Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet

Summary of sorts

• Meditation is for looking deeply, seeing more clearly, recognising the seeds of our actions, revealing the truth. From this, appropriate action can arise.
  • In right mindfulness every step of the path is the path itself.
• We must learn the art of suffering, so that we suffer less and can help others suffer less.
  • We practice mindfulness not to avoid suffering but to get the strength we need to cope and to help.
  • Don’t fight or suppress your suffering: recognize, embrace, and gradually transform it into compassion.
  • Listen to give the other person a chance to speak out and suffer less. Give them a chance to unburden themselves.
• We inter-are at every level.
  • Everything we do changes our body, mind, collectives, environment. Our thoughts, speech, action continue in the world.
  • Every thing is made of element that are not that thing. There is a you, but you are made of non-you elements. Everything we are comes from previous causes and conditions.
  • Break through the ideas of a separate self, a human being, a living being, and a life span. Separation creates division, discrimination, and suffering.
    • Throw away the notion of self. It takes training! It’s like how rain doesn’t need a rainer.
  • (Think about a cloud, as changing form, as part of the water cycle)
  • Sharing material resources is a concrete way to practice interbeing.
• There are two levels of truth: conventional (relative, historical) truth and ultimate (absolute) truth. We need to pay attention to both.
• Many things have their seeds inside us. Peace, acceptance, patience, compassion, non-discrimination.
  • Water a seed to make it grow. Stop watering it to let it die.
  • See everything we read, watch, and listen to as water for the seed.
• Happiness is available to each of us, right in this moment, if only we can awaken to it.
  • If we’re attached to one particular idea of happiness, it’s as though we’ve closed all the doors except one. It needs great insight and courage to release our ideas of happiness.
  • Life is not only suffering; it is also full of wonders.
• Live daily life such that every act becomes an act of love.
• Train to see all views—including our own—as limited, impermanent, and open to change.

Preface

Cultivating a strong training in meditation and mindfulness is not an opiate to escape what’s going on but a way for us to truly still the mind and look deeply, in order to see ourselves and the world clearly. From this foundation of clarity and insight we’ll be able to take the most appropriate, effective action

Introduction

• An essential condition to hear the call of the Earth and respond to her is silence.
• When you wake up and you see that the Earth is not just the environment, the Earth is us, you touch the nature of interbeing.
• The planet and future generations are also us; we are not separate.

Part 1: Radical Insight: a new way of seeing

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

• there’s one thing we have the power to change, which will make all the difference, and that is our mind.
• Buddhism speaks of two levels of truth: the level of labels and appearances, often called “conventional truth,” and the deeper level of reality, known as the “ultimate truth.”
• we need to wake up to what’s going on at both levels of truth.

Spring Thunder

• If you have a strong desire in you, a mind of love, that is the kind of energy that will help you do these two things: wake up to the beauties of the planet to heal yourself and wake up to the suffering of the world and try to help.
• New laws and policies are not enough. We need to change our way of thinking and seeing things.
• we must learn the art of suffering: the way to suffer, so we suffer much less and can help others suffer less.
• allow yourself time to sit, to walk—not doing anything, just looking deeply into the situation and into your own mind.

Zen Roots

With the energy of mindfulness and concentration you can get a breakthrough and begin to see the true nature of what is there.

Diamond Breakthrough

• Throwing away is a very strong term. It’s not just “letting go.”
• The aim of a Zen master is to help students to transform; it’s not to transmit knowledge or views.
• Insight is a kind of direct intuitive vision that you get from strong concentration.

You Are More than You Think

• The first notion you must throw away is the notion of self.
• It takes intensive training to throw this notion away.
• It’s similar to saying “it’s raining.” The rain is something certain; it is raining, but there is no rainer. You don’t need a rainer for the rain to be possible.
• I am made of non-me elements and, when these elements come together, they produce me. So, I am that. I do not have a separate existence. I do not have a separate self.
• There is a you, but you are made of non-you elements.

Deep Ecology

• The second notion the Diamond Sutra tells us to throw away is the notion of “human being.”
• without minerals, plants, and animals, how can there be human beings? If you remove or return all these elements, a human being cannot exist anymore.

Life Has No Limits

• The third notion we have to break through is the notion of “living beings.” Many of us are caught in a distinction between sentient or “animate” beings and non-sentient or “inanimate” matter.
• To separate out living beings from the inanimate world and make a divide between them is incorrect.
• We must remove the notion of a “living being” as different from a non-living being, or an enlightened, holy being, because that notion creates so much division, discrimination, and suffering.
• Mindfulness, concentration, and insight are in us all as potentialities—seeds—and that is our buddha-nature.

