A Quiet Beauty in Everything (Episode #111)

Welcome dear listeners to this latest episode of the podcast series "The Way Out Is In". I am Joe Comfino, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change. And I am Brother Fappu, a Zen Buddha's monk's student of Zen Master Tingehan in the Plum Village tradition. And today dear listeners we are going to be talking about finding beauty and reverence in the most ordinary of things. The Way Out Is In. Hello dear listeners, I am Joe Comfino, and I am Brother Fappu. And brother this is the first time we've done a recording since we came back from India about six weeks ago and since then you've been in Australia doing a tour. So tell us how are you? I'm really tired and it feels so good to come back home into spring because it's really beautiful at the moment and very hot. We are going to hit 36 today and remind her we are in May. So this is absolutely not normal. And we are gearing up for a very large gathering in Plum Village. It is the 60 year anniversary of the Order of Interbeing and we will be hosting three weeks and plus one more extra week for a number of friends staying behind. And I think personally with everything that is going on for me in this year I'm also slowing down more so I've decided not to facilitate in this retreat. I'm going to be making tofu for three weeks back to the roots back to the novice days. Still be giving one or two teachings but why not take refuge in the community as as a practice. There is a large community that is here and a lot of all I members are coming as well as Dharma teachers so learn to relax, let go and take refuge. That's my practice this coming man. Great and so the topic today brother is finding the beauty in ordinary things or which seem to be ordinary because of course nothing is ordinary. And part of the reason for doing this is I have a new book coming out. Well that's come out by the time this has been published which is called Between Earth and Sky a hundred days of deep looking in the place of the dead and this was it's a photography book and a visual meditation of my time in lockdown in a place called Mittler in Mexico and it's a desert like scrub land. There's virtually it looks to the surface to be completely empty of life and I spent a hundred days walking hiking in this land taking photographs and it was a time of great transformation a time when I just left New York as a journalist and was on my way to live here next to Plum Village and it was a time of literary of slowing down of stopping of deep looking and realizing that even though the land looked completely empty it was actually full of life and full of beauty but it was only when I stopped and changed my way of seeing that I was able to see that and this is something that's been sort of in sense core to my life which is about not feeling very beautiful when I was young and then finding the beauty in myself and realizing actually that could be found everywhere so I'm going to just start off before we go into things brother with just a little passage which just talks about my photography and it says it's easy for places like the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas to generate awe but I discovered the same sense of wonder in the most ordinary things during the five years I lived in New York while most photographers were drawn to Manhattan's dramatic skyline I focused on objects like the splattered doorway of a Brooklyn metal merchant a dirty rag hanging from a pipe in a bus depot and red hook and a twig poking through this snow in central park that reminded me of the struggles of life I would cycle to industrial parks and photograph discarded objects such as a crushed plaque plastic cup floating in a puddle giving them a sculptural dignity to help others see their quiet beauty that same impulse to hold space for what often goes unseen or unacknowledged continued to animate my work this way of seeing the world is very much attuned to ties invitation to view our consciousness as an artist painting our world into being I spent my childhood believing I had nothing to offer that I was small insignificant irrelevant and ugly I did not feel I had a place in the world I did not feel at home as I gradually healed my wounds I learnt first to like myself and then to love myself my photography has evolved alongside my growing understanding of my place in the world I want people to see the monumental in the mundane to understand what we often dismiss as ugly or worthless can embody profound beauty and deserves reverence sometimes all it takes is reframing the way we see ourselves and the world around us so brother with that in mind one of the things I love about tignartan is that he said we can see beauty everywhere and he talked about the fact that actually if we really focus on drinking our tea then actually what more do we need that actually when we feel alive and present on this earth what more do we need so can you tell us a bit about this sense of seeing the beauty in the ordinary not looking for the fact that we have to climb to the top of the Himalayas not saying that we have to see the Grand Canyon but actually we can actually sit and look at a tree or look even at a rock and find all of life in that well first of all congratulations Joe on the book thank you this is such a moment to celebrate and I think just that taking the time to celebrate is also really important because so many times we finish a project and our man asked our mind is like okay what is next right so I just want to honor this moment of receiving the book just a few minutes ago and I know how much effort and energy has been put into it so thank you wonder the word wonder is what I discovered in Plum Village and wonder is always around us but most of the time we miss we miss the wonder it's because we live kind of like in a fast paced world where we are always driving and it comes from many different circumstances that we have to strive and all of us we have our different stories and our different journey and meditation itself is the first act of meditation is learning to stop it is learning to take a pause and feel the present moment and feeling the present moment is more important than thinking about the present moment because when we are when we attune ourselves into our own body into our senses like what we see what we smell what we hear what we touch it gives us this opportunity to be in touch with life in the very here and now and it sounds very very simple in a way it's like just stop and see what's happening but our mind is not training that way our habit energy is not training that way so the art of stopping is really a masterclass and it is a lifetime journey and when we could like really come back and just be present and just enjoy a moment it can teach us so much like your reading just now it allows us not then to chase after what beauty may be promised into the future but already see the wonders and the beauty like of the trees of the leaf or the sounds of the birds