Individual and Collective Manifestation

Thich Nhat Hanh — Winter Retreat 2013–2014 Full Moon Meditation Hall, New Hamlet, Plum Village · 21 November 2013 · talk 2 of 24

Illuminates: Verse 9 of the Fifty Verses — “All manifestations bear the marks of both the individual and the collective.” · vijñapti (manifestation-only, not consciousness-only) · the three parts of a perception (subject / object / self-substance) · contact and appropriate attention · collective energy of mindfulness.

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[Opening chant / invocation: Let the whole Sangha breathe as one body, chant as one body, listen as one body, transcending the boundaries of a delusive self…]

Today is the 21st of November, 2013. We are in the Full Moon Meditation Hall of the New Hamlet, in the winter retreat.

The flower that never stops singing

Sixty-four years ago, in 1949, I met a young artist in Saigon. His name was Quách Thoại [poet, c. 1929–1957]. He was still very young then. The South was still under the French, and even the street where the temple stood had a French name, because back then the South was a French colony. Quách Thoại was a poet who drew much of his inspiration from the Buddhist teaching, and he had a collection of poems called The Pilgrim. When he published his first booklet in 1949, only fifty copies were printed, to be given to his friends. Someone searched for a copy, found one, bought it, went into an artists’ garden, and read the whole book of poetry through. Then he lay down on the grass and slept; and when he woke, he wrote a poem to offer to the order [of poets].

Quách Thoại died early — he died in hospital when he was about twenty-nine years old. When his work was gathered, many unpublished poems were found, and one of them is called “The Dahlia.” When I read this poem I was startled, because it has the spirit of a master. It goes like this:

Standing peacefully by the hedge, you smile your wondrous smile. I am speechless, and my senses are filled by the sound of your beautiful song, beginningless and endless. I bow deeply to you.

The poet hears the song of the flower, and bows down, touching the earth before the flower in respect. If you are a musician you could turn this short poem into a song — it is short, but it has insight in it; it has the spirit of Zen meditation.

That was 1949. Later, in 1964, I composed a long poem in which this flower of Quách Thoại’s remanifested. Last year the sisters of the New Hamlet danced to this poem set to music. In it there is a small purple flower in the forest:

Little flower in the wood, you are part of the wondrous manifestation, without beginning and without ending. You are not a creation — only a manifestation.

A deer discovers this tiny purple flower; and two little children discover it too, because they have the capacity to listen to the song of the flower. The flower has never stopped singing — it never stopped its song of eternity. The flower in this poem is really the flower of the poet Quách Thoại: a flower that knows how to sing.

In Mahayana Buddhism there is the teaching of the dharma body. When the Buddha’s physical body — his flesh body — disintegrates, his dharma body continues. We can come in touch with the dharma body of the Buddha in the present moment; that is the work of Mahayana Buddhism. Every flower, every cloud, every leaf is giving a dharma talk, and if you have concentration, mindfulness, and insight and look at the flower, you can see the flower giving a talk on impermanence, non-self, interbeing. So the Buddha never stops giving dharma talks. The physical body no longer gives them, but the dharma body continues — and if we have the ears, we can come in touch with the talk right now. As another poem says, every leaf, every flower is preaching the Avataṃsaka [Flower Adornment] Sutra. The flower stands still outside the hedge, smiling its wondrous smile, always there — but we, lacking mindfulness, never recognize it. Just as the dharma body is present in this moment but we never really touch it.

That day, the poet recognized the flower; he saw it as something wondrous, and he was surprised. But we are no longer surprised by the wonders of life — we take them for granted. The poet suddenly sees the flower smiling, singing a song of no-birth and no-death, a song of eternity, and his attitude is one of respect: he bows down and touches the earth before the flower.

Only manifestation — vijñapti, not vijñāna

This is the meaning of no birth, no death, but only a manifestation. It is the teaching of Manifestation-Only: you are not a creation, you are a manifestation. The word biểu [in Chinese / Vietnamese] means manifestation — there is only manifestation, there is no creation. So this flower is a manifestation. And from where is it manifested? Not from nothing. The Christian believes it is manifested from God. But in our teaching we do not call it God; we call the foundation of all manifestation store consciousness (ālaya) — the object that is there before everything manifests, from which everything manifests. We don’t know what to call it; we can only temporarily call it store.