You Are Non-Temporal

• The fourth notion the Diamond Sutra teaches us to remove is the idea of a “life span.” We believe that there is a moment in time in which we were born, and there’s another moment in which we die, and we think we only exist between these two points.
• what he could not do in his lifetime I try to do for him.

The Task of a Meditator

While eating, walking, cooking, and sitting—whatever you are doing—you should train yourself to keep this insight of inter-being alive so you can break through the ideas of a separate self, a human being, a living being, and a life span. Doing so, you free yourself from discrimination

Seeing and Acting in the Light of the Diamond Sutra —T.D.

• The Diamond Sutra helps us touch the deep realization that we are intimately bound to the web of life.
• the mind of not-knowing is a mind that’s open, free, and awake to infinite possibility.
• The insight of interbeing breaks through the idea that whatever happens to the Earth after we die has nothing to do with us.

You Cannot Become Nothing

• A permanent, immortal soul is something that cannot be accepted, either by good Buddhists or good scientists; everything is impermanent and continues to manifest in different forms.
• We shouldn’t fall into the trap of eternalism, but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of annihilation either and say that after death we become nothing.
• Imagine for a moment that you are a cloud. This is a meditation.

What’s Your Karmic Footprint?

• That is the way to look: you see yourself not just in this body but everywhere, in your thoughts, speech, and action that continue you in the world.
• Every thought we produce, every word we pronounce, everything we do changes our body, mind, and environment. This impact is called “retribution.”
• The environment in which we find ourselves is us, and it is the result of our action.

Two Kinds of Truth

• the conventional (relative, historical) truth and the ultimate (absolute) truth.
• The ultimate truth transcends the ideas of separate selves, separate species, and even the idea of “birth” and “death.” At the level of the ultimate truth, there is no such thing as death; there is only continuation.
• There is no conflict between the two kinds of truth; they are both useful.
• It is possible to accept both kinds of truth. We cannot claim that one truth is better than the other, or that one truth is the only truth.

Face Your Fears

• In Buddhism, we speak of four kinds of nutriments:
  • edible foods (what we eat and drink);
  • sense impressions (everything we consume through our senses in terms of images, sounds, music, movies, websites, and so on);
  • volition (what we consume in terms of our deepest intention);
  • consciousness (what we consume in the collective energy around us).
• We can learn from Mother Earth’s patience, non-discrimination, and unconditional love.

The Way Out Is In

• The way out is in. You have to go back to yourself, face your deepest fears, and accept the impermanence of our civilization.
• Technology alone is not enough to solve the problem. It needs to go together with understanding, compassion, and togetherness.
• look deeply to get the insight of peace, acceptance, and non-fear.

Zen and the Art of Catching a Snake —T.D.

• In deep Buddhism, we learn that both truths are happening at the same time and that by deeply contemplating the conventional truth we can touch the ultimate.
• “When you can face the truth and fully accept reality as it is, you will have a breakthrough and be able to have peace.”
• When peace and acceptance is born in our hearts, we realize we have nothing whatsoever to lose; we’re inspired to do whatever we can to help.

Your Deepest Need

Meditation is for this. It’s a very urgent task. We can learn how to cultivate, in any situation, a feeling of peace, understanding, and compassion.

Part 2: The Action Dimension: A new way of living

• once we realize that we already have more than enough conditions to be happy, we can be happy right here and right now.
• it’s not that they don’t want to do something, but they find themselves in a situation where they can’t do anything because they have their own difficulties. They have pain and suffering, which they don’t know how to deal with,
• we need to help them change their idea of what happiness is. And even that may not be enough; we need to give them a taste of real happiness. Only when they have tasted real happiness will they change their way of thinking and way of life

The Present Moment Is a Whole World to Discover —T.D.

• Happiness is not something we attain by accumulating wealth or status; it is something available to each of us, right in this moment, if only we can awaken to it.
• It takes strength to resist the running and just be there, open to whatever’s going on inside and around us.

Open to Life

• if you are attached to one particular idea of happiness, it’s as though you have closed all the doors except one. And, because that particular door does not open, happiness cannot come to you.
• It needs great insight and courage to release our ideas of happiness. But, once we can do that, freedom and happiness can come very easily.

