Silence (Episode #94)

Dear listeners, before we start this latest episode of The Way Outers In, we want to let you know two pieces of news. The first is that the second book by Fapur and I, "Come in the Storm, Zen ways to cultivate stability in an anxious world has now been published and you can buy it at any good physical or online bookstore." And the other is that at the end of January of next year, Fapur and I will be leading a pilgrimage to India, where we will be recording a special series of the podcast. And this is to let you know that you are invited to come, if you would like to. And the pilgrimage, which is following in the footsteps of the Buddha, is between January 31 and February 13. And is being led also by Shantam Seth, who is a master at leading people through the life of the Buddha, in situ in India, actually visiting all the sites of the Buddha's life from birth to death. And if you would like to know more information, you can go to www.budderpath.com. And if you decide to come, we will go on a real adventure. Dear listeners, welcome to this latest episode of the podcast The Way Out Is In. I am Joe Confino, a coach working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems evolution. And I am Brother Fapu, a Zen Buddhist monk, student of Zen Master Tiggyahan in the Plum Village tradition. And difference today, our topic is silence, thundering silence, noble silence. Hello dear friends, I am Joe Confino. And we have had a bit of a standing joke over the years that we should do an episode on silence because it would give us a great break. We would just sit here and there would be nothing to do, nothing to say, and that we could all sit here for an hour and a half in pure silence. And then I was on a walk-yes-day with my wife, Paz, who was sitting with us. And we were thinking, "Oh, what would be a good topic for today?" And she said, "Well, how about silence? Because there's so much to say about it." And it made me think that actually it is a really good topic because it's such a core part of the Plum Village tradition and of living a good life. So Brother, in Plum Village, silence is often referred to as noble silence. So can you give a sense of what is the point of silence? silence is there, it's always there, but we are so noisy and we're so busy so we cannot feel and we cannot hear what is present. So noble silence is a practice for us to just learn to listen. What I have learned from musicians is that you need silence for a note to be played. And we need silence so that we can cultivate our minds, so that our third training, which is the training of cultivating insight, has an opportunity to be cultivated and manifest. So noble silence is a very direct order in a way. It is a fundamental practice in Buddhism as a whole. In Plum Village, I would say that it is not as strict as many other Zen tradition and there are other communities that practice Buddhism or other monastic culture where silence is probably the fundamental policy of the way of life. In Plum Village, our teacher has once shared with us that silence is very important, but the silence that we are learning to cultivate is the stillness that we all need. And what does that mean? That means that even in the most busiest place, we have the capacity to be in full stillness, in full silence of our minds, of our worries, of our anxieties, so that we can hear what is around us. Of course, we do practice real noble silence where normally in the monastery, most of the time it is officially starting at 9.30 pm, which is near the end of our last activity of the day as a community and it stretches out all the way into after breakfast, after we wash up breakfast. And the silence there, it is to help us ease into the evening, ease into our rest. And the silence helps us also just to hear ourselves to contemplate the day, what have we done today? Our life is shorter by one day. And meditation, the second wing of meditation is all about reflection, it is to look deeply. How can we listen to ourself and how can we look deeply if we are so busy, if we are always plugged in? So silence is an obligation for us, no, not obligation, I would say. Silence is a place for us to allow ourselves to have spaces of deep reflection. And silence is also to hear ourselves, so it's not like to quiet our mind only, it is like to see what is our radio station that we have inside of our minds. And when we learn to allow ourselves to be in silence, the silence become very delicious because it gives us just this immense feeling of spaciousness. Silence is also very scary if we are not trained in it. And it is scary because we get to see our restlessness, maybe our anxieties, our depressions, our fears all has a chance to be there. And maybe some of us hearing this will probably be very afraid of that. But then there's something to fear, fearlessness in Zen, it's like you have to meet the beast, you have to meet your monsters in order to really learn to embrace and love yourself. So silence is also a language of love. And noble silence is it is a distinguished silence that we are giving ourselves the space to reflect the space to be alive. It is not a repression, it's not a, it's not a to repress ourselves of speaking, of thinking and so on. But actually, the noble silence is a silence of being present. And that is where nobility comes from in the word noble silence. And there's stories from the Buddha's time. There's one very particular story, which is, you know, the Buddha had a very crazy life, even after enlightenment. And one of the crazy part of his life was one of his own disciple, which is his cousin, Devarata. I think that's how you pronounce his name, Devarata in Vietnamese. And he wanted to be the next Buddha. He declared himself as the leader of the community and that the Buddha should rest and let him take over. And the Buddha said, oh, heck no, not on my watch. And what he did, his cousin, the Buddhist cousin, what he did was he split it to community. He gained political powers. He became friends of, of a prince who wanted to overthrow his