like I've never listened so profoundly to the music of the birds until I learn to stop and even though I've lived here for 25 years in Plum Village I would I would say like only this year I really enjoy the melodies of the birds and it's not through me it's through the people that come through Plum Village and when they go back into the cities they would write me messages and they would say oh brother I miss I miss the singing of the birds and I was like huh and I have it every day and I don't enjoy it as much as as the bird is gifting is melody to me. So this art of stopping, this art of pausing, of seeing the wonder that is present, it's a journey of growth individually. It's a spiritual growth. I really connected to that. And just this morning we have volunteers arriving for the June retreat and I just sat with a volunteer and we just looked at the forest and I felt so enough in that moment. I felt like we don't need to even think about the retreat that is going to happen starting this Monday. But this moment, sitting with a friend, having a cup of tea and the beauty of the forest is really present. And as a novice, I didn't enjoy it like this, even as a young big shoe. But now I feel this is it. Like Thai has so many phrases that reminds us of the beauty of wonder. And there's this calligraphy and it says, "This is it." And there are moments that you can sense that and you can say, "Ah, this is it." But this morning I had that moment of this is it. As not in a moment of success or a moment of like of insight, but this is it as in like, there's nothing more important than this forest right now. There's nothing more important than being fully present with a friend sitting on my left. There's nothing more important than just sharing our presence and not having to think, "Oh, what am I going to say so that this friend think that I'm a wise person?" You know, like our discourse of the mind can really take over the present moment. So the understanding of wonder, it is a journey in itself for each and every one of us. And I think as practitioner, we all have to ask ourselves, "Do we see the wonders in the mundane?" And I think our teacher Thai, Zen Master Tikihann, he was a master at this. And for him it's because of his own journey of suffering. He doesn't want to take for granted any day that he gets to live because he's already seen death. He's already seen the violence, he's already seen the discrimination. And the present moment, when you can be grounded in it and feel this breath is the wonder, this tree is the wonder. This is it. What else, what else do you want to search for? But these moments can escape really quickly and that's why the practice of mindfulness, it is learning to sustain it also in everyday life. And it's really interesting, brother, because when you look at sort of social media, there's such a competition for the very best, so someone who's showing you the very most beautiful view. And there's such a striving to have an experience. And then everyone looking at that wishes they had the experience. And as you say, if we actually stop and be present, there's a question, can we find as much beauty in looking at a rock as in going and having the most exotic experience? Can we actually sit with a rock and see that there's life in the rock? And what I loved about Ties, he said, there's consciousness in everything. And it's so easy to look at things and to think that there's no life in them. But actually a rock, the dust, everything has consciousness in it. And actually everything is in us. So, you know, the minerals in a rock are in us. We are actually can learn an amazing amount from a rock. So, one of the things when I was on these hiking, these walkabouts in in Midland, Mexico, was, you know, I could only go in one direction. So, every day, I would pass the same rock or the same little bush or the same dried up riverbed. And actually, what I realized is if I paid attention, I would become friends with these places that actually I would say hello to the rock, I would, I would form, I would be in relationship to those things. And that took time, that took awareness. So, can you talk a little bit about what it means to find consciousness in everything? What it actually means to be present for life in all its manifestations? I think we have to start with oneself, like being aware that we have a consciousness and our consciousness is very conditioned. So, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste, what we touch through our senses, they're the window into our own consciousness. And our consciousness is always in relation to the outer world. And as a practitioner of practice, we learn to to see our consciousness as a reality, not just something that happens and we forget about it. And our consciousness is very alive, it is where our mental formation, mental formation is a very Buddhist word. And it means our feelings, our emotions, there are manifestation of what we're in touch with. And it can evolve into, let's say, a feeling of peace is a mental formation, a feeling of ease, a feeling of tension, a feeling of agitation, a feeling of anger, a frustration, they don't just come from nowhere. They are already stored in all of us. And we see them as seeds that we all have. Even mindfulness is a seed, it is a mental formation, awareness. And we cannot be given, it is already in us, but it is conditioned by our surroundings. Even the transmission of birth, like when we are born, our parents already transmit to us a consciousness, transmit to us different mental formations that are stronger or weaker because we are linked to them. So a practitioner, we want to break it down to something very practical and fundamental. And the best way is start to tune into our habits. How does our habits show up in our daily life? As simple as when we open a door, how do we open a door? It's a very mundane thing. We open many doors a day. Are we opening the door with consciousness, with awareness? Or are we slamming the door? Or are we carelessly just coming through the door as if nothing is happening? Or as a practitioner, we can open the door with such awareness that opening a door, going through a door is like going through a new universe. How we show up our way of being can shift and change our whole mental formations, our whole consciousness of reality. So consciousness is not limited to just human beings. We and science and and I think artists have already demonstrated that everything has consciousness, everything has energy, everything is a in relation to. And that's why I think for us meditators and artists, we go hand in hand versimlessly because as artists, there is a imagination and an understanding that there is language that is beyond what human we kind of just think of as speech or bodily language. And science also now provides us a lot of insight. In Australia, I was in a trail and we had a pause and I really helped my tongue because I really don't want to be that person. But there was a conversation