Mother Earth Has All the Seeds

Thich Nhat Hanh — Winter Retreat 2013–2014 Stillwater Meditation Hall, Upper Hamlet, Plum Village · 8 December 2013 · talk 7 of 24

Illuminates: going-forth and the collective (no-separate-self) future · renewing the teaching to fit the time · Mother Earth as store consciousness (holds all seeds — Māra and Buddha) · the characteristics of a seed extended to eleven (incl. individual/collective → Verse 9; neither old nor new; neither inside nor outside; neither defiled nor immaculate) · the plowing-Brahmin story (the field is the mind) · double grasping (subject–object inseparable).

---

[Opening: the chant of Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels.]

[The newly-ordained brothers and sisters present themselves and offer their dharma names — many in the “True Sky” (Chân Trời …) lineage: True Sky of Wonder, of Aspiration, of Spiritual Light, of Friendship, and others.]

Dear Sangha, today is the 8th of December, 2013. We are in the Stillwater Meditation Hall of the Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, in the winter retreat.

A new year, a new me

We have twenty-two days until the new year, and after it the Lunar New Year. Thay has written verses for us to print out in French, English, and Vietnamese. The couplet reads, on the left, “A new year — and a new me”; on the right, “Joy within, joy all around.” It is inspired by [Nguyễn Du’s] poem: if the person is not happy, the environment does not seem happy; if there is joy inside us, then whatever we see outside is joyful too. It is all in our mind. (“New year, new me” sounds strange in English — but it is strange in a powerful, good way.) We’ll put these online so friends around the world can use them. It is a practice of renewing body and mind so that we have joy — and when we have joy, the environment and society benefit.

Going forth — into a collective future

Today we have the ordination of twenty-seven brothers and sisters in [the new ordination] family. To go forth is to leave our small family and join a new, spiritual family — the family the Buddha Shakyamuni established — whose purpose is to bring the Buddha’s teaching to help people transform themselves and cultivate joy. For this we live a simple life; we don’t accumulate, so that we have time and energy to serve.

In the Buddha’s time, going forth was described like this: there are many rivers with different names — the Ganges has many tributaries — but when they flow into the Ganges, they lose their old names and become one with it. And it is not only the name that is let go: one lets go of caste, class, color, and race as well. Even a prince, after becoming a monk, lets go of his name, his prestige, his identity, and becomes simply a member of the Sangha.

The day before, Thay took the young brothers and sisters on a walk and told them: when we become monastics we let go of everything and join the community; we don’t think of our individual future, because our future is the future of the Sangha. The career of the Sangha is our career; the difficulties of the Sangha become ours, and its accomplishments become ours. So a monastic has no private, separate self — only a collective future. It is somewhat like this in the world, when a young woman marries into a family and her future becomes bound up with her husband’s, so that they struggle through life together; how much more so in a large Sangha like ours. So we have the responsibility to take care of every member of our family — older and younger brothers and sisters — like the five fingers of one hand: the suffering of one finger is the suffering of the whole hand, and the ease of one finger is the ease of the whole hand. There is no separate self.

A monastic life is very different from worldly life: we erase the old ways and learn a new way of being, so that we can become a continuation of the Buddha. Whether we are a good continuation or not, we are nonetheless his continuation — if a good one, the Buddha benefits; if not, the Buddha has to bear with it.

Renewing the teaching so it fits the time

In a dharma talk in the US, I said that in Plum Village we train monastics and lay practitioners, because the need for the practice is so great that the monastic dharma teachers alone cannot meet it. So we also train lay dharma teachers — thousands of them — and even that is barely enough, because lay teachers must also care for their families. Almost every country in Europe asks for at least one retreat a year; we have not been able to meet the demand. So in that talk I said: if you have nothing more interesting to do out in the world, why not become a monastic? We need at least another thousand. Young people today often don’t know why they are living; there is a void inside them. So the monks and nuns have organized Wake Up retreats for young people around the world, and a few years ago opened a five-year program of monastic training and service — three years as a novice, two more — after which, if happy, one can continue, or else leave and become a lay dharma teacher.

