The Value of Being Together

Thich Nhat Hanh — Winter Retreat 2013–2014 [Stillwater Meditation Hall, Upper Hamlet], Plum Village · 5 January 2014 · talk 15 of 24

Illuminates: the new year as action (karma → retribution) · the Five Contemplations — eating to generate freedom · brotherhood-and-sisterhood · happiness · freedom (giải thoát) as untying the ropes (anxiety, anger, craving, the three complexes — superiority / inferiority / equality) · King Trần Nhân Tông and engaged Buddhism · synchronization / breathing as one body (the river, not the drop) · refuge in the Sangha · learning by ālaya (new neural pathways) · the “beginningless element” verse — store consciousness as the foundation of all phenomena · ālaya as suchness / the ultimate dimension — unobscured and indeterminate · two retributions (body chánh báo + environment y báo, → Verse 9) · the modes of mind-consciousness (collaborating with the senses · working alone · in dreams · in dispersion vs. concentration · the states where it stops) · store consciousness as background consciousness · sudden enlightenment (đốn ngộ) rising from the store, not from mind-consciousness · mind-consciousness relies on the body (the brain) and on manas.

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[Opening chant — French invocation inviting the Sangha to return to the breath and breathe as one body, “flowing like a river, without separation,” freeing us from the complexes of superiority, inferiority, and equality; then the Heart Sutra (in French) and the gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā mantra; then the refuges in the ever-present Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.]

Today is the 5th of January, 2014. We don’t know where the year 2013 has gone. We are in the [Stillwater] Meditation Hall, in the winter retreat.

The new year is action

In 2013, every day, we created action — in our thinking, in our speech, in our body. These are action, karma; and of course in 2014 we will harvest the fruits we planted in 2013. So 2013 has not gone completely — it continues on. We have to practice so that our thinking this year carries the flavor of right thinking, a thinking that has love and compassion. We resolve that our speech and our letters carry the spirit of love and compassion — this is right speech: we will speak only the speech that embodies love, compassion, and understanding, so that we may harvest the fruit of our right speech. And we make the resolution that what we do with our body — in our consumption and our work — carries the energy of love and understanding; this is bodily action. We know that this is sowing seeds: we sow many good bodily seeds so that we can harvest good fruit. We have to be in control of our life, our situation.

Sitting and eating together — a lost art

In Plum Village we have the opportunity to sit together — to listen to the talk, to sit in meditation, to eat together. This is our culture, our civilization. But in society nowadays, in the small family of a couple with one or two or three children, we are so busy that we don’t have time to sit together as a family, or to eat together as a family. One person eats before another, and we have lost a great deal. In the old days no one would skip a meal, because the meal was a precious opportunity for the family to gather. In the evening, when the moon rose, the whole family would go outside to sit together on the porch, to watch the moon and talk. That is culture; that is civilization. But now we don’t have enough time. We work a lot so that we can have a lot of money, a lot of salary — but the truth is we are not any happier.

So if we want to be happy in the future, we have to think about how to reorganize the family so that each day there is a chance to sit together for a meal — for the meal is very important: everyone is present together, and during that time we can simply sit and breathe and look at each other and recognize that our loved ones are still alive. It is not difficult, but it has become difficult, because the structure of society has changed. So in a practice center like Plum Village we try our best to maintain those values: each day we have time to sit quietly together, and each day we have a chance to walk together. Several hundred people make gentle, mindful steps up the hill, and without needing to talk we see the presence of one another. We treasure the presence of one another. Even at mealtime, even if we are not hungry, we still come — to be present for one another.

The Five Contemplations — eat to be free

In Plum Village, before we eat, we read the Five Contemplations, and we say: eat in such a way that you generate freedom, brotherhood and sisterhood, and happiness. Eating is an opportunity to create these three things.

First, freedom. In Vietnamese there is the word nhàn — leisure, not being too busy. In Chinese the character is made of the door (or a window) with the moon inside it: we look out through the door and see the moon. Only people who are at leisure, who have the time, can really see the moon. And in Buddhism we have the word liberation (giải thoát) — not being entangled. The main purpose of a practitioner is not to be entangled. Entangled by what? By the ropes that tie us down — ropes we tie around ourselves, or that we let others tie around us. The biggest ropes are our busyness, our anxiety, our anger, our craving, our jealousy, our fear — and our complexes: the complex that we are better than others, the complex that we are worse than others, and even the complex of being equal. These three are ropes too. At the root of them is ignorance — wrong thinking, wrong perception of ourselves, of others, of the world. These wrong perceptions create suffering, and we need to cut these ropes off. When we can cut them, we have freedom, liberation.

