfulness Practice Center, It's a place where everyone, anyone can come. And at any moment, you may come at the time when you are having a silent meal.

0:39:57 You are invited to share the silent meal. And someone among us will give a briefing of a few minutes as to how to enjoy a silent meal. And if you arrive at the time when you are working in the garden, vegetable garden and then you'll join our mindful gardening and one of us will give you a five-minute breathing as how to enjoy silent gardening and every minute of your work, breathing in, breathing out. Of course, we have to train our people to be placed in these practice centers in in order to organize full-time practice, so that in the city, if anyone needs to join the practice, they can come right away.

0:40:53 They may telephone, and they will be welcome right away. And the Mindfulness Practice Center in the city may organize days of mindfulness, and short and long retreats in the cities or in the countryside. Uh-uh. MPC, Mindfulness Practice Center, is the operation of the place.

0:42:03 And three of them are taking shape now in North America. One is in the Washington D.C. area, one is in the state of Vermont, and one is in California. And we need your intelligence, your work hard, in order for us to be able to realize this very dear project. You might like to initiate the efforts of establishing an MPC in your own city. And we need an address for conducting in order to receive information that are useful to the setting up of such a center.

0:43:06 In the beginning, we might just hide a place. And after some time, we might buy a place that is more fit to our purpose, a place where there is a room for sitting, where it is a path for walking, a playground for children. Because in our practice, children can very well be included. In the practice of Plum Village, children are always included.

0:43:51 I have offered the lectures for children in Europe, and also in North America, quite a few times. And children have shown that they are very capable of enjoying the practice. I remember one of such retreats in Southern California. On the last day of the retreat, the children stood in line to practice a helping meditation with me. And they didn't want to go. Why do we have to go to go? Because they loved the retreat.

0:44:36 Parents were there also in order to support the children. We had a lovely retreat for young people that year. So in Mindfulness Practice Center, we should have a path for walking, meditation, a place for sitting meditation, a place for sharing a salad meal, a garden, a playground for children, total relaxation, and so on. and so on. It's like an inner duchyate.

0:45:21 And we also need... I think everyone of us can support this project. If you are an architect, if you are... if you are a poet, if you are a writer, if you are a legislator, well, everyone, if you are a journalist, you all can help with this project. And according to our experience, it is absolutely possible to practice mindfulness as a non-religious practice.

0:46:15 And we don't have to bow, to burn incense, to do like that in the Mindfulness Practice Center. And still, we can do everything mindfully. We invest 100% of ourselves in the present moment. I suppose the person who comes is not used to looking and bow. And then you are very ready to shake hands. To put one hand on the other to show that I am investing 100% of myself in shaking your hand. I am really very pleased to meet you, not just a formula, not just a same formula, but you have to do it, really.

0:47:06 So please do reflect on this. And I think we need an address, an organization in order to contact, in order to exchange ideas and experiences. There will be a retreat on the art of mindful living next year at the Omega Institute in Ryanbeck, New York. I will be there for the retreat with a number of monks and nuns from Tung village.

0:48:12 The retreat will begin on Sunday, June 14th and end Friday, June 19th, 1998. For registration, information about the retreat, call Omega Institute. This is in the sheet with the address. And prior to that retreat will be a 21-day retreat. This is a retreat called "June Retreat" that takes place every two years in Pinkville. But next year, it will take place in North America instead of Pinkville. So you don't have to fly to Europe.

0:49:00 The Path of Emancipation at St. Michael's College, Burlington, Vermont, a 21-day retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh and Munson from Ping Village. This retreat begins on Saturday, May 23rd, 1998, and ends Friday, June 12th, 1998. During the retreat, we will learn in depth the teaching and practice of mindful breathing in order to nourish and heal ourselves and help others to heal and liberate themselves. The Sutra on mindful breathing will be studied in depth, and we will discover that the practice of mindful breathing can lead to the release of all suffering and to the attainment of the state of no birth and no death.

