Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Peace and Happiness, Here and Now (video)

Seth Auberon and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Thay (plumvillage.org), Royal Festival Hall
Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh) teaching at Deer Park Monastery, California (Wisdom Quarterly)

(Wisdom Quarterly)
Ven. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (Abbot of Plum Village Monastery, Vietnamese activist, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee) speaks live from the Royal Festival Hall of London on March 29th, 2012. What is our interdependence other than inter-being? A rose, for example, is composed of all non-rose elements, such as air, water, light, mud, and nutrients. This is a profound reflection of the fact of emptiness, shunyata and anatta, the basis of all form and the impersonal (dependently-arisen) nature (dharma) of things. How does it work for us as a living experience? It has been slyly said, by some Zen wit or other, that we are not nothing. We are no-thing. 
  • 0:41 Singing Meditation
  • 5:52 Introduction
  • 8:10 "Breathing In, Breathing Out"
  • 14:13 Guided Meditation with Thay Phap Dung
  • 31:00 Thay enters
  • 32:45 Introduction to the Chanting by Thay
  • 55:00 Namo Avalokiteshvara chanting by the Plum Village monastics
  • 1:17:55 Main Talk
  • 2:32:20 Sister Chan Khong "I Smile to the World"
Things are composites composed only of other that, when functionally integrated, give rise to the illusory, subjective, and clung-to idea of a "thing" -- a self or object in the objective universe. But thinking will not get us to this insight. It cannot. Gentle-watching, seeing deeply by calmly letting go of preconceptions, delighting in bliss and yet remaining mindful-and-clearly-comprehending, that is not being overwhelmed by craving-and-clinging, that may get us there. Let go. Watch. The world unfolds. Insight flashes forth. Enlightenment blossoms.

We let go, we know-and-see. A teacher, any teacher, only points the way. And looking back, were we ever that far away?
Orbs (devas?), monastics, devotees gather as a sangha (Wisdom Quarterly)
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