Brother Phap Huu: Touching the Buddha Within and Self-Acceptance

[Music] dear respected Tha dear Beloved Community today is the 20th of October in the year 2024 and we are in our rains retreat in h Plum Village we're in the loving kindness Temple this is our second uh Sunday of uh our Reign Retreat this Reign Retreat the uh the monastic community as well as our long-term uh friends who are here with us for the whole Retreat we have an opportunity to explore the teachings of our teacher from 2012 2013 with the theme soulmate of the Buddha and for those of us who uh just arrived uh for the week um welcome uh to our Retreat and you will also have an opportunity to listen to the direct teachings from our teacher on Wednesday as a community We are continuing to uh invest and cultivate our understanding of uh our spiritual practice our understanding of uh the Buddha and when we hear the word the Buddha we may think of the Buddha as a maybe a God or of somebody with a supernatural power or someone who is of the past as a historical future uh as a historical um person but in our tradition when we invoke the name of the Buddha or we uh think of the Buddha it is to establish a relationship not outside of us but more of a relationship inside of us because the word uh Buddha is a title that uh sidarta received when he was fully enlightened and Buddha means Awakening it means to wake up and in our our modern language Buddha is also the energy of mindfulness it is the seed of awareness that we all have inherited from our spiritual ancestor our genetical ancestor so to understand and to have a relationship to the Buddha first and foremost we learn to touch the seed of Awakening inside of us we have to be able to cultivate the capacity to be mindful to be mindful of an action mindfulness is always mindfulness of something as we have uh been practicing since our arrival I think one of the foundational invitation that we have all received when we are in Plum Village is listening to the sound of the Bell listening to the breathing that is uh present so in this uh cult motivation of practice of uh listening to the sound of the Bell we are listening to the rhythm of our heartbeat we are listening to our mind we may recognize that uh our mind in the present moment is uh very busy it may be a little bit chaotic it may need time to settle and to support our aspiration of grounding ourself we need a focal point like a refuge so that we can ease and guide the mind and in our tradition that is uh the in breath the out breath the practice practice of uh befriending our breath so our breath is also our soulmate as you are alive this breath is always present with each and every one of us so our practice here we are developing a very foundational um dimension for us is this spiritual Refuge that we can always come back to and this uh seed of mindfulness as we continue to explore it and cultivate it it starts to become a light for us a light to shine to our present moment the state of our body in this present moment we may be present but our body may need time to arrive our body may need time to to to ease into the Stillness we've experienced um Noble silence since we've arrived in the retreat and I'm sure for each and every one of us uh Noble silence is a very different experience for some the silence can be very uh very scary even because in the silence we may hear we may hear a lot of uh noise and that noise maybe is internal or we may be able to hear our agitation our our anxiety our worries our fear our doubt yesterday uh someone uh in my uh group of U mentees and when we were listening to each other's experience in Sharing um they shared that uh that doubt is coming up very strongly like I'm here I'm in PV and I have have a intention I have an aspiration but this doubt today is very loud and the notion that we have doubt it can bring up the idea that we are not succeeding in the practice we're not succeeding in being in a retreat we're not uh succeeding in being present and just like the practice of awareness of the breath I invite uh the friend to to hear and to smile to the doubt and to say it is okay to have doubt because doubt probably was already there for a long time but we've been so busy and we haven't been able to listen to ourself and listen to doubts not just in Plum Village but maybe doubt in life but now it's just manifesting because finally you're able to to be here to sit still and to allow the silence for us to hear what hasn't been heard inside of us and I also invited uh us that when doubt arise as a feeling our practice is instead of running away and being afraid of it it is to see it Call It by his name hello my doubt I know you are here and in this moment I am here if I have the capacity I can be with you I can breathe with you I can start to look deeply into you where is this fear coming from where what triggered it today was it a conversation or was it a moment of being alone and not uh feeling grounded and so doubt arise and with the teachings of the Buddha and our teachers we know that we have also a pathway of guiding our energies so doubt anxiety fear sadness Joy excitement they all all come with a source of energy and us as a practitioner we have a choice the first choice is to drown in that emotion and feeling and uh there's many ways of drowning in in uh in those feelings one is we go internal and we start criticizing ourself we go down a dark Rabbit Hole of all of the UNH wholesome stories that we've experienced and we allow it to replay itself another hole which I've also done is I go online and I look at other people that are better than me and at first if maybe there's a little bit of a motivation to get me out but then it also drags me away from the present moment and as we know in our times there's ways of consuming such as um what we see what we hear or there's also way of consuming sometimes there are those of us who when these feelings arises we we give into to it and so we find we find an action to um cover it up and that may be a habit that we have generated and cultivated that it has also become a kind of friend in our life a habitual friend and it may be um also