0:49:59 Dharma teachers, meditation practitioners, physicians, nurses, therapists, social workers, and others in the helping profession can profit from this retreat. And this is the first time a 21-day retreat is offered in America. And the retreat will be held at St. Michael's College in Burlington, near Lake Chaplet. and the campus will provide a comfortable accommodation. Together with this, I would like to announce that... that 200 acres of land has been offered to build a monastery for monks and nuns in the state of Vermont.

0:50:59 That will be in Woodstock. And there are already a few houses there. So in a few months, there will be a number of monks and nuns living and practicing exactly in the style of Blue Village. And if you are interested to learn about the monastery, there is an address somewhere. I would like to go back to the conference.

0:51:49 Dear friends, yesterday I talked about "Dicotine" and "Mindful driving". But I have not spoken about the sex industry and the show business. The sex industry and the show business are also responsible for a lot of suffering. In our modern society, we have to practice awareness about the effect that these kinds of industries have produced daily in our life, social and individual life.

0:52:53 We should offer the practice to the people we love, to the younger generation so that they can know how to protect themselves. Because people just want money. They will do anything in order to get money. So their products are full of poisons, toxins. We just cannot allow our people to be intoxicated like that and destroy it like that. It is like in the field of smoking.

0:53:47 We have to try to bring it into the realm of legislation. We get to protect ourselves, to protect our children, to protect our beloved ones, to protect our society and our nation, we should not allow it to continue to destroy us like this. If you are a writer, if you are a journalist, if you are a filmmaker, if you are a legislator, if you are a teacher, Please do your best to speak out about this and offer a way to stop people from the continuation of the destruction.

0:54:43 And here we have the five mindfulness practices, the five mindfulness trainings as the guidelines to this kind of action. We know the Five Mindfulness Trainings are the most concrete ways of practicing mindfulness. If we look deeply into the Five Mindfulness Trainings, we can see the Buddha, we can see the Dhamma, we can see the Sangha, we can see the Kingdom of God, we can see the Holy Spirit, we can see Jesus Christ, we can see God. Because if we are determined to live according to the five mindfulness trainings, we get the protection.

0:55:34 We can protect ourselves, we can protect our families and our society. And that is a very solid base for our action. Because when you receive the five mindfulness trainings, And if you live according to the five-month understanding, you are already on the path of a bodhisattva. You are motivated by a strong desire to protect your society, to transform the violence, the hatred, the anger in society. That is why I have said that every time I see a person making the determination to receive and practice the five mindfulness trainings, I'm very happy.

0:56:29 And to practice the mindfulness trainings, we need to get affiliated to a group of people, a sangha. in order for the practice to be solid because we really need each other in order to practice well. A Sangha is essential to our practice. I know that all of us are motivated by the desire to practice. But practicing alone, while it is possible, it is much more difficult than to practice with the support of a Sangha.

0:57:15 So I would propose that we devote some time this afternoon to discuss about Sangha building. We might people who live in the same area might come together in groups and discuss how to continue the practice as a Sangha after the retreat. And when you go home, please remember to pursue the practice of Sangha building. This is very essential. And everywhere I go, I always urge my friends to do the same.

0:58:01 The Sangha is our refuge. We need our Sangha. So, let's go back to our verses. Now we are on the 16th. And I believe that we have already read the 16th, the 17th, and so on. I know that from the 1st to the 15th it is about Alayabhijyana, Star Consciousness, that we used to call it Eight Consciousness, because there are Eight Consciousness, and Alayabhijyana is always called Eight.

0:59:04 The first being 'I' is consciousness. Because when the Buddha talks about the six sense organs, he always says, 'I' is first. 'I' is nose, 'I' is ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, and then 'manas' and 'alaya'. So manas is the seventh and manavishnana, mental consciousness, is the sixth. The sixteenth, the seeds of delusion, the internal formations of craving and afflictions, are the impulsive forces that agitate consciousness at the time name and form manifest themselves.

0:59:54 When name and form are manifested, this consciousness is already existing. Name means our mind, and form means our body, you already know. "Having Alaya as a support, manas consciousness arises. Its function is mentation, grasping of Alaya, which is considered to be its object, the Self." We know that manas is rooted in Alaya, and it turns to embrace alaya, part of alaya, and consider it to be the object of cognition, the self.