own father to become king. And he violently put his own mother in prison. No, his father and his mother had to rode dough of bread in her body. And when to visit her husband, which is the king, in order to feed him, because they were starving the king. And the prince was overruled by his greed of power. Even though the King Bimbisara had intention to at one stage. give his throne to his son, but the fear and the whispers and the news and the information that the Prince was receiving, let him to this deep fear. So this divided the whole nation and he then became king and when the prince became king and the king died, I forgot his name, but the prince went into a deep depression of what he did, even went into a deep sickness in the mind and he went to seek the Buddha for help. And in the story, the king, the king now, which is the son of the prince, comes to meet the Buddha and he enters into the monastery where the Buddha is staying and he is frightened by the sight of hundreds of monks sitting with the Buddha in deep silence. And it was such a noble silence that the king himself was, it reviewed himself of all his actions, what he has done and all of the bad karma that he is now receiving in his own ill being of the mind. And so that silence in a group can also be supportive as well as very confronting. And in our modern day, silence is almost a luxury and we have to pay expensive money and we have to pay a lot of money to go to resorts to go to well-being centers and to embrace ourselves in this silence. And we also have to give ourselves a lot of luxury in order to curate this kind of state of silence. But in the practice, silence is always there, it's free. It's a part of the cosmos, it's a part of the offering. But none of us, we know how to access that because we ourselves have become so noisy, so busy and we don't know how to heal. So silence is also very healing because in this silence, we are allowed to rest. Our body is allowed to rest. Can we be at ease with our own body? The joy of us, we are very restless. We don't know how to sit still. We don't know how to breathe quietly. Our breathing itself is very noisy. It is very heavy itself. So there's a lot to learn in silence. There's a lot to discover in silence as well as there's a lot to celebrate in silence. Thank you, brother. And I know that one of the things I love about the Plum Village tradition and but is teaching in general, but also how Thai taught it, says don't trust me, what I'm saying, but it's good to experience the teachings. So given that, I suggest why don't we just sit in silence just for a minute or so and just taste it and for those of you who are listening is just experience yourself in this silence, see if you are able to calm yourself and just be aware of what comes up in your mind and just be present to who you are in this moment. So let's just have a moment of silence. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] So do listeners, that was just over one minute. And it's interesting, brother, because what comes up for me is discomfort. And it's because for me, the podcast is all about keep it moving, keep it smooth, have a flow, but it's based around words. So having a minute silence in the, towards the start of a podcast feels like there's something wrong, I need to fill that space and isn't that so true in our modern society that we are so distracted that silence looks awkward and a problem, something we need to fill. And we don't realize that in silence, silence is spaciousness. And there's something about sticking with silence. There's something like when we create silence, we're creating space, and in that space we can create more silence. But to begin with, it can be very uncomfortable. Because as you said, people's fears come up, people's sort of worries, people think actually. And people get bored because they're normally so distracted. So it's interesting to see what comes up when we actually are silent. Yeah, and you know, I was just reflecting on my teenage and my childhood. And because I have a lot of, we have a lot of children right now in Plum Village, where in the second week of our summer retreat, and a lot of teenagers. And the cookers were always the loudest. They were always the most outspoken, rude, and just like loud, not just in voice, but also in body. And I remember trying to be that loud, you know. And it's become a mainstream idea, also in leadership, also in success in a way. The ones who are successful are the ones who outspeak all the others. And coming to the monastery and the spiritual dimension, the silent one are the wisest. The silent one are the ones who are unconditionally available, and their love are much more boundless. And they know how to listen. And so it's almost like when you enter into this world of practice, you start to see how wrong, I mean, excuse me, I say this from my own experience, but how wrong are mainstream ideas of life is. And that's why peace is such an ideal and it's not a reality. In the last Damantok I gave, and I gave a Damantok on the last day of the first week of the summer retreat. A lot of people have a lot of fear about going back into the world because they don't know how to integrate this way of being that they've experienced in Plum Village, which is a lot with kindness, it's loaded with kindness, it's loaded with spaciousness and with presence. And we had that picnic in Shanghai for a thousand people, nobody was on their phones. Everybody was present, everybody was engaging, it was a lot of noise, but the noise was, I would say it was noble because the relationships and the conversations that were happening were the sound of just people enjoying the present moment and enjoying deep interbeing with one or another, and that just means conversation. And the same, I had some business friends in my Dhamma group, in my family pods, and they don't believe that they can integrate this into businesses. And I challenged everyone, and I said, you know, I think all of us, the first thought that we think of is like, in the real world, this can never happen. In