The technical word is vijñapti, which has the prefix meaning to distinguish. It should really be translated as “manifestation-only” (biểu biệt — distinct manifestation, manifesting as an object that can be perceived), not “consciousness-only.” The word vijñāna, consciousness, is a different word. To translate correctly: vijñapti is manifestation; it is what manifests as the object of a perception — a flower manifesting so it can be perceived.

For example, in each of us there is a seed of anger. When the seed has not yet manifested, we don’t see the anger, and we think the person is not angry. But we know that deep down the anger is there; it simply hasn’t manifested. If someone says something challenging or unkind, the seed of anger is touched and it manifests, and we can see it. Before it manifests, we cannot say it is not there — we just haven’t seen it. The flame hasn’t manifested, but we can’t say it isn’t there; it is hidden, latent, waiting for the opportunity to manifest. It is called unmanifested — and unmanifested does not mean nonexistent; it just means it hasn’t manifested yet. Your hand has the capacity to write Chinese, to draw a circle — but you don’t see that capacity, because it hasn’t manifested; you can’t take a picture of it, yet it is there. When the hand takes a pen and draws, then you can distinguish it. So it manifests so that we can see it.

This winter we will learn the teaching of Manifestation-Only. Mātra means only — only manifestation. I hope everyone has the text of the Thirty Verses, with the English, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Sanskrit. In China and Vietnam we have tended to use the phrase “consciousness-only,” but in truth it should be “manifestation-only,” not “consciousness-only.” In this text the word vijñapti (manifestation) is used several times, while vijñāna (consciousness) is used only once. When [the translator] rendered it as “consciousness-only,” he should have used “manifestation-only,” because that is the title and spirit of the text — and elsewhere he very clearly translates vijñapti as manifestation.

The three parts: subject, object, and the substance they share

The treatise on Manifestation-Only says that a consciousness has two parts: one is the subject of perception, the other is the object of perception — and these two rely on one another to manifest, at the same time. Just as a sheet of paper has two faces, right and left: these manifest at the same time, and without the right there is no left, without the left no right. So the object of consciousness and the subject of consciousness always manifest together; neither comes before the other. When we are sad, we are sad about something; there cannot be sadness without an object of sadness. When we see, we see something; we cannot see without an object of seeing. These two rely on one another to manifest, because without one the other cannot be. In phenomenology this is clear: consciousness is always consciousness of something.

Usually we think our mind is one separate thing and the object of our mind is another separate thing — that there is a subject “in here” that goes out and grasps an object “out there.” We see in a subjective way, and imagine reality is an objective thing outside that the subject reaches out to grasp. This is a very wrong understanding. In Manifestation-Only, the object and the subject of perception manifest at the same time and rely on one another, just like the right and the left. You cannot say the left comes first and then the right; looking at the sheet of paper, you see both at once.

But if there were no substance — the substance of the paper — then the right and the left could not manifest. The substance is the foundation of manifestation. So in Manifestation-Only there is a third part: the foundation of the first two. We don’t use the word “God”; we use the word store (ālaya) — a place where things are stored, like the hard disk of a computer that keeps all our information, so that when we search, it appears. The flower that is preaching is a manifestation, but its foundation we can call God, or suchness, or store.

In the treatise these are called the subject part (kiến phần — the seeing/cognizing part), the object part (tướng phần — the appearance part), and the self-substance part (tự thể phần — the substance from which the two manifest). And these three are not separate; we divide them into three only to help our understanding. In reality the three are really one — in the flower you can find the store, you can find God or suchness; the store is not outside the flower, not in another place. The notion that manifestation has an object and a subject of cognition helps free us from the idea of birth and death: before a thing manifests we cannot say it is not there, and after it stops manifesting we cannot say it is no longer there. So the word vijñapti is a very good word — it helps us end the pairs of opposites: being and non-being, birth and death, beginning and ending.