1:01:00 And that function is called "mentation". In Sanskrit, manana, manana, "mentation". "The object of manas is the mark of a self, "found in the realm of representations, "created at the point where manas and store intersect." This we have explained before. So the object that is called self-appears is a product of a constructive mind, an invention of the constructive mind.

1:02:04 It is based on ignorance, on delusion. That is why that object of condition must be clasped in the realm of representation. Because the realm of representations do not belong to the realm of suchness, does not belong to the realm of things in themselves. The realm of representations is a realm constructed, created by our deluded mind.

1:02:49 It is like, we cannot see the piece of rope, we can see only a snake. Wrong perception. As the ground for good and evil of the other six consciousnesses of transformation, We can call, we can say, the six evolving consciousnesses, because there are seven evolving consciousnesses, beginning from manas and ending with I's consciousness.

1:03:41 The basic consciousness, the root consciousness, The Alaya is not called an evolving consciousness, but all these are the seven aqua evolving consciousness. So this seventh consciousness, manas, is the base, is the ground for the other six consciousness. It means mental consciousness and the five consciousness of sensation We are based on this consciousness called manas. Manas is both continuous and quotitating. Quotitating is thinking, discerning, grasping.

1:04:31 And continuous means operating day and night without stop. We know that the star is also continuous. The star is always changing, evolving, but the star is always continuous. Its nature is both indeterminate and obstructed. Obstructed because of its delusive nature. To terminate it means it can be transformed into something wholesome. The 20th manas goes with the five universals, the five universal mental formations, such as contact, attention, feelings, perception, and volition, because all consciousness grows with the five universes.

1:05:52 And with the prasna of the five particulars, It goes along with the last one of the five particulars. Prajna here is an idea. It is an assertion and not just wisdom. You are sure that it is that, but you might be wrong. That is why the word "prasna" here does not mean "prasnaparamita" - the true insight. It means you believe you are right. You are certain that you have got it, but you have got it wrong.

1:06:42 You have got the snake while the reality is the rope. So from the five particulars, there is only one that goes with manas, that is brahsuna. With the four major afflictions and the eight secondary ones, the four major afflictions are ignorance about self, ngā shī, "Value" about self - ngã kiến, "arrogance" about self - ngã mạng, "love" of self - ngã ái, "ngã su" - ngã kiến, "ngã mạng" - ngã ái, the ignorance about self, the prejudice about self, the arrogance about self, and the paving love about self.

1:07:54 That is the four major afflictions that go along with manas, and then it goes along with the eight secondary afflictions. I guess that you have received the list of 51 Mental Formations, no? Yes, yes. And the list is available in the box on the table. All these afflictions, all these mental formations are indeterminate and obstructed, just like manas.

1:08:48 When these things go with manas, they all become obstructed and indeterminate, like manas. Manas always follow the store. It's like the shadow follows the body. Manas always follow the store, follow the store like a shadow following its form. It is a defense mechanism, a blind instinct craving for duration and craving for satisfaction. That is manas.

1:09:31 And its nature is delusion, is ignorance, is discrimination. The 22nd, when the first stage of the Bodhisattva path is attained, namely the stage of joy, that's 10 stages that a Bodhisattva would go through before becoming a perfectly enlightened being. And the first stage is the stage of joy, "Wow, he is." So the moment when you begin to practice the Bodhisattva path, you experience a joy, first stage. And if you feel joy, now you are on the stage, on that stage.

1:10:18 When the first stage of the Bodhisattva path is attained, obstacles of knowledge and afflictions begin to transform. And when arriving at that each stage, The yogi transform his or her innate belief, innate spirit itself. The eighth stage is called Pháp Văn Vĩa, the cloud of the Dharma. Remember, in India, a cloud is always very welcome. The cloud is not an obstruction of the good weather.

1:11:05 But it's so hot that if there is a cloud and then you feel better, like you have a shade. And the cloud always can bring refreshing green. So the clouds in India, They may give a feeling that is quite different from clouds in countries where the sunshine is a little bit too little. So, "Dharma Cloud" means the eighth stage of the Bodhisattva.