You Don’t Need to Live in a Cave to Be Zen

with mindfulness, you can sit in the heart of the marketplace and still be alone and have peace and freedom. It doesn’t take years in a cave.

Set Yourself Free

You feel the privilege of being alive. Life is not only suffering; it is also full of wonders.

Who Is the Boss?

When you walk, it’s not just to get somewhere. With every step you enjoy being alive.

This Is It

We don’t sit to do something. You only need to sit.

The Courage to Sit —T.D.

• It may seem that there is a paradox here: on the one hand, the Zen masters tell us to breathe and accept the situation; on the other, they say we must seek to change it. The way out is to do both.
• We listen deeply to the imprint of the world in our body and feelings; we dissolve the restlessness, soothe the anxiety.
• Everything you do leading up to the sitting is already the sitting.

The Power of Simple Living

Happiness doesn’t depend on external conditions alone; it depends on our way of looking at and seeing things.

Bodhisattva Samantabhadra

Our practice is to live our daily life in such a way that every act becomes an act of love.

What Should I Do with My Life?

• We need to avoid a kind of dualistic thinking that “work” is one thing and “life” is another thing.
• I touch the truth of no-self because my teacher is in me, my father is also in me, and the meditation, the work, joy, and life become one.

How Can I Make Difficult Decisions?

• We should avoid making decisions when our mind is not free. Even if people pressure us, we should refuse because a wrong decision can make ourselves and others suffer for a long time.
• To practice mindfulness doesn’t mean you’re forbidden from making plans for the future, and it doesn’t mean you’re prevented from learning from the past. The idea is not to get lost in fear or uncertainty about the future but to be grounded in the present moment and bring the future into the present moment and have a deep look.

How to Fail

Right action is the kind of action that goes in the direction of understanding and compassion and truth.

The Mindfulness Training on True Happiness

• practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting.
• share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.

What Are You Feeding?

• If you cannot deal with the problem of pollution and loss of balance in yourself, how can you deal with the problem of pollution and loss of balance in nature?
• In many ways we are responsible for our own suffering. We may have thought that something is good for us, and yet it makes us suffer a lot.
• As soon as we can recognize whatever is the source of nutriment for our ill-being, we just cut it off and our suffering will cease; it has no more fuel and it will die.
• In Buddhism, we speak of four kinds of nutriments:
  • edible foods (what we eat and drink),
  • sense impressions (everything we consume through our senses in terms of images, sounds, music, movies, websites, and so on),
  • volition (what we consume in terms of our deepest intention),
  • and consciousness (what we consume in the collective energy around us).

Deepest Desire

• We practice mindfulness—we may even become monastics—not to avoid suffering nor to avoid society but to get the strength we need to cope and to help.
• we take refuge in a community, not for our own sake but for the sake of everyone because, without community, we cannot go far.

Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha

• There is a bodhisattva whose name is Ksitigarbha. The vow of Ksitigarbha is to go to the places where there is a lot of suffering in order to serve and to help. There are hells a little bit everywhere on the planet.
• There are many doctors, nurses, and social workers who are living Ksitigarbhas.
• if the meditator and the artist are alive in us, then the warrior will know exactly in which direction to go.

Is It Zen to Dream?

In Buddhism, the means and the ends should be identical. There is no path leading to happiness; the path is happiness itself.

Do You Dare to Dream? —T.D.

the art of meditation is to reveal the truth and the path forward.

Guard Your Mind

• When we reach for stimulation, it’s not exactly because we need these things but we’re doing anything we can to avoid encountering ourselves.
• Those of us who are activists are always eager to succeed in our efforts to help the world, but, if we don’t maintain a kind of balance between our work and nourishing ourselves, we won’t be able to go very far.

Where’s Your Horse Going?

The problem is that we’re using technology mostly to satisfy our cravings and take us out of the present moment.

Beware the Embargo

stop watering these seeds to prevent them from growing.

A Warrior’s Strategy to Guard Our Mind —T.D.

• The concept Thay is proposing here is relatively simple: to begin to see everything we read, watch, and listen to as food.
• It’s about time: How much is enough? And it’s about what our screens and earphones are taking us away from.
• Taking control and having the freedom to choose what we put in our mind is not easy.
• We also need a plan for how we’ll take care of our mind when we’re not consuming. How will we embrace our loneliness, sorrow, or despair? How will we nourish joy and connection? How will we relax?