Plum Village, yes, because we're not the real world, we're our little bubble. And we can only say this is because we have been brainwashed, we have been given this view of how life should be. We should be very productive, we should be very noisy, we should do, do, do, and do, we shouldn't have time to be instillness. We shouldn't have time. to be quiet. We shouldn't have time to be together and not have to say a word. Fun fact dear friends, I think that Thai really liked me is because I had nothing to say with him. When I was with Thai in the early years of attending him, I never asked him a question, besides the question of Thai, which you like a cup of tea. Oh, how can I prepare your meal, prepare the desk and so on. But I never was there to extract from him. And I was very mindful because the world had so many questions for him. And the gift I can give him is silence. The gift that I can give him is my generous being, that I don't need anything from him. And that is a kind of stillness that you can offer someone. It's very generous. And I think because I believe that, that I don't need anything from him. His presence alone is more than enough. And I think that's where our relationship really developed. I remember the hours of drinking tea with him where we said nothing, Joe. Besides Thai, would you like another cup? And for some people would think, oh, what a waste of time. You are sitting beside a zen master of the 21st century and you're not trying to gain more insight. So this extractive mind of consuming the silence is very powerful in our society. So my challenge to the whole community that we're leaving the next day in the damatop was, I think we have to reimagine what well-being is, what success is, how our modern world can be. I'm not saying should be. We are introducing another way of being that is so embraced with kindness. Like everything we do in Plum Village, the meditation is actually not that much in 24 hours. 30 minutes in the morning, an hour in the evening, in the evening. And then we have all these activities that are around us. But it is the intentionality that we put in the daily life. And everybody gets to understand and see their habits because they are slowing down. It is because the silence that is being offered. And every retreat we would curate the silence a little bit different. If we are in a retreat that has more people that are recognized in a way, business people, artists, climate activists, leaders, CEOs, we would extend the silence even longer. Because everybody goes into a mindset, oh, this is like a conference. I need to show up. I need to tell everybody who I am. What is my name? What are my titles? This is my CV. Please accept me. Right. And we are going to introduce actually, you know what? You are going to be quiet for half of the day. Almost until lunch. Almost like we say it into 1130, which is walking meditation. But walking meditation is another hour of silence. So we almost have half of the day in silence. And we've received the feedback that at first it sounds almost frightening to know that we can't engage. But then their nervous system all gets to relax because we've been told that we're not going to talk to each other. And we're also instructed that communication is more than words, the way we look at each other in the line of getting food, you know, of just recognizing that that person is going to take that apple. And your hand is also going there, but you're recognizing so you're engaging and giving space for that person to take that apple and you take the next apple. And all of this is language in a way. It's a language of recognition of being in the here and now, knowing how to step back to give space, being generous. And a lot of friends have shared that that way of interacting has led to a deeper relationship with so many people because then when you talk, your conversation is deeper than just how are you, right? It's more you ask deeper questions like what did that silence bring up in you? It almost like silence allows to be much deeper in a way. And I think we're afraid of being deeper also. We like to stay on the surface level because we're afraid of going to the to the depths of our own consciousness of our own being. So the silence that we cultivate in Plum Village and as a practitioner, it can be in the physical schedule, which is mandatory silence, but it is also in the silence of when you're in a space when there is a lot going on, you don't lose yourself. You know how to anchor yourself. That is a silence that you enter into and you are being nurtured by your own mindfulness, your own awareness, your own presence. And then when you speak and when you enact your action, it is very intentional. And silence is an art of resting. Like in this retreat, in Abraham, this week, we have 450 people that is much more than our day-to-day life. And I'm very aware of where there is noise and where I want to avoid even in my own home. And this is because I know that I need the silence to careful myself, to protect myself in a way. The T-house is a very famous and popular space. It is the downtown of Abraham. It's the heartbeat of the community in a way. But that the heart is always beating and I don't need to be there. Because I have to preserve my energies for three whole weeks of being over 3,000 people in Plum Village. So we have to become silent itself to give ourselves the space of rest as well as to encourage other to be in silence. And I think in today's world, every time we're together, we talk. Which is beautiful. I'm not saying don't talk, you know. But there's not many who knows how to be together and not talk. And relationship and communication is as deep as talking. Beautiful brothers. There's so much in what you said. So I just want to pick up on a couple of things. One is, so I've been in the world of sort of climate change and biodiversity for 30 years. And you know, whenever I went to a conference, and especially in recent years, the conference has a already a schedule, you've already got a list of people who are going to be