1:11:51 And when one arrives at the eighth stage, the belief, the deep belief in a separate self will vanish completely, and alaya is then released from manas. Manas will detach themselves or release Alaya as its object of clinging, of grasping. And that is liberation. Liberation from delusion, from the inner belief in yourself.

1:12:35 Because before that, the intellectual knowledge of oneself might have been obtained. We can obtain the intellectual knowledge about oneself. But self is very deeply rooted, innate in us, that we have to practice until we arrive at the eighth stage of the Bodhisattva in order to uproot all this innate belief in a separate self. And then Alanya is released. And Alanya becomes the wisdom of the great mirror.

1:13:30 So from verse number 15 to verse number 22, that is about the seventh consciousness, manas. Now with the 23rd, we come to the sixth consciousness called mental consciousness, or manovishnana. With manas as days and phenomena as objects. Phenomena means ideas, notions, downloads. The mountain is a phenomenon.

1:14:18 The mountain is an idea. The mountain is a concept, object of mental consciousness. So the base of mental consciousness is manas, and the object of mental consciousness is phenomena or ideas or notions. Mental consciousness manifests itself and its sphere of cognition is the widest. I think we have read this already. And mental consciousness possesses three modes of cognition and has access to three fields of cognition and is capable of having three natures. All mental properties are concomitant to it. All the 51 mental formations can go along with the mental consciousness.

1:15:07 The universal, five, the particulars, five, the wholesome, the unwholesome, and the indeterminate. The total is 51. As some of us have not quite understood the three fields of cognition and three modes of cognition, so I would like to repeat a little bit. The three fields of cognition. The first one is the realms of things in themselves.

1:16:00 It means reality as it is, without being distorted by our way of conceiving and understanding it. The piece of rope is the piece of rope, and not a snake. A snake is a snake, and not a piece of rope. Sometimes we call it the ultimate reality, or suchness. reality as it is.

1:16:48 The second field of cognition is the field of representation. The field of representation is not reality in itself. It has been constructed and built by our patterns of thinking. We are used to think in terms of self and permanence. We are used to think that things exist outside of each other. Namely, in other words, We don't see the nature of interconnectedness of things.

1:17:43 We don't see the emptiness of everything. Like the emptiness of transformation. We are caught by pairs of opposites. We really believe in these pairs of opposites like birth and death, being and non-being. And that is why the objects of our consciousness manifest themselves as only as the field of representation full of error. And that brings us a lot of suffering.

1:18:33 And then the third field of cognition is the field of mere image. All the images that we have are walked from the realm of preposition. we store them in our store, in our alaya-vishnana. The image of a friend, her beauty, her anger, all these things are stored as a vision, as seeds in our consciousness.

1:19:19 And if we need, we go to the archives and it takes these things out in order to use. And during our dreams, it lives in the realm of mere images. And if you are a poet, you may use a lot of these things, and you combine images that are already existing into new images. Like, you have the image of an elephant in your store consciousness, and you have the image of a bird in your consciousness, and you may like to take the wings of the bird and put it on the shoulders of the elephant, so you can see an elephant flying in the sky.

1:20:14 That is the work of an artist you imagine. And I think architects operate very much the same way. I would like also to repeat about the three modes of cognition. The first one is this intuitive. The second one is discursive. And the third one is erroneous.

1:21:06 When the intuitive mode is correct, you reach the fuel of things in themselves. And all of us have had that kind of experience. When we deal directly with reality, we touch reality with our non-thinking mode, non-discriminative mode, we are capable of reaching to the fuel of reality in itself. It doesn't have a distinction between us as the perceiver and the other thing as the object of perception.

1:21:55 Suppose you stand there and you contemplate a beautiful snowy mountain. And in one or two seconds, maybe, you can attain, you could attain that kind of cognition. You don't feel that you are different from the snowy mountain top. The idea that you are one with it or you are different from it is not there. You just enjoy. You can be described as that mountain at that moment. Or you can say that that mountain is you at that moment. No object, no subject.