Collective Consciousness Is Food

The individual is made of the collective and the collective is made of the individual; they inter-are. Our individual consciousness reflects the collective.

Eating with Non-Violence

• Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are. Tell me where you eat and I will tell you who you are.
• It’s your awareness of suffering that naturally makes you determined to consume non-violently—it’s not because someone forces you. You do it out of awareness, mindfulness, and compassion.
• You should not talk too much about it but simply invite others to enjoy delicious vegetarian dishes with you.
• In the Buddhist tradition there is a verse reminding every monastic to train, in their interactions with the world, to be as gentle and mindful as a bee visiting a flower.

Learning the Art of Nourishing and Healing —T.D.

• The truth may sting, but it can wake us up.
• The world doesn’t need any more fanatics. If a habit is hard to shift, it’s likely to have been transmitted to us through several generations or held in place by society, culture, and our context or environment. We can discover a lot about ourselves and our ancestors as we begin to make changes to align our choices with our values.

In True Dialogue Both Sides Are Willing to Change

• Technical solutions have to be supported by togetherness, understanding, and compassion.
• we need more than just the intention to listen: we need training in how to listen.
• As we listen deeply to the other side, we begin to recognize not only their wrong perceptions but also our own.

How to Listen

• To listen is first of all to be fully present and not distracted.
• This is the quality of presence we offer to the person in front of us so we can listen to hear what is being said and what is being left unsaid.
• You keep alive the insight that you are listening with only one purpose: to give the other person a chance to speak out and suffer less.
• Compassion protects you and prevents what the other person is saying from triggering irritation and anger in you.
• if you find you can’t listen, and you turn away, it’s not necessarily because you don’t have compassion but because you have not yet been able to transform your own suffering inside.

Bodhisattva of Compassion

• If what the other person is saying is difficult to hear, you may have an urge to stop and correct them because it’s painful to hear and touches your own suffering. But we do our best to refrain from interrupting them. It’s not important whether what they are saying is right or wrong. What is important is to give them a chance to unburden themselves. Listening with compassion for their suffering is the only way to help.
• if the seed of compassion is powerful enough, you’ll be able to activate your compassion to protect you while listening, and you’ll be able to protect the seed of anger from being triggered.
• In Plum Village, after a session of deep listening, we often practice walking meditation outside to restore our peace, calm, and freshness.
• Being listened to, they may be getting a little bit of relief, but it’s not enough. So, we should find allies and together help them organize their life so they can cut whatever source of nutriment is feeding their suffering.

Deep Listening 101 —T.D.

• We don’t repress any feelings that come up for us; we simply take note of them and embrace them, knowing we can always look into them later after we have finished listening.
• We cultivate a genuine curiosity to understand their deepest fears and concerns.
• I find that the best way I can listen to difficult, bitter, or angry speech is to listen to the pain behind the words, to the feeling the person is trying to articulate, however clumsily they’re doing it.
• If we’re not in the right frame of mind to listen, it is better to say so, and offer to listen deeply another time.

Mastering Anger

• Of course, anger is very powerful, but the question is whether you can control it. When you are angry, you’re not very lucid, and you risk creating a lot of damage, both in yourself and in the world. But, if you know how to transform anger into compassion, you still have a very powerful source of energy.
• the practice of mindfulness here is not to fight or suppress the anger but to recognize, embrace, and gradually transform it into compassion.
• Anger, on the other hand, blocks communication.
• If you still have too much anger, too much energy of blaming and punishing, you’ll only widen the division.

The Art of Not Hating

• looking deeply we know that, just as we have suffered, the other side has suffered too. We want a chance to live in peace, safety, and security, and we also want the other side to have a chance to live in peace, safety, and security too.
• The Buddha teaches us that first we have to win ourselves, meaning we have to free ourselves from resentment, hatred, and wrong perceptions.
• Winning does not mean victory over those who cause us to suffer but victory over our own ignorance and resentment inside.
• The practice of compassionate listening can remove a lot of anger, remove a lot of suspicion, and remove a lot of fear.
• Compassion and forgiveness are possible once we can see the suffering of those who’ve inflicted suffering on us.

Is It Possible to Work for Change Without Hating the “Other Side”? —T.D.