King Trần Nhân Tông — the freedom of an engaged life

There was the king [Trần Nhân Tông], who left his throne — he handed it to his son and became a monk — because he treasured the quality of freedom so much. As a politician there are a great many anxieties; so he left the throne to look for freedom. But freedom does not mean you do nothing: it means looking for the teachings and practices that help us untangle ourselves. After he became a monk, he continued to support his son, who was now the king, working in the world as a politician — while he himself worked as a spiritual teacher, helping the country and teaching people the Five Mindfulness Trainings. This is engaged Buddhism, engaged action. Though he lived on the mountain, he was not far from the world; and because a monk does not carry all those entanglements, he was more free to help the world. In his poem [Cư Trần Lạc Đạo — “Dwelling in the World, Joyful in the Way”] there is the word for freedom, and the teaching is that there is no practice more important than the practice of being free: there is no Dharma as important as liberation.

So each of us, when we have the chance to sit down and look into ourselves, must see what kind of ties we have. We have to recognize the ropes that bind and tangle us — identify them — before we can untie the knots. We are not happy because we are being tied down. Liberation is to untie. The rope of anger can go with us all our life, so we have to undo it, cut it off — the anger of revenge that some people carry their whole lives, having no freedom; the craving for fame, for position, for the objects we chase all our life, tied down by that rope of craving.

The capacity to be happy

So the most beautiful virtue of a person is the capacity to be happy. We have to ask ourselves: Do I have the capacity to be happy? If the answer is no, we have to ask why — and the answer is: because of these ropes that tie us down. For example: everyone is doing walking meditation together. Walking meditation is an opportunity to let go of anxiety, to walk so that each step brings joy and happiness — because we know intellectually that each step can bring freedom and put us in touch with the wonders of life in the present moment, wonders that have the power to nourish and heal us. Every step is nourishing; every step is a miracle; every step is healing; every step is joy. To have a body, to walk — what is better than that? With mindfulness and concentration it can bring great joy. So while we are walking with others, and others are able to generate joy in every step — why can we not? The answer is the same: because we have these ties that bind us. Other people taste every step; but we walk automatically, walking only in the form, and our practice has no essence and does not nourish us. So we have to sit down and ask what ties entangle us, and untie them — and to untie them with intention is not enough; we have to wake up. We cannot let this rope of craving and anger tie us down all our life. How long can we live? When our insight is bright, we can easily let it go — we see that we were foolish, wasting our whole life. What is important is our freedom; if there is no freedom, there is nothing. In this present civilization there are very few people who are truly free: people may have millions in the bank, position, fame, power — and not be happy, because they have no freedom. As the king said: the only thing I want is freedom.

Brotherhood and sisterhood — the Sangha’s true wealth

So when we eat, we read that we should eat in a way that generates happiness — and that is the practice of freedom. If we sit there with all these ropes binding us, we are really not there; we are not happy, while for others every mouthful, every breath brings happiness, because they have freedom.

Brotherhood and sisterhood nourish us. Between a couple there should be brotherhood and sisterhood — in Vietnamese culture a husband and wife may call each other “brother” and “sister.” Between father and son there should be brotherhood and sisterhood: that person is our father, and also our brother. There are fathers and sons who are like friends, mothers and daughters who are like friends; teacher and student are the same — a couple of brother and sister, with whom we can share our dreams. If there is no brotherhood or sisterhood, there is really nothing; but with it, we are nourished, and we can help other people.

In a practice center we must live together in a way that generates freedom and brotherhood and sisterhood. This is our investment. Every day we generate brotherhood and sisterhood, and that is our profit — and the more we get from it, the more we are able to offer to others. When we organize a retreat for a hundred people, what we offer them is the brotherhood and sisterhood; it is this that transforms the collective energy and helps them transform. People are transformed not because of a single good thing, but because of how we walk, sit, and eat — because we share this energy of freedom, brotherhood, and sisterhood. As monastics in Plum Village we have no salary — instead of a salary we have brotherhood and sisterhood, and people are nourished by it. The greater the brotherhood and sisterhood, the stronger our aspiration, our career of helping people. So to invest in that career we must have brotherhood, sisterhood, and freedom.