eating or it may be extreme sport reports a kind of feeling to to to release Us in this moment and in the practice of Zen we have other invitations in these moments so I shared with my mentees I said first of all it's totally normal to have doubt I'm here and doubt comes up on monthly basis and in but what I've learned in my practice is not to be afraid of the doubt and to see also the other connections the other feelings that are related to doubt and a part of it for me at least sometimes maybe it it is linked to sadness it is linked to uh um fear of the future and then in this moment I have to also remember that presently though I do have the ability to recognize and to say ah here is here is my good old friend of doubt and here are the stories that are coming along with it and you know what to today it's not your day today is my day and you're going to practice with me and yesterday particularly at 4:30 at 4:30 after service meditation we have this in between moment between service and then uh exercise sport time there's a lot of times I I crave for I crave for me time I Cay for aone time but then when that time present itself I don't know what to do how many of us have have have arrived there like you have this time and then you're like ah what do I do with it and then you go down this list ah I can read I can write I can listen I can do this I can do that and then 30 minute passes and for me yesterday very particularly probably because it's linked to today that I have to give a talk that this particular doubt of like dude am I good enough like it's it's really --- moment in this action with awareness and intention there is a healing that is happening that we may not be recognizing and this healing is the healing that in this present moment we are training oursel to to have the ability to take care of suffering to take care of pain to take care of Doubt because in that moment I was able to touch uh Joy I was able to touch the joy of life and that Joy Of Life do not think that it is outside of pain and suffering that Joy of life gives us data gives us information that we have the ability to have joy in our upper Hamlet um lay community in the first Bean um I was able to hear one of our aspiration is uh to be able to touch Joy be able to cultivate joy and we may think of joy as something that's very exciting or or something that is more special but for me what I've been able to see in the fruit of practice is the Joy of recognizing the joy of Simplicity of actions to help us uh be free from a past emotion and feeling that arises in the present so in our practice we're always um reminded of the awareness of interbeing of happiness and suffering peace and violence kindness and hatred we may think that we have to in our idea of meditation in our idea of transformation is to we have to be able to unlock like untangle the knot of these uh mental formations or these experiences and maybe it is also very important for us to see and to take in the responsibility of generating also the pleasant emotions and the pleasant feelings that are also inside of us these mental formations like peace like ease like Stillness just recognizing that you're giving yourself permission to be here to listen you may be doing this deep listening not just for yourself but also for all of your loved ones who don't have this opportunity so when we are cultivating these um this ability of creating our spiritual foundation in order to uh to bring up the awareness that I can bring joy and I can bring peace to my present moment now that now that is a superpower and this is something that I was able to I was able to uh to see and to witness in uh the times I was with uh our teacher Tai that every moment is an opportunity for us to choose how to be when uh suffering arises we have a choice either to accompany it and drown with it or we have a choice to guide it to guide it into the present moment and teach it that it has the ability to to be happy it has the right to be mindful of this moment it has the right to heal and it has the right to have a new experience and this present moment key that uh we receive from our ancestral teachers it gives us this opportunity of um building a new past there each and every one of us have stories we all have EXP experiences that have mowed and shaped us who we are today some of it Pleasant some of it very unpleasant and a lot of the times we can carry that past and that story throughout our whole life into the moment we return back to the Earth but with this uh practice of Awakening it is to wake up to this this present moment and is to wake up to to to tell us that in this moment we are also creating A New Path tomorrow we will look at today and so we're painting something in this present moment so do we have the ability to use uh these paint brushes these ingredient these ink so that we can bring them into a new way of being a new way of U listening of sitting of uh sweeping of uh cooking so all of these moments become a new opportunity for us so every Retreat especially our Reigns Retreat what is very supportive is the consistency the consistency of uh the community schedule the consistency of who we see and the consistency of just having the space to be in and um we we can also be carried away by Our intention and aspirations and I shared this to uh my my my group of friends yesterday mes cuz uh we can also be entrapped to it because we have this ideal of three months Rings Retreat and and we carry that ideal every day and and if we don't also let go of that we can't touch what is really happening now so I said it is okay to have doubt and it's okay to be reminded of our aspiration and intention of why we are here but don't hold on to it so tightly that it doesn't allow you to be present in this moment so so I also share this to a lot of us who are um practicing for the full 90 days with us cu the 90 day is uh really an opportunity of being of being in practice being in community being in nature being in with ourself and that aspiration and that intention was very helpful it was really needed it was the fuel that got us here and in Zen there's always there's also a saying we