1:22:42 and when you contemplate the ocean, you may feel that you are immense because you don't discriminate between you and the ocean, and you become immensity. And there are moments in our life when we can afford to touch the ocean not like that, but rare, because the patterns of our thinking that we have learned do not allow us to do that very often. And when it is intuitive but not that kind of experience, It means it belongs to the third category.

1:23:42 Sometimes you have a direct feeling, experience. And you may think that it is authentic but it may be just erroneous. It belongs to the third category. So it does not mean that when it is intuitive that it is always correct. When you say I have the impression that it is this, you might be wrong or you might be right. The discursive mode also, you may use logic, you may use inference, you may use the techniques of deep-looking thought by the Buddha in order to get out of your wrong perception.

1:24:45 First of all, you look at the other person and you discriminate against her. She is not me, why do I have to take care of her? I have my things to do. There are moments when you discriminate like that. the barrier is set by your way of thinking. Or when you say, "It is my country, right or wrong, it is my country, I have to follow and support my country." That is the stand dictated by discrimination. But when you learn Buddhist meditation, you try to use your intelligence in order to look in such a way that you can remove that kind of of distinction, that kind of discrimination.

1:25:42 And so the discursive way can also help you to approach the realm of the ultimate. But when you fail to do that, although you think a lot, you reason a lot, you speculate as God, you belong, your connection belongs to the third category, eros. In the teaching, there is the word, there is the expression "parakampita" Parakampita Svabhava, the nature of discrimination.

1:26:36 And if there is an intervention of this tendency to discriminate, then you fall always to the third mode of cognition, errorness. Because the discriminative mind is the element that causes all kinds of errors. Vikampa means discrimination.

1:27:24 It is paravik, parakampita, the same. But when you use the Buddhist method of looking deeply, you use the meditation on impermanence and non-self, and into being, or emptiness, you begin to get away from vikanpa and you have a chance to touch suchness. And that kind of capacity is called Nidh vikanpa jnana. The wisdom of non-discrimination.

1:28:16 "Nyek" means "nown", "vikaṭa" means "discrimination". Because our mind tends to chop reality into several pieces and conceive each piece as existing independently from all the other pieces. And that is the discriminative mind. The practice of meditation is to train ourself in a way to look, to discover the nature of interconnectedness of things.

1:29:06 And finally, you get the non-discriminative wisdom so that you can touch the field of things in themselves. And this is called Paratantra. Paratantra means the nature of reality, that begin to review to you in the direction of suchness. And when your practice of Paratantra has been completed, your nuclear past jhana becomes perfect.

1:30:05 And then you can touch the true nature of reality, which is called the nature of Nishpana. So Paratantra is leaping to Nishpana. And as we are in Parakangvita, we have to be aware that we are still in the world of discrimination. So we should train ourselves to look and to touch things in such a way that can reveal the true nature of things. It is said that Nishpana is the nature of reality when Paratantra has been realized perfectly.

1:30:57 So Paratantra is the way to Nishpana. And all of us are on the path of Paratantra, learning to sitings with a non-discriminative mind. The twenty-fifth mental consciousness is the root of all actions.

1:31:50 Body and speech, I think it should be like the root of all actions, semicolon. "Thought, body and speech." Because thought is an action, is a category of action. Thinking is one category of action. Body is another category of action, and speech is the third one. Its nature is quotienting but not continuous. because the mental consciousness can stop.

1:32:40 In the case we sleep without dreaming, we faint, or when we enter the concentration of no thinking, no perception. And it gives rise to actions leading to maturation and plays the role of the gardener who sows the seed. Mental consciousness is very important in learning, in training, and in transforming. It can initiate the kind of action that leads to maturation, whether in the good direction or in the bad direction.

1:33:33 And it can sow the wholesome seed or the unwholesome seed. It is responsible for many things. Mental consciousness is always functional, except in the state of non-perception, in the true attainments, in deep sleep and well-fainting. These are four non-perceptions, that is the state of samadhi. Through attainments, that is the attainment of no thinking, no perception. In deep sleep, and then fainting.