The bell, contact, and appropriate attention

All of us have the seed of mindfulness in us, and to practice is to help that seed manifest — to help mindfulness, concentration, and insight manifest. When these three energies manifest, they have the capacity to calm body and mind, to nourish, and to heal. So the daily practice is to generate mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

When you hear the sound of the bell, the sound is a condition. It may sound at the same time as the songs of birds, or people talking, or children playing — but the purpose of the bell is to help us come back to ourselves, to generate the energy of mindfulness. So instead of paying attention to the crying of children or the talking of others, we pay attention to the sound of the bell, because we know it has the capacity to bring us back to ourselves, to stop our thinking, so that we can breathe in mindfully and generate mindfulness.

The sound of the bell creates a contact. It gives rise to a mental formation: contact (sparśa). In the teaching, contact is a mental formation that manifests when three things come together — the sense organ (here the ear), the object (the sound), and the consciousness (ear-consciousness). When organ, object, and consciousness touch one another, the mental formation of contact is born; we come in touch with the sound of the bell.

At that same time we may also be in contact with the sounds of children playing or people talking. But as a practitioner we choose among the sounds, selecting the one that helps us come back to ourselves. For this we need a second mental formation, attention (manaskāra). On your sheet of the 51 mental formations you can find it in the different languages. We pay attention to the sound of the bell rather than to the sound of children or of people talking, because we know the bell is beneficial. That selective attention is appropriate attention (yoniśo-manaskāra); we select an object that helps us be mindful. If instead we put our attention on other sounds, on the quarreling or yelling, that distracts us — it is inappropriate attention (ayoniśo-manaskāra). As a practitioner we have to choose appropriate attention, because it generates mindfulness, concentration, and insight. When we hear the bell we pay attention only to the bell, to no other sound or image.

When the habit of listening to the bell is established, then whenever we hear it we automatically stop thinking and talking; we come back to our breathing to generate mindfulness and concentration, and we can do it well. If we have practiced for some weeks, through several retreats, this becomes a habit and we don’t need to make effort.

Every cell breathing — individual energy

When we breathe in, it is not only the lungs that breathe; we invite all the cells of the body to participate. Our body is a community of millions of cells, each with its own life and a collective life as well. Each cell receives nutrition and oxygen, and with these conditions it lives. So when we hear the bell and breathe, we practice in such a way that the whole body and mind participate, and we invite every cell to join in the breathing. Every cell is like a candle; when we breathe mindfully, all these candles light up with the light of mindfulness. We are not breathing with the lungs alone; we breathe with every cell, and so the energy of mindfulness can be very strong.

When we are really mindful and concentrated, the breathing can generate peace and calmness. Sitting in meditation, every breath can generate mindfulness, concentration, peace, joy, and happiness. We may be sitting with eighty other people in the room, helping mindfulness manifest, helping concentration manifest, helping peace manifest — because our mind and body are sometimes not peaceful. We invite all the cells of the body to light up and come to a state of synchronization; when all the cells breathe together, the energy can be very powerful, and it can help heal body and mind. The energy comes in focused, like a laser beam — as countless photons light up in synchronization, the light becomes a laser. When we breathe skillfully, we create this synchronization; all our cells come together and generate this energy.

This is the individual manifestation (biểu of the individual): peace, joy, and happiness rising from the unmanifested into our own mind.

Eighty people, one field — collective energy

When eighty people do the same, the collective energy of peace, joy, and happiness becomes much more powerful. When we sit and are able to be peaceful, it is called peaceful sitting — and as practitioners we have to learn how to sit. We invite one another: “May you sit mindfully, may you sit peacefully.” Some people sit and cannot be peaceful — they sit as if on a pit of fire, very agitated — but a practitioner can breathe, calm body and mind, and generate peace; and where there is peace, there is joy and happiness.

When eighty people generate this collective energy, and we know how to open our heart to let it enter, then the calming and the healing happen much more — by eighty percent more. That is why practicing with the community, with the Sangha — sitting, walking, eating together — is much more beneficial: the energy we generate is collective, and it has the capacity to heal and to nourish the seeds of peace and happiness. So we should not sit in separate rooms; we should come together, each of us contributing to the collective manifestation. Within the individual manifestation there is the collective, and within the collective there is the individual.