• Love allows us to go even further, and to see hatred, anger, and discrimination not so much as enemies but as energies—inside all of us—that can be embraced and transformed.
• The challenge is to train to see all views—including our own—as limited, impermanent, and open to change.
• Thay’s teaching is strong here: in the light of interbeing, we cannot have the right without the left. In terms of views and dialogue, we should also have the perspective that our position has arisen in relation to their position.
• We might want to say to the other side, “You change first! If you’re not going to change, I won’t!” But, with the insight of interbeing, we know that our way of being, our openness, already changes the situation.

Catalyst for Change

Christiana calls herself a stubborn, grounded optimist. For Christiana, optimism is not about anticipating a certain outcome, but about choosing the kind of energy with which we enter the challenge of the climate crisis.

Bringing the Healing Home

Compassion goes together with patience.

Words That Heal

• By coming back to your mindful breathing to embrace any strong emotions, you’ll be able to use words that are skillful and easy to receive.
• You also have to speak to yourself with love. Many of us have suffered as a child, and those wounds have not yet healed.

The Mindfulness Training on Loving Speech and Deep Listening

• When anger is manifesting in me, I am determined not to speak.
• I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and in the other person.

Love Is Fuel

• With the mind of love we have a heart on fire and the vitality and strength to do whatever we want to do.
• That is the meaning of love: to be one with.
• You realize that you are here as a child of the Earth and you carry the Earth within you. Mother Earth is not outside of you; she is inside. Mother Earth is not your environment; you are part of Mother Earth. And that kind of insight of interbeing, of non-discrimination, helps you to be truly in communion with the Earth.

In the Belly of the Earth

• There is the breathing but there is no “you” who is breathing in or breathing out. We don’t need a “you” or an “I” in order to breathe in and out. The breathing in and the breathing out happen by themselves. Try it!
• Allow yourself to be seated. Allow yourself to be yourself. Don’t do anything. Just allow the sitting to take place. Don’t strive in order to sit. And then relaxation will come.
• Sit in such a way that you don’t have to try to sit. You just enjoy your sitting deeply, nothing to do, nowhere to go.

Hungry for Love

• A good question to ask ourselves is: How can I generate—how can I create—the energy of peace, understanding, and love?
• We need to understand our own difficulties and suffering first, in order to be able to love others.
• Everything you do in your daily life can be an act of love. When you’ve been working on the computer for an hour, are you able to take time to stop working, go back to your body and enjoy breathing? This can be a powerful act of reconciliation, an act of love.
• The question is: “Am I making time to take care of myself, to heal, so I can love, so I can serve, so I can help heal society?”
• in our meditation we can take time to look deeply into our actions, in order to recognize the seeds that led to them.
• if you recognize that the action isn’t beneficial for yourself or the world, you resolve not to repeat it. In this way we’re really practicing for all our ancestors and future generations, and not just for ourselves.

Love Without Boundaries

• Love’s true nature is inclusiveness, non-discrimination. If there’s still discrimination in it, it’s not yet true love.
• the Four Immeasurable Minds.
  • The first is maitrī, which can be translated as “loving kindness, friendship, or companionship.
  • The second element of true love is karuṇā, compassion. Karuṇā is the capacity to bring relief, to remove suffering.
    • Compassion is made only of non-compassion elements, and so the art is to make use of those non-compassion elements like fear, anger, and despair to create compassion.
  • The third element of true love is muditā, joy. True love always brings joy, to ourselves and to the other person.
  • The final element of true love is upekṣā, inclusivity. We no longer exclude; we include everyone. Our love benefits everyone, not just one person.
  • I would like to help the Buddha, and add two more elements of true love: trust and reverence. Of course, these two elements can be found in the four, but to make it more obvious, we have to mention their names.
• True love is there as a seed in every person, but we need to water the seed to help it grow.

There’s an Art to Being a Soul Mate and They Don’t Teach It at School —T.D.

• Thay taught us to cultivate the kind of insight in which everything is changing, and the challenge is to always help it change for the better not the worse.
• True love is generous, tolerant, and forgiving.

Love Meditation

• To look at others with compassion, you first need to be able to look at yourself with compassion, and accept yourself as you are. We practice not to blame ourselves, but to look deeply at the roots of our suffering, and all the causes and conditions that have led us to suffer, so we can accept ourselves with compassion. Once you are able to accept yourself, you suffer less right away.
• There are seeds of happiness and joy in us and when they are watered they give rise to the energy of joy and happiness. The contemplation here is to recognize these seeds.
• Although we don’t want to be indifferent, we also don’t want to be caught in either of the two extremes of attachment and aversion.
• True love is without boundaries; it is a limitless mind.