1:34:23 There are three forms of mental consciousness. The first form is cooperating with the five. The second form is operating alone, whether in dispersion, or in concentration, or in psychosis. When the mental consciousness can perform alone, like in a dream, when you dream, there is no cooperation from the other five consciousness: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body.

1:35:13 And yet, you can see things, you can listen, you can hear things, You can touch things because you are using the elements in the realm of mere images. You don't need your actual eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body anymore because all these images are already available in store. So you can help yourself and you can create your dream, the world in which you can live. So that is an instance when mental consciousness operates alone. Or when you do thinking, you close your eyes, you turn off your television, you concentrate it on something, and you don't need your eyes, your nose, your tongue, your body.

1:36:13 It is called in Vietnamese "Mental Consciousness Operating Alone." When it is in dispersion, thinking of that, thinking of this, being caught by the past, being caught by the future, running to this direction, running to the other direction, that is the state of dispersion that many of us find ourselves in, in our daily life. That is the opposite of the situation we wish as a meditator. Because a meditator wants to be concentrated, to be mindful.

1:37:04 So dispersion is one. Vietnamese is "Tán Vị Ý Thức". Cooperating alone, "đạc đầu Ý Thức", "dispersion", "Tán Vị Ý Thức", "concentration", "định trung Ý Thức". When we are really concentrated, that is another situation of our mental consciousness. And finally, when we have troubles in our way of perceiving or thinking, we have mental illnesses.

1:37:49 That is, loạn trung ý thức. Loạn trung ý thức, tức là khi mình điên. when we are mentally sick. This is the verse 20th age. We have left the mental consciousness and began to learn about the five consciousness of sensations, namely eyes consciousness, ear consciousness, Nose Consciousness, Thong Consciousness, and Body Consciousness.

1:38:34 Based on Mental Consciousness, the five consciousnesses of sensations manifest themselves, either separately or together with Mental Consciousness, like waves on water. There is a chance that when your eyes consciousness collaborating with mental consciousness, that you can reach the real realm of things in themselves. In that case, there is no discrimination. But mental consciousness is very used to think, to discriminate.

1:39:21 That is why if you have been able to touch the world of suchness for the first few seconds, then you may lose it on the third, on the fourth second. Because vikanpa, the tendency to discriminate with inducing that to conceal things in terms of opposites, to see things outside of each other, is always there and prevent us to touch the realm of suchness. But alone, left alone, the five consciousness have more sense.

1:40:28 Where the organ of sensation, any counter of the object of sensation, it will give rise to consciousness. It's still possible that I, as consciousness, continues to touch the realm of suchness. Even if mental consciousness intervenes.

1:41:17 But that is rare. The 29th, the field of cognition is the field of things in themselves. Their mode of cognition is direct, intuitive. When they operate alone, their mode of cognition is always intuitive. That is why they have more chance. With the collaboration of the mental consciousness, the thinking and explanation will come very soon.

1:42:07 That is why it has less strength. "The nature may be wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral. They may operate on the subtle sense organs and the sensation center in the brain." The subtle sense organs here means the sensation nerves, nerves, like optic nerves that we cannot see without our eyes. So we can see only the eyes, the rough organ. We cannot see the subtle organ.

1:42:52 The subtle organ here, in sutra, it means the sensory nerves that are hidden behind the causal organ, and also the sensation center within the brain. They are based on that. The thirtieth, the concomitant mental state comprise the universal, the particulars, the wholesomes, the basic unwholesomes, the two secondary unwholesomes, Also, the tribute, avocating, and confusion. All these mental formations are compatible with the five consciousnesses.

1:43:48 Consciousness can be viewed as having three parts: the perceiver, the perceived, and the wholeness. All sorts of mental formations are the same. Here, with the thirty-second we go back to the general. We have ended the discussion about the five sensations, the five consciousnesses of sensations with the thirty-first. Now we come to the general terms used to all eight consciousnesses. Consciousness can be viewed as having three parts. This is very helpful.

1:44:30 The conceiver, the conceit, and the wholeness. Horses and mental formations that work along with consciousness are the same. That means they also have three elements: subject, object, and the maze. I remember very well my teacher. He picked up a snail on the bush. He showed me: "When we pick up a snail on the bush, "It's two antenna. Antenna will be withdraw." And it does not look like a snail anymore.