Eat slowly — be nourished by three energies

And the third thing is happiness. Before we eat, we read the introduction to the contemplations: eat in such a way that there is freedom, that there is brotherhood and sisterhood, and that there is joy. During the meal we are nourished not only by the food but by these three energies. We sit there and are free. Nowadays people eat as quickly as they can so they can get on to something else, and they have no freedom. Here we say: eat as slowly as you can — the slower the better — so that we have more time to look at each other and enjoy our freedom. (There is even a yogurt advertised with the words eat slowly, savor it longer.) We keep each spoonful in the mouth and really listen to its taste — eat every spoonful and listen to the taste — and we are aware that our brothers and sisters are around us, with the same aspiration. So we are nourished not just by the food but by the brotherhood and sisterhood. We eat at ease, with freedom, so that eating itself becomes a practice. Are you free while you are eating — or are you thinking about something else, worried or angry, eating your anger and your anxiety? That is not good for your health. Sometimes it is a challenge: we have to eat in a way that, during those forty minutes, we have freedom, brotherhood and sisterhood, and happiness. And if we can eat that way, then we can also walk that way, and wash our dishes that way — in freedom, in brotherhood and sisterhood, in happiness. And when we have these things, we can share them with others; if we do not have them, there is nothing to offer.

Breathe as one body — synchronization

Notice that before we chant, we say: dear ones, let us breathe together as one body. While we breathe in, we recognize the presence of our brothers and sisters — that as we breathe in, others are breathing in; as we breathe in we calm body and mind, and our brothers and sisters are doing the same; as we breathe out, we smile and let body and mind grow calm. Doing this as a community, we see brotherhood and sisterhood clearly. Listening to the sound of the bell, everyone stops thinking and talking, and we pay attention to the breath: breathing in, we let the mind and body calm down; breathing out, we smile. When people do this, the collective energy of mindfulness and concentration becomes very powerful — this is called synchronization. While we breathe, we create the energy of peace; and this is a collective energy, not just our own — we nourish one another with it. If one person makes mindful steps of joy, that person is also nourishing us. So when we practice together in a community, we nourish one another with the energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight, which brings freedom, brotherhood, sisterhood, and happiness.

Dear ones, breathe together as one body, chant as one body — there is no separate self. We go together as a river, not as drops of water. When we harmonize ourselves within this river, within the Sangha, our suffering is embraced by the collective energy, and it is lessened. If we go as a single drop, our suffering stays the same. So when we sit and walk and breathe with the Sangha, we let go of our individual self and breathe as one body, listen as one body — like water going to the sea together, not as separate drops. If we go as a drop, we keep all the suffering to ourselves and suffer alone; but if we lean on the Sangha and let it embrace and guide us, we have the chance to transform — because the Sangha’s collective energy of mindfulness, concentration, freedom, and peace helps us transform. This is why, in Buddhism, taking refuge in the Buddha and the Dharma is not enough: we must also take refuge in the Sangha, for the Sangha holds the collective energy that lets us transform easily. If we want our practice to last, we have to rely on the Sangha.

The evening chant — calming body, speech, and mind

Before sitting meditation there is the evening chant: I sit beneath the Bodhi tree — my body, speech, and mind are calmed. We sit just as the Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree, very stably; meditation is a time to calm the actions of body, speech, and mind. We breathe deeply, and speech and mind grow calm — no more thinking, no more right and wrong. For in daily life we are tied by exactly this rope: you are right, you are wrong; I am right; you have created so much suffering for me; you are responsible and I am only a victim. We get caught in the attitude of “you are wrong and I am right” — a rope that ties us. So in meditation we untie this rope and let it go: there is no right, no wrong. We sit correctly in our posture, bring body and mind together, and end the argument of who is right and who is wrong, bringing body and mind into mindfulness — a light that helps us see who we are, so that we can leave the shore of anger, anxiety, and suffering and cross to the shore of freedom.