Buddhism, like science or education, is an art, and it must be progressive; if it stands still, it loses its capacity to serve the world. The conservative side prevents the progressive. Without the Mahayana tradition, Buddhism could not have stood in the society of its time: the patriarchs saw that the older teachings had become rigid and no longer spoke to the young, so they renewed the teaching to make it applicable. The image of the bodhisattva — Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, those who go into the world to serve — is more appealing than the image of the arhat who withdraws into a cave to practice for himself alone. New sutras, new trainings, new precepts followed. In every area of life — science, education, technology — there is constant progress; if Buddhism stands still, it no longer serves its purpose. In some countries young people no longer go to temples, because the teaching as delivered does not respond to their needs or open a door out of their frustration.

A basic characteristic of true Buddhism is that it must be appropriate to the mentality and situation of the people, in whatever era. If it is not appropriate, it is not really Buddhism — even if it uses all the Buddhist terms. If we teach the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path in a way people cannot understand, that does not respond to their needs, then it is not yet true Buddhism. In Plum Village we always look for ways to be more appropriate, and we are not afraid to renew our tradition. If we compare the Plum Village Five Mindfulness Trainings, or the ten novice precepts, with the older forms, ours embody the teaching more deeply — and if the Buddha knew, he would approve. When a monk asks, “Who are you to change the Buddha’s precepts?” our answer is: we are the Buddha’s students, carrying on his wish, continuing his career and making the teaching new and relevant.

Remember that before the Buddha passed away, he told Venerable Ānanda that the 250 trainings were too many and that some of the minor ones could be set aside. But when Ānanda told the council of five hundred arhats, they asked which ones the Buddha meant — and Ānanda said the Buddha had been too tired, so he hadn’t asked. So the council decided to keep them all; and from that conservative stance the practice has stayed exactly as it was 2,600 years ago. We are afraid, and lack the courage to renew it. Those of us in the Mahayana tradition are brave enough to renew, change, and modify — for monastics and for lay people alike. In the old tradition there was no formal request to receive the Five Trainings, and no Sangha-common procedure; in Plum Village we have both, which creates a solemn atmosphere and harmony before the trainings are transmitted. In the past one teacher ordained one student; now sometimes five hundred or seven hundred people receive the Five Trainings together. Plum Village is even courageous enough to revise the Prātimokṣa — a very courageous act, and this work must continue; at first we kept all 250 precepts, fearing it would be too shocking, but as people grow familiar we can take a second step.

Up to 2013, in the twenty-first century, some communities still recite the trainings and the Sangha-procedures and the daily chants only in Sino-Vietnamese — so conservative that it cannot catch up with modern life; how can it serve the young? Those of us who are senior in the community are responsible for carrying the Buddhadharma forward; we need to sit together and look into the future, to establish teachings and practices appropriate to the modern mind. In the Zen tradition there was the practice of the koan — the silent reflection that helped many people in its time — but the koan is no longer applicable for us: if young people with real frustration and suffering are asked to reflect on the sound of one hand clapping, or whether a dog has Buddha-nature, they will feel it has nothing to do with their suffering. Where Buddhism (Korean, Japanese, and others) holds only to the old ways and will not renew its practices, it drifts to the margin of society.

So the responsibility of the Sangha is to renew Buddhism. The new year is not only a new me — it has to be a new Buddhism, and even the Buddha has to be new. The Buddha is not a separate self; we tend to think he is, but the Buddha said, “I have no separate self.” The Buddha is still continuing his work in the present and the future — just as a cloud continues through the rain and the river, so that looking at the rain we see the cloud, looking at the Sangha and the practice we see the Buddha. And the Buddha was a revolutionary: in an age when all ideologies and religions taught a great Self, he taught clearly that there is no self — a minority view that challenged the majority. The truth is always the truth, but we need the courage to be honest and speak what we see. We are the continuation of the Buddha; we must help the Buddha go forward, and not hold the teaching back for our own comfort or interest.

Verses for living deeply

For the new year I offer two verses for older people: “I treasure every moment, every day and month I still have left.” If we are older and have wasted time running after images, now we wake up and change how we live, so that every moment is deep — joy, peace, happiness. Every morning we read the waking gatha: Waking up, I smile; twenty-four brand-new hours are before me; I vow to live them fully, looking at all beings with eyes of compassion. We still have this day; we should not waste it on thoughts, speech, and actions that are not beneficial. We walk so that we are happy, breathe so that we are happy, sit, eat, wash the bowls, brush the teeth so that we are happy — that is the practice, very concrete.

These two verses come from four lines used when walking down to the lower hamlet. Going down a slope, breathe in for three steps, out for five — one word per step:

(in) I treasure — I cherish — I am walking (out) legendary steps; happiness is smiling on every path I tread.