Keep Your Loneliness Warm

• You feel lonely because you have not seen the connection between yourself and other beings.
• You are lonely because you believe there is a separate self. The insight of interbeing can help solve the problem of loneliness.
• You can train yourself to breathe, walk, and sit in such a way that you can get connected with the stars, the trees, the air, the sunshine.
• You don’t have to push your loneliness away. Your loneliness is there, and you accept it. You breathe in and out to be truly there and you embrace your loneliness. Sometimes we want to be alone and hold our loneliness.

Three Kinds of Intimacy

• There are three kinds of intimacy. The first is physical and sexual, the second is emotional, and the third is spiritual.
• We should not think that the body is one thing and the mind is a completely different, other thing. Mind and body inter-are. You cannot take the mind out of the body or the body out of the mind.
• True love should always include a sense of reverence and respect.

Are They “The One”?

If we don’t take time to observe ourselves, we won’t understand who we are, and we won’t be able to see our strengths and weaknesses, and we’ll have a wrong perception of ourselves.

Learning the Art of True Love —T.D.

• Even if you find the words challenging, they are an invitation to reflect on the pain points in our love and relationships, and to create conditions for healing and fulfillment.
• As with the other four of the Five Mindfulness Trainings, it’s not intended as a hard-and-fast rule but as a contemplation to help us look deeply and grow.

North Star

• That is the love of an awakened person: love without boundaries.
• If we get lost in a forest and we don’t have a compass at night, we can look at the North Star in order to go north, to get out. Your purpose is to get out of the forest, it’s not to arrive at the North Star.
• having a path, a direction to go in, is what we need most.

Part 3: Communities of resistance: a new way of being together

A Place of Refuge

• We are a warrior on our path, yet we still need a community to continue to be a warrior.
• As soon as we have found our path and a community, we have peace already.

Six Principles of Togetherness —T.D.

1. Physical Presence
2. Sharing Material Resources
   • It’s a concrete way to practice interbeing.
3. Sharing Ethical Principles
   • it’s essential to agree on the values and direction that lie at the heart of our being and acting together.
4. Sharing Insights and Views
5. Sharing from the Heart
6. Compassionate Communication
   • It’s important to make a commitment to each other to guard our speaking, to practice restraint so we don’t create harm.
   • we don’t just “speak the truth” (which is only our perception of the truth) without responsibility for the consequences. Bald, direct, unskillful, so-called truths may be violent in their effect, and they can damage trust.

Thay taught us to see every person we encounter as “a country to discover.” Everyone has their value; everyone has a talent to be revealed and cultivated.

To Engage or to Meditate?

we can support and nourish each other so we can continue for a long time and not burn out.

Engaged Mindfulness in Action —T.D.

• “Burnout is a sign that we’re violating our own nature in some way. It’s usually regarded as a result of giving too much, but I think it results from trying to give what we don’t have”
• In authentic community membership, we’re always holding ourselves accountable for the well-being of the larger community.

Success and Freedom

• The first power is the power of cutting off (斷德, đoạn đức). It is the power to cut off your cravings, anger, fear, despair, or jealousy,
• The second power is the power of understanding (智德, trí đức). If you have enough mindfulness, you cultivate concentration. And, with mindfulness and concentration, you can look deeply and get a breakthrough into the heart of reality. You can liberate yourself from wrong views, misunderstanding, and wrong perceptions.
• the third spiritual power is love (恩德, ân đức). This is the power to love, forgive, and accept others and offer understanding and love.

Mindfulness Is Not a Tool, It’s a Path

• Right mindfulness is not a means that can be used to arrive at an end.
• True mindfulness is not only a path leading to happiness but it is a path of happiness.
• If you know how to breathe, then you get pleasure, peace, and healing right away while breathing.
• In right mindfulness every step of the path is the path itself.

The World as a Koan

• A koan should be like that. You hold it day and night, embracing it, looking deeply into it. And one day insight will come, and you’ll understand, and you’ll be liberated.
• You do not just use your intellect in order to work on a koan. A koan should be buried deep in the soil of your mind.
• When the practice of a koan takes place at the community level, it’s very powerful.

Individual or Collective?

We don’t train as individuals; we train to develop communities. We learn to live together, do things together, and cultivate awakening together. Whatever we do, we do together.

Wake Up for a Future to Be Possible

Coming together in community offers a way to pool our energy and act in synchrony.

Added 2024-03-31.