attending. You've already got the pre sort of the app where you can already get in touch with people. You're already seen who you want to speak to, who you want to avoid. You already say, oh well, I think this person is going to help me with this. This person's going to help me with that. And so before people even show up, there is no space. And then when people arrive, they're always running around. And I remember I used to go to the World Economic Forum in Davos every year. And everyone who was, because there was so much going on, everyone who was somewhere felt they should be somewhere else. And the person who was at the place somewhere else thought they should be where that person was. And everybody was actually feeling left out or feeling that they were missing out actually. And so it's been a wonderful experience to be here for the plum village climate retreats. And exactly as you describe people show up, they don't know who's going to be here. There's no schedule. There's silence. There's only first names. But it's the spaciousness that is created just transforms people. And I just want to reiterate one of the things you said is that the depth of communication that we think words are the way we communicate. And actually we know through, many decades of scientific study that the words people use is very, a very small percentage of the experience. We look at body language, we look at what's not being said. And actually words are in sense literally a little the tip of the iceberg. And The other thing brother is about, about really honoring people who are quiet. And I know you mentioned this, but I just want to gain, reiterate this bit because, in my career in life, there's so many occasions, especially in groups where, and often it's women, often men are the ones who dominate space and women are there, and it's not just women, but people are there who are quiet and who listen. And often getting gnawed, and yet they often have the answer. And so in every group I've facilitated, what you do is you notice who hasn't spoken. And then you bring them in and often, they just need some support. To say, actually, you're going to be welcomed in, and you're going to be listened to, and so much the time, they are the ones who come with the answers. So I'm just very aware of space. And I've also noticed, with, in sometimes in question and answer sessions, that the elder monastics will answer last. (laughs) That the younger ones. - That's the wisest. (laughs) - That the younger ones will often dive in with the answer. I've got the answer to that. And you have the elders, and they're just sitting there, and they're deeply listening and processing what actually is this question about. Is this question about just the words, or what is the deeper meaning? What is it that this person is looking for at this moment? So I'm also very aware of the sort of that sense of stepping back. And also, you know, another aspect is just the level of busyness. And you've mentioned that. So there was a Nordic, big Nordic company I was working with, and it was in financial difficulties. It had done very well for many years, and the last few years had really started to suffer financially. And I was working with a senior leadership team. And there was an archivist who ran the archive of the whole company, it's very traditional, and they were the ones who looked at the history of the company. So I went to the archivist and I said, what is it that has changed that you think has led to this difficulty? And she said, in the past, people were giving space and time. And in that space and time, they could create, they could understand what was going on and they could come up with solutions that really worked. And now it's just time is money. And actually, people are just hurrying around. And by hurrying around, they're missing on actually answers that are there if they were to create space for things to emerge in silence. So brother, I'd like to ask you a little bit about community and silence because you've touched on it. I want to go a bit deeper because I know a lot of times people say we're social beasts, we love talking, we love connecting, and it's always based around talking. And one of the things in Plum Village is, as you've sort of described a little, is the community of silence. And that often shows up in, not just when there's complete silence, but let's say in the Dharma sharing groups then these are circles where people sit together as family groups and are able to share their deepest fears, hopes, worries, aspirations. And what they're saying is held in silence. And no one responds to them, no one tries to fix them. It's just, people are just present for each other in a deep way. And I would love you just to talk a bit about the silence of listening. The silence of listening is a whole art form. And it's a practice of an embodied listening. And that means that we're just not listening with our minds, but we learn to listen with our whole body. When we listen, all of our senses are reactive, our ears are nose, our tongues are minds are body. And our own reactions is the language itself. And our teacher used to train us, come to Taizadama talk, don't bring a notebook, don't write what I'm telling you. And everybody ignores this rule. 'Cause everybody's like, no, but the words of the wise and master, I gotta capture it. And he said, well, the moment that you're trying to capture something, you're losing the next thing I'm saying. And he teaches us to trust our own consciousness, which is our consciousness is like land, a soil, it's a farm. And we have many seeds in them. And when you listen to the podcast or the dharma, or anything that is to nurture our own consciousness and body, let it just sink into our whole consciousness, our whole being, not trying to gain more, not trying to capture more. Like there's this concept and brother spirit spoke about this in the science retreat. He's like, we're not here trying to gain more to enhance our label. Actually Zen is about seeing our label and letting it go in order to see our wholeness. 