There are many such verses, and we can write our own. When we say “every step, I am happy,” our parents and ancestors in us are happy, our children are happy — we walk for our children and future generations. These feet are the feet of our parents, our ancestors, our future children; we walk not for ourselves alone but for the whole Sangha and family. So we walk, instead of rushing as if chased.

If we walk in mindfulness, with peace, then we are a continuation of the Buddha, and there is no complex. Then we are a cell of the Sangha body — a true, good cell — nourishing the Sangha with our mindful breathing and steps. Every cell in our body has its life: it knows how to breathe, to absorb nutrients, to release toxins — and a cell that nourishes itself never worries about cancer. Likewise, a member of the Sangha who knows how to walk with peace and joy nourishes the whole Sangha. The Sangha body is a continuation of the Buddha body, so a cell of the Sangha is at the same time a cell of the Buddha. “Who are you?” — “I am a cell of the Buddha body.” We may study at a Buddhist university for seven or ten years, but if our step is not peaceful and mindful, it is not really beneficial; and if we can walk like that, we are truly a cell of the body, a continuation of the Buddha. All we need is just to walk.

The sutra: the characteristics of a seed, extended

Now we review and extend the characteristics of a seed.

1. Momentariness (kṣaṇika): the seed dies and is born every instant; a kṣaṇa is a unit smaller than a split second — its nature is instantaneous.
2. Simultaneous with its fruit (sahabhū): the seed and its fruit manifest together — H₂O manifests as rain or cloud; the rain is the formation, H₂O the seed. We can say the seed and the formation are “one” — H₂O and rain are not two separate things — yet, to be exact, H₂O is not one with rain and not different from rain (it can also be cloud or snow). So: neither the same nor different.
3. Continuous as a series (santati): continuing, not rigid or static. A cloud or a river seems to keep its nature, but it is always changing, always continuing in a series.
4. Determinate in nature: it stays H₂O whether manifested as rain or snow; this nature is wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral. A lotus plant continues as a lotus, not as any other plant.
5. Waiting for conditions to manifest — and we have learned the four conditions [cause, supporting, continuity, object].
6. Leading to its own fruit.
7. Individual and collective manifestation (Plum Village addition): the seed has the nature of both collective and individual.
8. Interbeing and interpenetration (Plum Village addition): it is what it is, but it is also made of non-itself elements. Without these two characteristics (7 and 8) we could misunderstand its nature as unchanging or as merely “leading to a fruit.”
9. Neither old nor new — which means neither increasing nor decreasing.
10. Neither inside nor outside — not internal, not external.
11. (revealed at the end of the talk — see below).

On the origin of the seeds: one teacher [name garbled — Dharmapāla?] held, correctly in principle, that there are both innate seeds and newly-planted seeds; in Plum Village we lean further still — toward neither old nor new. As the human species, out of our needs, we plant more of some seeds than others: we find ways to produce a great deal of rice, sowing and harvesting and sowing again. It is the same with habit-energies, and with suffering and happiness: we need the seeds of compassion, peace, and joy, so as practitioners we sow and water them. We practice the Five Trainings so as not to plant and harvest the seeds of suffering — we don’t want to water them; we want to water the seeds of love, understanding, and peace.

The plowing Brahmin — the field is the mind

You remember the time the Buddha and some monks went on alms round and met a Brahmin landowner [Kasi Bhāradvāja] with five hundred buffalo. He judged the monks: “We have to plow, sow, plant, and harvest in order to eat; but you don’t plant or grow, yet you still eat — that is not good.” (Communists, likewise, like to say practitioners are not beneficial because they don’t plant, grow, or harvest, yet they eat.) The Buddha said, “Please don’t say that — we too have a field; we plant and harvest, because our work is important.” “Where is your land? Where is your plow?” the landowner asked. The Buddha said, “Our mind is the field; our good seeds are mindfulness, concentration, insight, love, and forgiveness. We plant these seeds and harvest them and offer them to you — and if life does not have these elements, it is not good.” The Brahmin woke up, and offered the Buddha some rice. The Buddha thanked him but said, “We do not teach in order to receive food.” The Brahmin said, “But I have offered it; I cannot take it back.” So the Buddha told his attendant to pour it into the field — and there was a reaction in the soil, a bubbling, because that rice could no longer be eaten.