These chants — the evening chant, the chant before incense — are reminders. If we sit there and do not contemplate, there is little benefit; we have to let the chant go in and help us look deeply — to go into the body, through the nervous system, through the synapses, into the neurons. We must let these words, this insight, these practices, go into the body. In Plum Village, before walking meditation or working meditation, we come together and sing — these are practice songs, not entertainment. When we sing “Happiness is here and now,” we are reminding ourselves to step and to breathe so that each step, each breath, becomes a wonder. The more familiar we become with the practice, the more we create new neural pathways that lead to happiness — instead of the one worn path that leads to suffering, which we keep walking down. We are now walking a new path that leads to happiness, and we keep walking it, just as when we hear the bell: once we are familiar with the practice, no one needs to remind us — as soon as we hear the bell, we stop the body and the mind and attend to the breath. In Plum Village everyone does this; there is no effort, no struggle — it has become a new pathway, and automatically we come back to the body and the breath, and body and mind calm down.

Learning by store consciousness

This is learning by the ālaya, by store consciousness. When we practice, we nourish ourselves; we learn how to nourish ourselves — when we stand, sit, wash, eat — and once we can nourish ourselves, we can nourish others: our brothers and sisters, our children, our husband or wife, our friends.

In the sutra there is a line — “there is something that, from beginningless time, [is the support of all phenomena].” These verses speak of the store consciousness as a reality. From beginningless time — no beginning — there is something; and that something is the ālaya, the foundation of all phenomena, of all things. In Buddhism this is called consciousness — the ground of the cosmos, of reality — and from the ālaya life manifests.

We learned in earlier weeks that the ālaya by its nature is unobstructed, uncovered — uncovered by ignorance. This is to say that the ālaya is equivalent to reality, the ultimate dimension, suchness — things in themselves. It is not covered by ideas or notions: not the notion of beginning or ending, not being or non-being, not good or evil, not purity or impurity. It is unobstructed — not obstructed by discrimination, by ignorance and delusion. There is no beginning, no ending; no being, no non-being; no good, no evil; neither pure nor impure. That is the nature of the ālaya: we have to describe it as reality.

Two retributions — body and environment

And due to our actions, the ālaya manifests — it manifests as a body and as the environment the body is in. In Buddhism there is the teaching of retribution, of two kinds: one is [chánh báo], the body — the proper retribution; the other is [y báo], the environment — the environmental retribution. So we are not only the body; we are also the environment — the environment is us. The body and the environment are the two closest, most concrete manifestations, and the environment nourishes us — without environment there is nobody; the two rely on one another, each influencing the other. And the ālaya is not the foundation of body and environment alone; it is the foundation of everything.

In neuroscience they say something similar to the ālaya — they have discovered a small part of it and call it the background consciousness. It is consciousness, but not mind-consciousness. Mind-consciousness (the sixth consciousness) is active when we are awake; it springs up from the ālaya, which is its foundation. From store consciousness arise the springs of mind-consciousness.

The modes of mind-consciousness

Mind-consciousness has its objects, and its objects may be smaller than those of store consciousness — for store consciousness embraces all phenomena, all things, while mind-consciousness takes one object at a time. When we look at the moon or the mountain, the mountain is the object of mind-consciousness; when we look at anger, anger is its object. When we go to sleep — especially in deep sleep — mind-consciousness stops. And mind-consciousness has different states:

When the mind is in dispersion [tán vị], we think endlessly, associating this and that — our normal state, not concentrated on anything, scattered, all over the place. When we concentrate on something — the breath, a math problem — we have concentration [định trung]; in meditation mind-consciousness is in concentration.

When mind-consciousness works together with the five sense-consciousnesses — eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body consciousness — it is called [ngũ câu ý thức], “mind-consciousness in collaboration with the five senses”: seeing, hearing, touching (as when we listen to a Dharma talk, using the ear-consciousness). When the five sense-consciousnesses are closed and mind-consciousness works by itself — especially when we reflect on an abstract subject — it is called [độc đầu ý thức], “working alone,” apart from the senses. While we sleep and dream, there is mind-consciousness in dreams. And sometimes mind-consciousness does not work at all — in dreamless deep sleep, in certain states of concentration that need no mind-consciousness, or when we faint.

At first we might say we are only mind-consciousness — but when mind-consciousness stops, we are still alive. In principle, when mind-consciousness is not working we ought to be “dead”; yet mind-consciousness stops and we remain alive. So we know that beneath mind-consciousness there is something deeper that maintains our life — and that is the ālaya, store consciousness, what neuroscience now likes to call the background consciousness.