When I sit in the meditation hall, I am not sitting only for myself; I am sitting for you, because when I sit I generate the energy of peace, joy, and happiness, and these nourish not only me but you as well. I offer my presence and my practice to you. It is the same when we walk: walking alone is good, but when two or three hundred people walk together, all generating joy and peace in every step, this collective energy nourishes everyone — and each of us has to contribute our part.

This is also true at home. If you are the first in your family to know the practice, then living in your family you can generate the energy of mindfulness, concentration, peace, and joy — and this is very beneficial for them. If you suffer and are sad, your family suffers because of your suffering; but when you know how to practice and generate this energy, you suffer less, and your family suffers less too — they may not be practicing yet, but seeing you, they already feel lighter. Your steps, your breath, the way you stand generate peace. And if you can convince one family member to practice with you, then there are two, and the energy is more powerful, and the suffering of the family lessens noticeably while its happiness becomes more noticeable. We convince others not with words but with the way we live — when we look with eyes of compassion and speak gently, those who see us also suffer less. So the individual manifestation brings about the collective manifestation.

It is like a candle: the flame first shines on its own candle — that is the individual manifestation — but the light also radiates out and lights up other areas. Eighty people sitting very still, each generating the energy of mindfulness and peace: each has an area of light, individual manifestation; but where the light from one person overlaps the light of the next, that area is no longer individual but collective manifestation — the collective manifestation of the energy of mindfulness and concentration. So in a hall of eighty people, each has an individual practice, and at the same time there is a collective energy generated by everyone.

Individual and collective — Paris, the nerves, the rules

This is what it means to practice with friends — not two people but eighty — so that the collective energy can be very powerful. The collective energy is made of the individual; the two intertwine.

Consider the Upper Hamlet of Plum Village. It is a manifestation, and in it we see the individual and collective manifestation clearly. For us who live and practice here — lay and monastic — our perception of the hamlet is very different from that of people living in the surrounding village who have never been inside and don’t know what really takes place here. The Upper Hamlet exists because some of us felt the need to practice and came together — in our thoughts, our speech, our actions, we created it. To us it is very intimate; but there are millions of people in France who don’t know it exists, and to them its presence has no meaning, because it is not in their experience. Just as the candle’s light first shines on itself, the light may be reaching people far away, but it is so faint to them that it is as if nonexistent. So the collective manifestation has to do with the individual manifestation.

Take Paris. Everyone in France knows Paris is the capital, so it belongs to everyone — that is its collective manifestation. But the French have a deep, lived experience of Paris if they live there or go often; many in France have never been to Paris, and their image of it is very different from that of Parisians. If you are a tourist, you too have your own individual image of it. So Paris has an individual manifestation and a collective manifestation at once.

Or your optic nerve. Your optic nerve is your individual concern — it matters to you, not to me; that is individual manifestation. But if you are a driver, and I am a passenger on your bus, then my life depends on your nerves: if your eyes are not clear, you can drive into the ditch and I can die. So even your nerves carry a collective manifestation. In the individual there is the collective, and in the collective there is the individual.

When you know how to practice mindfulness and generate peace, joy, and happiness, that is your own benefit — individual manifestation. But your family also benefits, because you are more at ease and suffer less. So your energy is individual and at the same time collective. In summary, there is nothing that is purely individual manifestation, and nothing that is purely collective manifestation.

I heard that in one hamlet the monks decided that during the three months of the winter retreat there would be no internet, no Facebook, and no private email. In this way they have time to generate mindfulness, concentration, insight, joy, and peace — and even in a few days the energy of peace rises greatly. That is their individual practice and their collective practice; and when the brothers are more peaceful, more mindful, the other hamlets benefit from their energy too. So there is really nothing completely individual and nothing completely collective; the two manifest at the same time, like the right and the left.

The same is true of the rules in France: the law is for everyone — collective. But some people know how to make use of the law and benefit from it, more at ease, while others, less educated, don’t know their rights, are taken advantage of, don’t see or use their opportunities. So the law is collective and at the same time individual. There are many beautiful regions in France, with snow or beautiful beaches, but during the summer holiday only wealthier people are able to go to them — so these beautiful mountains belong to all the French, yet only a few benefit from them, and in that sense they belong only to a few. In the collective there is the individual, and in the individual there is the collective.

It has been an hour and a half. We will continue on Sunday.