The word cultivation is, in Sanskrit, bhāvanā — to sow, to cultivate; whatever we do not yet have, we cultivate so that we can have it. Happiness, love, joy — we do not have them yet, but we plant and cultivate them. Bhāvanā means “to bring into being.” So where the Brahmin plants seeds of rice, the practitioner plants seeds of happiness.

Mother Earth is store consciousness

From the perspective of Mother Earth, we see that Mother Earth is like store consciousness. She stores all the seeds; the Buddhas and great beings all come from Mother Earth, and nothing is lost — we manifest, return to Mother Earth, and manifest again; not even a little thing is lost. That is what it means to maintain, to hold, to preserve so that nothing is lost — the function of ālaya. And the thing Mother Earth preserves is really the earth herself: she is both the subject that maintains and the object that is maintained. We have to see Mother Earth in ourselves, and ourselves in Mother Earth: we are the formation, Mother Earth is the seed — and seed and formation are really one. So the best example of store consciousness is Mother Earth — something very real, not illusory.

Mother Earth holds the seed of rice and all the others. We plant rice and want to eliminate the weeds — but Mother Earth holds both the seeds of rice and the seeds of weeds. We are her children, and so are the elephants and the fish; we have the same mother. Therefore we have the responsibility to protect the environment, because all other species are our brothers and sisters. In the sutra two qualities of the earth are named: solid and thick (broad) — it is stable, and its storage is vast. So Mother Earth, store consciousness, is very concrete: she has all the seeds — the seeds of Māra and the seeds of the Buddha — and it is up to us to choose.

We think we can create new seeds with new technology — genetic manipulation, modifying seeds, turning tulips black or making rice resistant to pests — but it is actually the same seeds recycled; we think they are new, but they are not really new. This goes alongside what science discovers: nothing is truly new. Matter becomes energy and goes in a cycle; nothing increases and nothing decreases — we cannot create or destroy matter or energy. The energy of the sun becomes other energy. So matter and energy neither increase nor decrease — and it is the same with the seeds: they do not increase or decrease. So we lean toward the teaching of no-increase and no-decrease, which is really “neither old nor new.” However much we try to create, it all goes back to Mother Earth.

Neither inside nor outside; neither defiled nor immaculate

The treatise speaks of seeds inside and outside — using the example of sesame, bean, or rice seeds for those “outside,” and the seed of anger or the seed of love for those “inside.” But we have to push further and say there is really no inside and no outside. The basis of Manifestation-Only is the insight of non-duality that transcends the double grasping (grāhya–grāhaka): the dualistic view in which we have a consciousness “inside” us that looks “outside” to recognize the world, as though our consciousness were separate from the world it sees, with no connection between them. As enlightened people we have to remove this double grasping: subject and object are two things that cannot be separated.

At first physicists thought they could stand outside and observe; but when we bring our mind to observe something, we change the observed — shining light on a thing to look at it already changes it, let alone bringing our mind to it. So scientists now say we cannot stand outside as observer; we have to be participant. To understand someone, we cannot observe from outside; we have to get inside their skin and feel their feeling — to feel their sadness we have to be sad. In India there is the image of a salt doll that sits at the ocean’s shore wanting to know how salty the ocean is — how can it know, except by entering and dissolving? So subject and object of cognition cannot be separated, and science now sees it must let go of the double grasping. As long as we still hold that object and subject exist separately, we do not truly understand. And the first thing we see is really our own mind — just as, loving someone, we really love the image of them we have created in our head, until that image no longer matches reality.

It is the same with ecology. Many people want to protect the environment, but their view is dualistic: they think we are different from the environment, and don’t see that we and the environment are not two. We cannot take ourselves out of the environment or the environment out of ourselves. We and Mother Earth are one — Mother Earth is the seed and we are the formation — and only when we can transcend the double grasping can we truly communicate with Mother Earth and care for her with good result. If we see Mother Earth merely as “the environment,” we will never fulfill that task.

So now the eleventh characteristic, which we were not going to reveal until now: the seed is neither defiled nor immaculate. Sāsrava means “leaking” (with the outflows); the eleventh characteristic is neither leaking nor non-leaking (anāsrava) — neither defiled nor immaculate — because it is non-dualistic, not caught in the double grasping.

There is no walking meditation today; we will have lunch together at one o’clock, and no afternoon activity.