also learn to let that be also let it have its organic process of um of maturing cuz you have to let it grow in the soil of the practice or you continue to hold on to just an idea an idea of what this experience should be instead of what this experience is so that was um some that was just a point that was very alive uh for me um from uh last night to this morning that I wanted to uh take the opportunity to uh to share uh with the wider community let us uh listen to a sound of the Bell together and uh enjoy our breathing [Music] I've been given a theme by the teaching body to focus on so I need to get to that now and then that theme is uh is a very close theme to to me um it is the theme of um of a spiritual friend when I ordained I was given the name uh fapu and uh that means uh friend ad dama friend a friend in the dharm and when I received it uh I remember uh one day uh Tai seeing me on the on the path in one of the hamlets and he said learn to be everyone's friend and uh I I I think personally I'm an easygoing person so when Tai said that I said done easy I I I can be I can learn to be people's friend if I don't know them I can just offer them a smile but as uh as life goes on humans we are so complex and uh I have seen my heart also shrinking and losing its capacity sometimes to uh Embrace and to be and to uh support and because that's also linked to my own experience in what I am going through so I remember very clearly when Tai said that and he gave me that mission to be everyone's friend I was quite a happy person so the the the inner World projected the outer world as got it easy done but as our internal our internal experience starts to change our capacity outside also changes and the word spiritual friendship in Sanskrit it is uh please don't hate me for those of us who are uh more fluent Kayana Mitra is is that correct in Vietnamese it's called Uh translated or it is translated as and when we read the master master Quan is another patriarch uh in our Zen tradition that uh have left a passage for young monks and nuns from monastic as encouragement of uh being being um not lazy in the practice and not taking for granted our youth it's a very uh interesting text and uh it's a very strong text from a Zen a zen teacher and um in the text it says that our parents have given us life but it but on the path it is our spiritual friends that help us grow so even though our parents have uh given us the conditions to be here to be as who we are but on the path of our journey the closest people that can be the greatest support or maybe not our genetic uh relatives but it is friends that we meet on this path and particularly here in the Dharma and in the spiritual world we speak about a spiritual friendship and a spiritual friendship is is so important in our tradition because our teacher Tha he has emphasize on numerous times when he teaches to the monks and nuns that for TI the greatest gift you can offer me is your siblinghood is your ability to expand your heart to learn to live with one another even though we come from different backgrounds we come from differen --- hich was slamming the door and in that moment the next the next day when we we we talked about it to see also beyond the person's action yes he slammed the door but yes he's also practicing and trans trying to transform his shame and how can I practice how can I be a support do I keep putting salt on the wound cuz he uh he was my older brother I could have chose to totally lose faith in him and not trust him anymore but at least a part of me was ah he's practicing and how can I support inside of me I'm expanding my acceptance I've expanding my my capacity of um embracing a community's a a member's action and this has uh been been a practice of really befriending this path of U committing to this path and in the previous dhama talk we we heard from Tha um those of us who didn't have the chance to listen uh all these talks uh we will also upload on our Plum Village uh channel so that we can follow it but there was a a there was a a sentence I shared that really stuck with me because in his teachings of how to how to define and understand the Buddha's teaching and he said that even even if the teacher is not practicing well do not give up on the Dharma even if what we see we meet uh a practitioner and we meet our our friend our brother our sister our sibling and at one point they suffer and they go through something and we may lose all of our confidence and we may give up on the path but isn't it also our responsibility to hold on to the foundation of practice to also to be a reminder and to be an example and to be a a nourishment for that person who may be going through difficulty I had two mentors like I shared and two of these mentors were really my Idols when I became a monk and uh by year one and a half one of them dis robed I think that was my first uh heartbroke in uh in my relationship with the community because it was somebody who I held such a um High values and I really because I I was a teenager so I really had the the um um the Mantra I want to grow up to be like you and when that person left it it was uh it was so heartbreaking because I felt like he was my companion he was my great support and like when something is uprooted from like from the soil like we're all like trees or plants and all of our Roots have connected and have met in the soil but then when that plant is not there anymore there's this pain there's this hold there's this emptiness that that manifests and that arises and uh in that moment we also have to be reminded of of the island within us excuse me as a practitioner each and every one of us have to know that we have an island within us this island where we can take refuge in this island of uh our spiritual Dimension our practice and that island has to be a soulmate for us and when I returned back to that Island I felt nothing was lost even though that brother is not here anymore and there's a part of him that is very alive in me because if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have these practices that I've cultivated so his loss as I see it as a loss but when looking deeply