Store consciousness learns — and works fast and cheap

We see clearly that store consciousness has the capacity to learn — and thanks to mind-consciousness, it learns; the learning becomes habit. Store consciousness is a store that holds all kinds of seeds — like a hard drive that stores a great deal of information, except that a hard drive holds only a limited amount, while store consciousness stores everything. This is why, when we practice eating, sitting, walking, listening, we use mind-consciousness to create new neural pathways. At first we remember only for a few minutes, then forget — we listen to the chant “sitting beneath the Bodhi tree, body, speech, and mind at peace,” remember it, and by the next day forget it; but the next day the sister chants it again, and we go down this new pathway once more, until gradually it becomes a pathway, a new neural pathway. This is how memory works: memory is not a bag that stores information, but pathways that, after we travel them many times, we remember. When we are born we have more than enough neurons to learn; if we tell our mind to wake up on time, automatically we wake. As a small child, hearing a certain sound — the footsteps — we learn that mother is coming, like an angel, to embrace us; hearing it again and again, we recognize it as mother. So if each of our steps is in mindfulness, we create a pathway of memory: the second step reinforces it with joy and peace, the third step again — and after a while it becomes easier to make mindful, peaceful steps. It is the same with everything we learn: playing tennis is hard at first, the path weak; but the more we practice, the more the pathway is reinforced and strengthened, until it becomes natural. The ālaya has this capacity to learn.

And sometimes store consciousness is working while mind-consciousness is not — as when we drive and think about other things: it is not really mind-consciousness driving, but store consciousness, which is very quick and reacts very fast. If we had to call on mind-consciousness to react, it might be too late. Neuroscience agrees that the neural network is the foundation that gives rise to mind-consciousness, and that mind-consciousness consumes a great deal of energy though it is only a small percentage of the body. Store consciousness, by contrast, consumes less energy but works very effectively — when we cook, when we drive, it is store consciousness at work. Mind-consciousness is expensive and not as effective; store consciousness is cheap and very effective.

The gardener and the soil — sudden enlightenment

So when we practice, we do not practice with mind-consciousness alone: whenever something is taught, mind-consciousness takes that information down into store consciousness. Store consciousness is like soil in which we sow seeds. Mind-consciousness may forget what was learned, but store consciousness keeps cultivating it. In the morning we meet someone whose name we cannot quite recall; the name is stored in store consciousness, but we can’t access it — so we give up, have breakfast, go to sleep, and the next day, while brushing our teeth, the name pops into our head. The work that searched for the name was not mind-consciousness but store consciousness. Enlightenment is the same: we are enlightened not by mind-consciousness but by the seeds we have sown in the depths of consciousness. Our teacher gives us a question to reflect on; mind-consciousness brings that question, that kōan, down into the soil of store consciousness; each day we water the seed, and we have to trust the soil that one day the seed will sprout. Enlightenment can come very suddenly — one day we walk and trip, or hear something, and become enlightened. This is sudden enlightenment [đốn ngộ], and it is brought about not by mind-consciousness but by store consciousness. So when we practice, we make use of the store: mind-consciousness is the gardener, the ālaya is the soil.

Mind-consciousness relies on the body — and on manas

Store consciousness is the foundation of the body and of the environment; mind-consciousness relies on store consciousness, and also on the body. In the body there is the brain, with its trillions of neurons and its nervous system. Mind-consciousness first springs from store consciousness, but it depends on the body. In the past, when the ancestral teachers first set out the Manifestation-Only teaching, biology did not yet exist; now we can use biology and anatomy to understand store consciousness and mind-consciousness, and we should teach our brothers and sisters the anatomy and working of the body and the nervous system — for when we understand the working of the brain, we understand much about the mind, about mind-consciousness.

And mind-consciousness relies not only on store consciousness but on another consciousness called manas, the seventh consciousness — mind-consciousness being the sixth, store consciousness the eighth, and the five sense-consciousnesses the first five. Just as store consciousness relies on the body and the environment, so mind-consciousness also relies on the body and the environment to manifest. We need to learn neuroscience to truly understand mind-consciousness.

We will continue this coming Thursday.