that was going on and I was eavesdropping because I was really mindful but they were talking about if trees have consciousness and the mother really believes that it doesn't. It does have feelings. And I was just like, oh no, no, this is such a wrong view. But no, no, no, I don't want to be a monk in this moment. I don't want to be that person to come and say, well, by the way, did you know when I've learned that, but sometimes as human beings, we were so ignorant. We only think about ourselves and we only think that we have consciousness. And therefore, because of that wrong view, we don't have reverence to life. We don't have reverence to a rock, to a table that we're using. But in monastery, especially with Thai, you know the table in his hut, it hasn't been changed. It's been the table, it's my older brother, it's my ancestor, and I've really learned to see it as a living thing. It's part of Thai. You cannot talk about Thai without talking about his sitting still hot, where he's trained, where he stayed, where he's lived. Every time I come into this place, one of our mindful manners, we have to knock three times, because we believe that there is consciousness in this space, that when we come into this hut, even though Thai is not alive today, but life is not limited from him physically, life is in this space. And he really told us, "When you come into my hut, you better behave like I am here. And if you don't, then you're not meeting me." And consciousness as Buddhists is very evolved as a meditator, we have to have reverence into everyday life, reverence into our habits, reverence into the way we walk, the way we look at each other. So this is what I can add to the practice of understanding consciousness and reverence, how reverence is also a manifestation of our mental formations. Thank you, brother, and also that reverence is, it sort of creates a sense of reciprocity, because when we have reverence, we are actually in conversation with whatever is in front of us. So when we think of things as objects, we are looking at them as separate from ourselves, and when we have reverence to them, what we see is that they are talking to us as well as we are talking to them. And I talked in the book about one experience I had when I was doing a master's degree, was we were in a place in Devon, in a forest, and we were split into twos, and we were taken into the forest, and one of us was blindfolded, and the other was us to lead us, to lead the other person around. And I was blindfolded to begin with, and we spent 50 minutes where we were touching everything. So we were touching the bark of a tree, or the moss, we were feeling the unevenness of the ground. So without our sight, we were having to rely on our other abilities to sort of feel and touch. And then after 15 minutes, what, the instruction has changed, I say, now can you sense nature feeling you? And it was the first time I'd had that switch from a human centric view to which I am experiencing nature to the fact that actually nature is experiencing me, and to recognize that we are in relationship with each other. And that was such a change, because I had always thought, and I think this is what's led to the scientific materialist view of the world that we can extract, we can dominate, we can take whatever we have, because we are not in relationship. And when we think it's just an object, we can abuse it. But as soon as we're in relationship with someone, it's like a person. If we are talking to someone on a phone, it's different from when we are sitting in front of them. We tend to treat people with more respect, we tend to be more open, we tend to see that there's a flow of energy between us. And I'll just read a little section on reverence, which I read. My embedded scientific materialist outlook on life often leaves little space for sacred reverence. Most of the time I see life through an intellectual lens, I have been all struck by nature many times, but usually in spectacular circumstances, standing atop a mountain peak, for example. That sense of wonder has rarely extended to more everyday experiences. In middle of this begins to change, in particular, I start to feel an animated by the same sunrise that used to fill me with foreboding over the coming heat. The first rays of the sun usually crest the mountains after I've been hiking for about an hour. Rather than turning around, I stop and stand in the stillness. I feel the light and warmth enter me to my core, like tea leaves a few single glass of hot water. I open my arms to the sky and allow it all in. For a few short minutes, I stand in quiet wonder as the earth is bathed in a golden halo, bringing on incomparable beauty to the most ordinary objects. Things I know will appear drab after the sun rises higher in the sky. A leaf, a tiny piece of bark, a droplet of sap, spider web shimmer with all the colours of the rainbow, and some anacrid take on a translucent glow. So, brother, I just want to come back to the tea leaves of using the tea, because this was one of Ty's signature. If he was a chef, it would be his signature dishes, which is that he was able to showcase the beauty and reverence life in a single cup of tea, glass of tea. So, can you just tell us about how that allows us to experience reverence? And I always remember in one of the interviews I did with Ty, he talked about himself like a cup of tea. He said, "You can keep adding water to the tea leaves, but eventually there'll be no tea left. But then you can put the tea leaves on the compost, and that will bring forth new life." And he was talking about his passing as being like, you know, that he would be on the compost and then produce new life too. So, if you take one small thing, you can actually open it up to the whole universe. So, I used to, and I still do forgetful sometimes, but I'll make a cup of tea in the morning. And I'll be doing other things, I'll be drinking it, and I'm not present for my tea. So tell us a bit about what it means to be in presence to something, and how that changes our relationship in the most ordinary thing, like a cup of tea in the morning. I think that's the beauty of Zen is turning a simple moment into a beautiful ritual we can say or ceremony even. And I would say that drinking tea, it's really part of the monastic culture, like I've never experienced like what joy having a cup of tea could be like, into a kind of plum village, because that was the way that monastics they celebrate being together. And plum village is only a continuation of that lineage, and tea drinking was already associated towards the monastic life and a monastic culture, because they would wake up really early and to have clarity and energy for the meditation, tea has caffeine, so it would help with a staying awake from meditation. And it has become a kind of staple in the plum village way of life, where it has become our survival kit, like if you were to ask us, whenever we travel into teaching tours, what do monastic we bring, and everybody