1:45:25 So you have to release it. And a few minutes later, it manifests itself again, and the two antennas are apparent again. He said, "One antenna is the subject of cognition, the second antenna is the object of cognition, And the whole body of the snail is the whole, the wholeness, the substance of cognition. So every cognition, every consciousness has these three parts. It's like the piece of 25 cents I talked to you about last time. There is the face, the pile, the head and the tail that I was using French.

1:46:17 The head, the tail and the metal. "Darsana Baga" means the first of these three aspects of cognition. "Darsana Baga" is the subject of cognition. "Nemita Baga" is the object of ignition.

1:47:16 It is the first, it is the two antenna. But we have to conceive another third, another element which is called Svavava Bhagavad. It is the first, it is the two antenna. But we have to conceive another third, another element which is called Svavava Bhagavad. In Vietnamese, we call it the "Tu Thế Phần", in Vietnamese, "Daksana Bhaga", "Namita Bhaga", "Tu Thế Phần", and "Svabhavabhava", "Tu Thế Phần". So, the wholeness of cognition.

1:48:41 And this is considered to be the ground, and this is considered... These two are considered to be manifestations from this. And it is repeated and repeated again and again that every consciousness has three parts. Every mental formation has three parts. Every object of cognition, every seat within our consciousness also has three parts: the seat of anger in you.

1:49:33 Even before it is manifested as a mental formation, it also possesses within itself the three parts. When it is manifested as a zone of energy called anger, in your mental consciousness, it also has three parts. Because to be angry is to be angry at someone, object of anger, subject of anger, and also the ground on which these two subjects and objects can be manifested. And that is the first thing to remember. Everything should be viewed as having these three elements that cannot be separated from each other, that can only coexist.

1:50:27 Lacking one, the other two cannot be. This is because there is. And the second thing to remember is that in the one, you can identify the all. Well, you can say that a seed of anger is only a seed of anger. But in fact, in the seed of anger, you can touch all the other seeds, the seed of love, the seed of reconciliation.

1:51:17 Anger is made of non-anger elements, like flower is made of non-flower elements. The one contains the all. We have the tendency to think that we have a seed of love, we have a seed of anger. Why do we need to say that love is contained within anger and anger is contained within love? It's not. That is because of our tendency to think in terms of Vikampa. In fact, Any mental formation, whether wholesome or unwholesome, if you can perceive deeply its true nature, you can get full enlightenment.

1:52:15 Because the one contains all the information about all. Like if you study a leaf, And if you know how to study deeply, you can understand the whole truth. You can study a pebble, and you can understand the whole cosmos. Because the teaching is the one contains the all, that is why we know that the seed of anger, the seed of delusion, Contained within themselves, the seed of love, the seed of enlightenment.

1:53:01 And this goes perfectly with the teaching of the Buddha, all teachings of the Buddha, including the first teaching concerning the Four Noble Truths. The first truth is about suffering, and it is called a Noble Truth. It is noble because looking deeply into suffering, You see the other three truths, namely the truth of the cause, the truth of nirvana, of release, and the truth of the way. If you look deeply into suffering, you can see the way out of suffering and the realization of well-being.

1:53:46 That is why interconnectedness, inter-being, the one contains the all, is a very important aspect of the Buddhist teaching. You don't need to learn everything, you just learn one thing. And if you learn deeply, you understand every teaching. Try the five mindfulness trainings. And you see that if you practice one of them in depth, you practice all the other four. And that is why if there is someone who says, "Thay, I can only receive two or three mindfulness trainings.

1:54:32 I am not discouraged at all." I say, "Please go ahead." Because deeply in my heart, I know that if she or he She practiced deeply these three, and then she practiced also the other two. Because intervening is easy. We have to remember. We have to train ourselves to look in that way. I think the 50 verses may not... At least, they are not difficult as they seem to be. If you have a chance to listen to the tapes again for a second time, I'm confident that you understand it all.

1:55:25 We'll continue tomorrow.