it is not lost because now it is a part of me and how can I continue for him in me so intellectually I was able to bridge that but on a practical level I also grieve his lust I also grieved and longed for his uh for his presence and to also give permission to to be sad and for a very long time I didn't give permission to be sad because I I held on to this uh other ideal that u a stable practitioner don't show emotion and we can conquer our sadness but as I continue to um to to understand what friendship is there's many layers of friendship and there's there's a level of intimacy that also um doesn't lose its connection our teacher have spoken on U on love he he has many uh teachings on love and there is a very particular dhama talk where he he speaks on love and he speaks about the three levels of intimacy that we we all maybe um crave and long for and the first uh intimacy it is um a physical intimacy physical the second one is emotional and the third one he speaks of and that brings it to the spirit spiritual Dimension is that there's also a spiritual intimacy there's a spiritual cultivation in relations in connections and I really contemplated on this because as a monk my practice is to also transform and befriend my um my desire My sexual desire my uh uh um pleasure seeking and to not see it as an enemy to not see it as uh something to suppress but to see it as a source of energy a source of life and what I what I've experienced and what I've um come to understand that these level of intimacy is also very alive in friendship and I can share with you I'm very nourished by these three level of intimacy in the community when we think of physical we may think of a of a sexual relationship or we may feel of a of a of a human physical intimacy as in we have to um hold each other we have to um conquer that person we have like that person has to be ours and yes in maybe in a relationship outside where there's partner there is that Dimension and normally we can see that the um emotional and the physical are very linked together but if we add a spiritual Dimension it adds more clarity and more practices of how to nurture a healthy relationship and I can share from the Monk's perspective that in in our life as as a as a spiritual Seeker we need companionship companionship friendship it is the whole path of our spiritual path and this this line comes from a Sutra um that the Buddha uh shared to his uh attendant Ananda and it's a very short Sutra and uh Ananda his uh uh personal assistant one day came up to the Buddha and said he he he really value the friendship in the community and he asked the Buddha isn't um friendship half of the Holy the holy path holy here means the spiritual path and the buddist said no no it's not half it is the whole path the whole path is spiritual friendship the cultivation and what does that mean we all have to explore that but for my Discovery I can share very firmly when we speak of uh the physical Intimacy in the monastic practice we have a respect for each and every one of us um aspiration of giving up our worldly desires to ad Adorn oursel in the brown robe in the STI and shave our head as a commitment to to be a monk a nun and when we love each other we want to support that commitment we want to support that path of Freedom that that person have chosen and when we fall in love when we fall in love we learn to love not the craving that we are seeking the intimacy that we are seeking will never be fulfilled even if we haven't transformed and feel wholeness inside and the source of trying to to um to take over another person is just it's just our Manas seeking our Manas here is like uh one of the element of our ego running away from suffering and trying to pleasure pleasure seek and cover up a different feeling but when we see and we expand our contemplation if we love that person what we love is we love their aspiration ation and their physical presence is a flower in our garden of the community and how can I as a practitioner as a friend support that um that flower to continue to exist continue to be and one time Tai said each and every one of us uh to the monastics we all belong to in the in the garden of um the Buddha and none of you have the permission to take that flow and put in your own pocket that flower is for all is for all being and I can personally share that I feel so so intimate with some of my siblings that I know that I am always willing to protect them physically I know that I can be there um in a heartbeat as we say and so this friendship this companionship I've experienced it as a very not an ideal but it is very real and it has taken many --- we all have the the aspiration to serve all beings but but on the community level we also have to continue to expand our heart service to the community that we are in and sometimes in our practice we we we become a Dharma teacher or we become a bigu bigu KN and uh we may feel like uh we we should be treated differently now we should we shouldn't have to do this or that because that's too minor we're the young ones I've done my part I've done my service for five years already and this particular mindset it it it becomes a lock it locks us from connecting and from um from communication with the community so when we think of service I also see it as a way of communicating my my love to the to everyone it's not a duty but it is a love and it's it's my practice of practicing selflessness my selfless nature to give to each and every one of you and this service also becomes the language of love so I'm going to speak a little bit more to the monastic community on this element because when we are looking for communication and looking for ways of being but if we if we don't give oursel also to the community as in forms of presence of practice of uh teaching and then of being of service with one another and we expect all the love we expect all of the um admiration and all of the Care it doesn't that ecosystem there's no flow there there's no flow there and it becomes very one one way and we start to take for granted the relationship and the community we have and in the mind we start dividing we start othering