has a thermos, and in today's world, the thermos can be cold and hot, and a tea pot, tea and cups. And it's really become a kind of support, you know, it's a reminder for us that no matter where we go on this planet, don't forget about dwelling in the present moment and enjoying the presence of yourself and the presence of other. And for Tai, it was his way of showing up for his students, because so many of us, we want to spend time with him, but it's also really scary to be with a zen master. So drinking tea is a way of breaking the ice, you know, inviting a person to hold the cup of tea with your two hands. I learned that in plum village, to hold a cup of tea with two hands. And there's so much reverence in just that simple action of, you're not just going to hold it with one hand, and the other hand now with your phone and just scrolling through the feeds, but no, you're going to let go of that phone, or you're going to let go of your thinking, and you're going to hold it with two hands. And I invite everybody, just your next cup of tea or cup of coffee or orange juice, actually hold that cup with two hands, it shifts you into a different space. A simple action of just two hands, like I'm fully present, just like when we join our palms and offer a bow, it represents the body and the mind, and it comes together. So in the practice of meditation, form comes into play to support the intention of our. the intention of wanting to be mindful. That's why we have, we have a whole training called mindful manners. It's like when you ordain, you're like a baby again. You're literally going to be taught how to drink a cup of tea. You're going to be taught how to eat your food. You're going to be taught how to walk again. You're going to be taught how to greet members in the community again. It's. we're going to break you down into everyday life and we're going to give you a way of understanding so that you can give. you can give reverence to every action. And it's so beautiful and it's so intentional. It can feel a little bit. a little bit rigid. And in the introduction, it even says, if something feels off for you, don't react right away but be open. Because there's cultural aspect that comes into it, right? Like Eastern culture. And now there's Western culture that we've adapted because we are in the West. But sometimes it is. the things that makes us uncomfortable is the mud that gives us an opportunity to look again at, "Oh, how is it that I interact with something in a particular way so that it makes me more attentive and more aware of actions." This training is very simple but it's very. it can help us really relate again to every day just as a cup of tea and that's why Tai, no matter where he goes, he brings that cup of tea with him. So brother, this is really interesting because I'll tell you what came up in my mind as you were talking is I know a lot of people these days who are taking Ayahuasca or other sort of substances. Because what they're looking for is a sort of out-of-body experience. They're looking to touch a deep spiritual experience that they hope will then relate back to their lives and help them to see their lives more clearly. And as you speak and you know, it's not to judge whether that's appropriate or not, everyone has to make their choice of what they want to do. But it's like similar to the fact that we want to explore out of space, we want to know what's out in space, but we don't know what's in our inner space. And what I hear you saying is if we really touch the beauty of a stone or really a present for a cup of tea, then actually we can find our spiritual nature in that. And it relates to that idea, we don't need to go and colonise Mars. Why don't we actually care for our home? Why don't we actually look inside of ourselves to find the answer? And I just want to just want to if you can speak to that because it's because I don't know many people who I speak to say, "Oh, you know, I'm going on a journey this weekend. Well, I'm going to just enjoy my cup of tea." They also say, "I'm going to go and do I was? I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that." And there's a part of me that understands that willing, that wish to touch the ultimate dimension outside. But what you're talking about is actually touching the ultimate dimension on the inside. And I just love your perspective on that. Don't ask why traditions like zen and plum village are so important because it holds this wisdom of slowing down and seeing the beauty in the present moment. I think I would be one with everyone if my family wasn't introduced to plum village. And in a way that's such mainstream way of life, which is, we don't have enough, we need more, we're not enough, we need to do better. We're always comparing with one another and how many countries have you visited and the list goes on and on and on and on. And the marketplace is wonderful because it knows how to meet our void in us. And it tells us by this, if you better, even us monastics, from time to time we said, "Let's go buy something and feel good." It's really a, like you said, it's not a right or wrong thing. There's a manas where it's a very technical term in the school of Buddhism that learns and study consciousness. And part of manas is it's afraid of the present moment in a way because it's afraid of suffering in the present moment. And it wants to run after desires and pleasure and buying something is pleasure or, you know, competing and winning is a pleasure. It is seeking something that is outside of us is a pleasure. And like you said, the culture that we have, it doesn't teach us that we have enough. You know, it doesn't teach us that actually come home to yourself and take care of yourself and rest and learn to just be at home and enjoy like what you've been working your whole life for. It's like so many of us, we finally have a home. But we don't enjoy the home. We are going out more and so on and so forth. And once again, it's not, it's just a reality. It's not a judgment, right? Even in us, Plum Village, like from time to time, there is a balance of moderation in not taking for granted what we have. So from time to time, we say, go, you should leave Plum Village, like go out there into the world and and be in touch with what you have, right? We have to have these balancing moments that reflects back to us. What we, what we are in abundance of and not take it for granted. But the masters, like Tai and some of the senior monastics that I get to live with, they don't need that comparison anymore because they have really arrived at the awareness that this is it. There's so much life, there's so much beauty here. And so I think this is what we are training in our meditations and in our daily life to not forget the beauty that is around us. Thank you, brother. So just to follow through, I just want to read one last passage from the book, which is a section called "Seeing in Silence". And it says, it's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when the very emptiness of this land, its silence becomes my salvation. Because I have nothing to divert my attention in the quietness of this place, I start to hear the softer and wiser voice within me, the voice that is drowned out most of the time. It suggests gently that the problem is not what I see, but the eyes through which I look. Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao to Ching, the ancient text written by Lou Tsou around 400 BCE, which has accompanied me since I first came across it in my early 30s, surfaces in my mind. It perfectly sums up the gift Hitler is offering, is quietly offering me that Manhattan for all its energy and vitality never could. Colors blind the eye, sounds deafened the ears, flavours numb the taste, thoughts weaken the mind, desires wither the heart. The master observes the world, but trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go, his heart is as open as the sky. Here the sky is all encompassing. Can my heart also be that open? So how do we open our heart, that wide brother? Because that speaks so well to me, because I was in New York with all the sights, sounds, textures, I mean, so alive. But in one way, it's also very draining. And then I suddenly arrive in Hitler, in the middle of nowhere, in a very fearful time, and just I'm in a place of real emptiness. And it's only when I was in the emptiness that I was able to experience that sense of deep connection. So it's difficult, isn't it? Because as you say, there's part of our mind that wants the excitement. But also when we're quiet in our mind, there's another part of ourselves that is already present, that already speaks to us about wanting something deeper. And in a lot of the coaching, my experience of people is that, you know, that quiet wise voice is in all of us. It's not We have to go out and find it through drugs or or any other means, it's already present. But it's like we buried it under so much habitual thinking wish to show up, wish to perform. But actually that voice is in us. And it's very quiet. But when we listen to it, it shows up. And as I was coaching someone the other day, very, very senior in the legal position, in the legal profession rather. And she was talking about how, when she was a child, because I said, when we work together, we're going to play. You know, let's be playful about this. And she said, oh my God, I realized that actually, when I was a child, the responsible is I had to take on as a young girl. Me and I stopped playing. But that little girl inside her is still there wanting to play. So I'm really interested in your sense of, when we quieten the mind, when we slow down, what we do is we touch another part of ourselves that often hasn't had a voice. And maybe a part of us as a child that was closed down and has been quietly calling out, let me out, let me out. But in our business, we haven't allowed it out. So is that an experience you've had or something you see in people who come to Plum Village that actually, you know, and we're doing a podcast soon, which is, you know, you're already the person you want to become. So this is inside us, us already. So you're sensible, that. - I think what you all just explained there, Joel, it is, and the question about, like, how do we open our hearts? It's an act of listening that comes up in my mind when I hear you speak about that experience to listen to oneself is a journey of opening one's heart. And listen to oneself is scary as well as it is, it takes courage and it takes skillfulness also because we have to listen to ourselves authentically not what it wants only, right? And when we speak about mindfulness and we speak about listening in the school of the traditional Plum Village, which is rooted in Buddhism, when we say we have to learn to listen to ourselves, it means we have to listen to our suffering. We have to listen to the ill-being inside of us, like the cry of the child, the pain that we went through, the sense of loss that we have and actually name it, call it by its name, be aware of it, own it in a way, the scars that we receive to really not hide away from it, but accept it with tenderness and acceptance is an act of opening the heart. Acceptance is an act of reverence to who we are because we are exactly what we went through. But the present moment now gives us an opportunity to not feel trapped in that exact same story because we are a new person now also. We have to learn to forgive ourselves also. And if we want to take it even further, we forgive the ones that have caused us harm and suffering. But when I say we forgive them, it doesn't mean we have to be their friend now. We forgive the actions that we have received from them because that is an acceptance of oneself. But it's not meaning that I have to go and embrace and see them as my friend, but I see them still as a human being that has also suffered. And somehow that mechanism of practice and deep-looking it makes us less bitter and it makes us not lose our humanity. It gives us the eye of justice and the eye of righteousness. I'm seeing what they did to me was absolutely wrong and not right action. But now I don't want to do that because the cycle of suffering is what I have received, it is very easy for me to also offer to others. There is a trauma of some sorrow that we experience that we can give. And when we accept and when we can forgive ourselves and forgive the actions that have been put on us, there is a moment of ending that cycle of pain and ignorance. And so therefore, when we speak about opening our hearts, it is a journey of listening and that listening journey. It doesn't stop after one retreat, it doesn't stop. After even one insight, I think the Western mind, when we look at spirituality, where I feel it's not correct is like, we look for formula, one plus one equals two. And it stops there. But in our way of looking at spirituality, we call it a path, vow, vow. The whole journey of spirituality, the whole journey of wonder, the whole journey of opening the heart, it never ends, it never stops. We never say we are healed, ed, we always say we're on the path of healing. We all, we never say I am enlightened. I am on the path of enlightening. I am always awakening to the beauty of life, to the suffering, to the confusion of our times. So it is always a verb. And I really think it's important for all of us to update these language because it is what we are transmitting to our next generation. When we speak about opening the heart, that is a skill that our teacher has said, like I wish that education would teach kids how to be present for their feelings and emotions, to learn to name it, to learn to say, oh, I'm really angry right now, I'm gonna ask to stay in a space that I can come back to my physical body to feel where that emotion shows up in. So I can be present. Our teacher has sung this song for 40 something years as he was teaching in the West. And I believe it will come true. I believe that it will go mainstream. But if it doesn't yet, all of us who listen is like how can we bring this culture into our way of life and then bring it into another way of life, which is our children, the next generation. And for me, you know, spirituality and the practice that we do in Plum Village, it's not something separated from the world. It's actually something that we're doing to be a part of, it is a part of the world and it is to be translated into everyday life. But it's very difficult and it takes a community, though, to remind each other, to encourage each other. And that's why in Thai would always say, becoming a monastic is easier to commit to this life and this way of being because we are supported by like-minded people. But in the world, it takes much more effort. And therefore, that's why building community of reverence is important, building community of knowing how to be present is so important. - Thank you, brother, just to reiterate that point 'cause it's so important. In a sense, and we've heard it a thousand times, but are we really listening to it? There is no destination. We're on a path and I love Pemma Chodron who says, you know, has a book studying start where you are. Don't try and be where you're not, start where you are. And one of the things, brother, I think that helps is when we see we're on a path rather than we're rushing to a destination, that by its nature means we're gonna look differently at what's around us. And I often use the metaphor of a race horse going around a track because they put blinkers over its eyes so it can only see forward. So it will race around the track, but it won't see anything outside of the track. And when we take our blinkers off and we realize we can stop running, then the whole of life opens up to us. And so when we're walking the path, first we're not running the path and Ty says, if you're in a rush, you're just rushing to your grave. So we're walking a path and when you walk a path truly, you see everything that's around you, you slow down. You're able to enjoy the beauty of life. And brother, I want to come back to something you were talking only about, about reciprocity, about when we are in relationship, then it changes the nature of the way we see life. And in indigenous cultures, reciprocity is such a key way of seeing the world that when we are given something, we want to give back. So we are sort of into a life of service because actually, you talked about early about sort of in a sense reverse reciprocity that when we go through a painful situation, often what we want to do. you unconsciously pass that pain onto other people, but actually positive reciprocity means that when we gain something positive, we want to share it. So can you just talk about the reciprocity within, firstly, maybe even within, you know, yourself, how you feel it, what you've been given and how you see your own life of service, but also maybe also how Ty would see that because I think it's such a powerful thing that when we've received something that's really heartfelt and is not manufactured or created, then all we want to do is offer that back out. Yeah, generosity is such a power and it is a power of kindness. It brings me back to this story, I remember in 2011, the year after that would be 30 year anniversary of Plum Village, which is 2012. And I just remember inviting Ty to take a year to pause and just, Ty, don't go on teaching tours, just stay home, just enjoy Plum Village, it's like your masterpiece, you've spent so much of your resources, of bodies, speech, and mind to curate and cultivate this community and since being your student, you're on gear seven all the time, you know. And I just remember Ty answering back to me and just saying, "But if we have something so precious, we don't want to hold it for ourselves. We want to be able to keep offering it to the world because so many people are looking for these treasures and we found it, why be gatekeepers and not be generous in offering?" And he gave another metaphor, which is as a doctor, when you found the antidotes, you have to be generous to share it. And he said, "For us as monastics, that is our way of being, that is our way of showing up, our way of listening, our way of teachings, what we teach is not just the theory, it's not what the Buddha said two thousand six hundred years ago, but it's our own journey in life, like what we did when we met at difficulty, how did we hold our pain, how did we hold our joy, because joy needs cultivation, it's like how do you be happy, how do you truly be happy, and it's not even in the theory, it is in the showing it and Plum Village is to show that it's possible to be happy. It's possible that we can all leave our egos at the parking lot and come into the community with just our skins and our journey of life and to hold that with honor in a way. So now that Tai is not here physically, as his students, when we speak about giving, there is something that's happening at the same time, and that is receiving something back also. When we give something, it's not only that we're losing resources, but we're actually getting a lot more back, and part of my own happiness is understanding why I'm a monk, why we do this podcast, why we share in a way, it's because we know it can support so many out there in the world, and when we see that, that gives you so much joy and so much happiness, that gives you the willpower to also journey through your own difficulties and your own complexes in a way. When you see the vision that is bigger, you don't become small, the horses that you said. If you keep giving and you understand the impact of your giving, you won't lose your path, but it's only when you start to narrow down and you only think about yourself. That's when you lose your sense of direction, and everything in moderation though, as a practitioner, we have to know our well-being, we have to understand our limits, we have to have boundaries, we have to know our capacity of compassion. There is compassion fatigue, there is moments where we have to know I can't anymore, I can't be of service in this moment, and it's not a failure in this moment to retreat, right? It's not a moment to then say I need to take three weeks off of service and come back to something more simple, you know, like that's what I'm recognising for myself in this month coming, it's like I just want to be with my hands, I just want to be physically more engaged in my mind engaging, than listening, I've listened enough, I've heard so much pain and so much suffering, and I need to digest all of this, and yesterday in the service, in the community, I was just gardening, and the joy of just weeding and then seeing the garden alive, you know, and that is also service. I think sometimes we fall into the trap of we have one way of serving and we think that's our only way of serving, but when we take a step back, which is the wonder, and it's like no, but I also enjoy making tofu, I also enjoy washing dishes, I also enjoy sweeping the grounds, I also enjoy being in touch