uh what is important what is not important but our continuous practice as as our monastic body is to is to see the importance of every cell of every organism in the body and every organism is as important as every other and I know that sometimes we the roles are very important like dhama teacher like Elder Brothers Elder sisters but those are responsibilities for us to be reminded of how in our Zen tradition this transmission of monastic Hood have continued to now it's this responsibility of transmitting of being there of listen in of showing up and when Tha speaks about siblinghood for us he speaks it not only in the tea and the playing and the joy together but he speak on it on all of the four pillars that he has given us the pillars of practice the pillar of study of openness the pillar of service serving from the day-to-day responsibility to the responsibility of having to receive some um tasks for the community that maybe we never signed up for but it's not about that it is about supporting the whole organism of the monastic body and we may sometimes say oh I didn't sign up for that I didn't become a monk to be an accountant but there's a need and you have that talent you have that capacity and you can serve it's not about the RO but it's about the heart and when you see that then the body is very supportive because all part of the organ is functioning and so we have to continue to reflect in our um spiritual family as as a monastic community of um how we can continue to to to encourage each other to support each other in uh stepping up for the community in taking on tasks that can be of a support for the community yes we have to practice humility humility practice is very important but we cannot use humility to avoid responsibility we cannot use that humility card in order to give to others if there is something that is out of our capacity yes we can share that that we can honor that and the community will look within but if it is also in our capacity we also have to be ready to see it as a Dharma as a Dharma task as a Dharma offering and this is this era that we are in where Tha has entrusted this Legacy to each and every one of us and we're not going to do it alone and we all say this we don't do it alone but also are we showing up to support so that that aloneness is not there and a part of our friendship is we also learn to celebrate each other's um um cont contribution to the community so every time we have jealousy come up Channel our mind to ah that is a flower of the garden of the community wow thank you dear brother dear sister for being an amazing translator for the community thank you for putting the hours into these dhama talks that we get to hear from Tha and to see the direct translation and when somebody offers something for the community because it takes individual to be a community so in the historical Dimension it can see like oh one person is succeeding in our community where are the others but our practice is to see that our offering is the offering of the community and those of us when we have that support and we have that Unity of the community support we feel we feel very empowered and we feel like we're not doing it alone we feel like we're doing it with each and every one of us together and this is what I'm practicing iing and I practice whenever I see my siblings uh uh some of them outgrow me better and I'm like yeah that's my young ones that's them stepping up and I don't I don't allow jealousy to take over and the practice of when we offer something when we've done something for the community we also see it as a gift to the three jewels we see it as as a gift to everyone and there's one story that I got to witness um it was a year that one of the book of our teachers just came out and I was at the Hermitage is a where he lived and uh that day two sisters uh who works with the the editorial team um came with such joy and they said Tha hot of the press hot off the press is his new book that just came out and the first thing Ty did he took that book and he went into his library and in his Library he has an altar and in that altar there's a photo of his parents his teacher and many other teachers before him and the first thing he did he didn't say anything to us he received it and he went straight to the Altar and he put the book on the Altar and he postrate three times he touched the Earth three times and I was right behind him so I was so curious I'm like where where's he going and T didn't say any anything and I just followed him in that practice I also touched the Earth with him and in that moment my mind was seeing that wow Tha is practicing selflessness and he is uh seeing that this book which has his name very big Tian is not him it is thanks to all of the conditions that have come for for this manifestation to be there and when he was touching the Earth and I was uh postra together with him I really felt like this line of um ancestors celebrating in this moment because these ancestors didn't speak English they couldn't have written this book in English and here TI as a continuation has done a new a new story a new book to help bring into the world as another source of Dharma in that moment I felt and I saw and I witnessed this this selflessness and this practice of shifting from Pride to gratitude right away and after uh he postrate and he saw I was right behind him and he said okay let's go drink tea and celebrate so this is also a very safe space um of practice where we can learn to uh to generate and to direct our maybe sometimes you know the joy and the and the happiness of success can be very strong and it may water in the pride in the ego and the safe space I've seen is to share that Merit is to direct it to gratitude to see that all of the conditions that have come to support this manifestation thank you dear Community let us uh listen to three sound of the Bell together enjoying uh our breathing allowing oursel to uh to be alive to feel the in breath to feel the out breath to be a companionship for our breath to continue to commit our love and Trust in the D mama in the S and in the Buddha the awaken nature in every one of us [Music] e