with my own physical body, it's like, oh man, I'm so out of shape, you know, and I just need to get my heart rate up again and all these little moments, it's a generosity and opening our hearts to ourself. Beautiful brother, and I want to give a couple of examples of what you've described. So when I first came to live next to Plum Village, we were here for the first, it was during COVID actually, so there were everyone who was inside the monastery, was inside everyone outside, we couldn't come, so it was very intimate time, and I remember the first sharing circle I joined here, we were asked to talk about what we did, which is not normal Plum Village, it's not like work, but just what our aspiration was, what we cared about, and we were going around the circle and I sort of rather pompously said, oh, well, you know, I'm engaged in sort of global climate challenges and I'm trying to sort of deal with a loss of biodiversity and all this sort of big stuff, and then the person next to me is someone called Tom, who was then working on the happy farm, and he said, my aspiration is to grow beautiful vegetables, and I felt like such an idiot, because what I had done was I was partly wanting to sort of say, I'm doing these great things, and then Tom sort of just completely sort of cut through that, just said, well, actually I'm here to create beautiful vegetables, and in service to the people eating them, and I just thought, wow, that's such a discriminative mind I have, that I thought what I was doing was more important than that, but actually not to judge what I would normally consider big and small things, and the other example is I was facilitating out, we have in Plum Village these big climate retreats for climate leaders, and then I host a monthly call for the people from the Americas so that they can keep in touch and practice together, and one of the women was saying, you know, that she was feeling completely low and despairing because of what was going on with climate at the moment, and that she felt the work she was doing was not making any difference, and she was feeling very powerless, and then I was just talking about not discriminating between big and small things, and she said, well, actually, yesterday I was in a cafe, and I was having a coffee, and I noticed there was this mother with two children in a push chair, double size push chair, and she was trying to get out of the cafe, and she was trying to open the door and maneuver the push chair, and that she got up, and she opened the door for that woman, and the woman looked at her and said, you have no idea how much that means to me. And as she spoke, when we were saying, you know, on the in the facilitation I was doing, she said, her face just lit up, and I said, look, was that any less important than the work you're doing on climate? And so just finally, brother, I'd love you just to talk about not, and you've really done it a little bit, but not comparing. We'd have such a comparative mind, so to go back to the beginning, the Himalayas are more beautiful than the Moss Underlay of a forest, that trying to impact climate change is more important. then helping a mother who's obviously had a really difficult day with screaming kids to just support her at that moment. Just what it means to take away this discriminative mind. Yeah, that's a lot. That's, um, I laugh because now I think of it. It's so simple. It's just about caring literally. It's like, how can we care for each other's happiness as we care for our own happiness? But it takes so much deconstruction to arrive there because of our history, our, the stories we create for ourselves as well as the, the stories that we're very attached to in ourself, which is very true to who we are. And it takes courage. Once again, I use this word because the journey of Zen is a journey of courage because to be a Zen practitioner, which is a meditator, Zen just means meditation. It means you have to meet yourself every day. You have to meet yourself in a historical presence, which is your past. And then in the ultimate, which is your legacy, like, what are you going to leave behind? And that means recognizing the bad habits you have, the comparing mind that you have, and just smile to it and say, I'm going to, I'm going to keep training you. I'm going to keep peeling you so that you can review the love that is buried behind, under all of that comparison, all of that discriminated, that discrimination, all that hatred that I have for myself, I have for others. And you're going to keep peeling and peeling and peeling meditation and the journey of, of loving oneself, it's, it's like peeling the onion. And sometimes you're going to cry because it's so spicy. And then sometimes you're going to wear goggles because you want to keep peeling and you don't want to cry, but you got to look at yourself. And then there's going to be a moment, you're going to be so accustomed to it that you know the sweetness of the onion. And the goodness of the onion, how much well-being it is for you to eat that raw onion. And this is just a metaphor that's just coming up for me as I'm speaking. But that's, that's the journey of one self. When we say one self in meditation, it means everyone because if you love yourself, that means you have to love everyone just as you love yourself. It's not, I love myself and I'm fine. That's not, that's not the path. The Buddha didn't retire after he was enlightened. The Buddha wouldn't even be a Buddha if he stopped under that bodhi tree there. He kept enlightening himself and enlightening the world because he was so in touch with the world. He didn't give up on the world. And he was so involved with the world because his students were the world. And there are so many moments that in the sutras, like the Buddha was so frustrated at his students because they kept repeating the same ignorant actions and habits. But the Buddha learned to smile, learn to share direct the mind in a way that we can recognize our own habits and change and have the clarity to put into action, the things we need to do to be more caring. And some of us, myself, I'm easy to care for others more than to care for myself. So my journey was then to, to say no to things, to not be a people pleaser, not to, not to feel little than others because part of my caring was to then, to be loved, to be seen, to be, to be heard. And then some of us, we are, we're very selfish, so we need to learn to care for others, right? So, and just naming that, like I'm a selfish person, and there are moments, I'm like, dude, okay, that was a very selfish act, you know, and to own up to it, and to be okay that in that moment, I had those thoughts. And then the next moment, this moment now, to have a different thought is like, I'm going to be more caring, I'm going to be more generous. And how do you show up? You know, there's so many opportunities in life, you're in line, you see like that friend who opens the door for someone, that's a moment that you put yourself aside and you're more caring. I was in Australia and I was telling a friend, like I was saying hello to everyone on the street, and she was like, don't do that brother, people are not used to that, and they may, you know, they may, they may be, they may be really mean back to you. And I was just like, yes, and why not though? Why not help shift consciousness? And it was true, there are some people that I said hello to the industry, I said hello, good morning, and some people were so surprised and engaged, and some, you know, gave me the most awkward look, and some just said hello back, and just always like ran away, because it was like, wow, you know, and then at the, at the mean brother hub, Lynn, we went shopping, and I forgot the name of the store, but it was a diversion of Walmart or Ela Claire in France, and the cashier, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna have a shout out because he really gave me this insight, is James Norton, who was in our retreat, and he said that when he goes back to London, he wants to, every time he buys something from the grocery store, he actually wants to engage with the one, the cashier, and just say hello, and just be generous as he thank you, even though, you know, you're the one paying for things, and it's his job, and we, the system has made us look at each other as transactions, right? As you give me this, so I received that, therefore I will receive the pay because anything goes on and on and on, and we, we don't look at each other as humans anymore, and when brother hub, Lynn and I, we were at the cashier, the cashier asked us, do you have reward points, and said, oh no, you know, we actually just arrived, and the cashier said, oh me too, I just arrived from India, and I'm doing a master, a master degree, so therefore I'm gonna be here for maybe three to four years, and suddenly we met each other as human beings, and we're engaging, and I was like, how is it, you know, do you find yourself at home, and the cashier was like, oh I'm discovering, I'm slowly finding, yeah, I've received a little racism, but I'm working through it, and suddenly that whole experience was so rich and so real, and I really felt her joy in meeting two random monastics, maybe the first time in her life, and just having a very human conversation, and so our minds, it's really the first obstacle for really any real connection to wonder, because we're like, oh maybe that person doesn't want to talk to us, and it creates all of these fear, it's a lot of fear that we have, a lot of perceptions that we carry forward, and we make it a reality, rather than our human nature is to engage, it is to be kind, it is to have empathy for one another, which is an act of respost, respost, respost, respost, which is respost, which is a way of giving, right, so I really think that for me the practice of Buddhism is to be more human every day. Beautiful brother, it's like the last chapter in the book is called The Quiet Beauty and Everything, and to see The Quiet Beauty and Everything we have to be quiet, and then we realise actually in truth there's nothing mundane in the world, that is only our judgmental perceptions that decide that is beautiful, that's ugly, that actually if we see deeply into anything in life, we can see that there's beauty in it. So brother, it would be lovely to finish today with a short meditation to help us ground ourselves in this moment and to recognise that all of life is here and now, if we choose to own up to it. Let's own up to the present moment, so dear friends, whether we are sitting on the subway, on the bus, in our sofa, at home, on a chair, on a bench, or we're going for a walk, we're cleaning our home, we're exercising, whatever we may be finding ourselves doing, maybe allow ourselves just to settle into our body, we can maybe even lay down if it's helpful to rest, And start to feel the weight of the body, on the chair, on the earth. And become aware of the sensation in the body, and just accept it as it is. If there's any tension there, just know that there's tension. And in the knowing, offer a little bit of kindness, relax those parts of the body that is tense. Maybe it's in our shoulders, we can move our shoulders a little bit. Maybe it's in our face, and just to open and close our mouth or jawline so that it can expand and close our hands. We don't need to hold onto anything in this moment, just release any of the tension there, let it rest on our thighs, on our knee, on top of its own palms. We can close our eyes and just allow my voice to guide us. In this moment, I invite us to feel our in-breath, to feel our out-breath. The wonder of the breath, giving us life. And as you breathe in, invite yourself to breathe in a little bit deeper. And as you breathe out, allow yourself to breathe out a little bit longer and slower. Just really feeling that deep in-breath, and feeling that out-breath that is slow and long. As you breathe in, allow the stillness of the present moment to be there in you. Even if there are noises around you if we're in a city, but that stillness in you, no one can take it away. And as you breathe out, allow your whole body, your feelings, your sensations, to bathe in that stillness. And there is stillness out, enjoying the stillness, in the body, in the breath. In this moment, breathing in, I invite you to hold something in this moment that you are grateful for. Breathing out, just smile to that awareness of gratefulness that you have inside of yourself. And in, I am grateful for, and name it, breathing out, I cultivate the gratefulness of life in this moment. Breathing in, I come back to the simplicity of just the in-breath, breathing out, I smile to the simplicity of the out breath, in breath, smiling. Your friends, thank you so much for breathing together, and for joining us on this podcast. Yes, dear friends, if you would like to buy a copy of the new book Between Earth and Sky, you can do that from your local bookseller or an online publisher, and also you can get it direct in the United States from Parallax Press. We hope you've enjoyed this podcast, there are many, many more that you can listen to, and they're available on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on other platforms that carry podcasts and on our own very special plum village app. And this podcast is brought to you by Global Optimism and the Ticking Hand Foundation. And if you would like to continue to support us, please visit tnhf.org/donate to continue to support the podcast in moving forward. And we would like to offer gratitude to the whole team, Clay, aka thePodfather, Kata, our other producer, and today we have Georgine on Sound Engineer, as well as our behind-the-scene team, our other friend Joe, who does editing, and Anka, who does the publishing and the show notes, and Cindy and Jasmine, who support on the social media, on getting the word out so that everybody can discover this podcast. And to all of you who continue to listen and support us. Thank you so much.