'Cause our wholeness is not shortsighted in just, I am a monk, I am a journalist, I am a coach, I am a business leader, I am a technician. We're so much more than this. And we move throughout the world with this sense of belonging, being seen and being heard, being accepted. And I'm not, I'm still going through this. I'm not trying to criticize anyone. I'm just saying that we have created this way of view of acceptance. And in community, it manifests us beautifully in sometimes the most loudest way. The ones who are not love are the ones who are needy the most. They don't know how to be in the present moment. They don't know how to be patient. They don't understand the virtue of ripening. I want more. I expect to be enlightened in one week. So please teach me. As a how much can I teach when your cup is already full? So in the Zen way is that if you want to learn, the first thing to do is learn to let go. And that's the hardest practice. And so when we're practicing silence, it is also seeing what are the views that we're holding on that is so noisy and that we are agreeing and disagreeing. And this is where I teach you say, and when you listen to my Dharma, don't bring your mind of what is right and what is wrong. And this is a very difficult practice, especially for academics, especially for those of us in the realms of science, in the realms of philosophy, because there has to be something that's right, and there has to be something that's wrong. And what our teacher has also went deep into ethics, you know. And what we think in our Western ethical mind, in some other regions, they see that as not cultural. And we look at that as not cultural. And we all have very different views. And we bring, when we show up most of the time, we're bringing our knowledge of what we think is right and what we think is wrong. And so in listening, we want to put that aside. I'm not here to listen to you, to tell you what is right and what is wrong. I'm not listening in order to fix you. I'm just listening plainly simply as the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvarara, her deepest vow, is just to show up as a compassionate human being. And that is just to listen without an aim. And that is one of the most powerful presence and the most powerful gift that we can offer to one another. Majority of us, when we listen, our mind comes up with a solution, oh, I know what to say, let me come in, let me chime in. And I see this in the monastics too, it's like I see brothers who have tendency, this person hasn't even finished sharing their problem, cuts right through, I know what's wrong with you. And this is so, we have been ingrained. And I'm so allergic when people say I know what's wrong. I say, actually, you don't know. You think you know what is wrong. So we were training in the listening to also re-educate ourselves. It's all about unlearning. How now we're gonna speak? How do we speak? Do we speak in a way to make that person feel less than us, to be more superior than that person? Or are we speaking in a way to have empathy, to inter-be with them, say, thank you so much for sharing your pain. I have that pain too. or something I'm just saying, thank you so much for sharing and I don't know what to do. But what I can offer you is just this, this mind of, I hear you and I see you. And you have to let insight come up slowly. And this is what is also, I feel in my own, and I'm giving myself more permission to not give answers to people, especially as among people expect me to have answers, and the truth is different, actually I don't know most of the time. And when I hear something, I wanna listen first. And the listening, I feel is already an answer because the response is then will come, the answer will come with a response that is much more generous and less ecotistic. Because what I'm gonna share to you is just an experience. It is not the ultimate truth. We don't, the only truth that I can offer you is, I know that there is suffering in the world. And I know that we all have fears and we all have demons inside of us that we are trying to be friend and transform. And so this listening in a community comes at so many levels Joe, and it's very scary in a community because in a true community, in true friendship, we will respond to you when you are so noisy and when you are also not mindful because we are quiet so we can hear them, we can hear your thoughts even. We can hear your fears, we can hear your culture, we can hear your rigidness. It's almost, okay, I give an example, something that just showed up very closely. We have a German brother and a Vietnamese brother, two very drastic different culture. This German brother is very good with rules and regulation. And the Vietnamese brother is more in tune to community. We'll bypass rules and regulations. And there was a situation that was brought up and they asked me, both asked me for that advice. And one side was coming with rules and regulation. And one side was coming from the community culture aspect. And what was very interesting was, for me was to listen to the two, and I can hear on both of them the whole ancestral lineage what was coming through. And so in the listening, I'm listening to more than what they're just saying. I'm listening to how they're brought up. What they think is right and what they think is wrong. And then we bring, we share the space and we share the solution together and we find them it away. And everything is situational, right? Everything is conditioned. So we have to look at every theme and every question with all of its facts and all of its nuances of cultural aspect of understanding education, livelihood. And then you find a solution. And for me, we have rules and regulations in order to guide us, but the listening helps us to adapt. Listening gives us the adaptation of being flexible. And in the listening, it doesn't mean you just be quiet, but you know when is the space to share and how you're gonna share it. So you're not trying to cover up the pain and suffering. What I see is a lot of times when somebody expresses suffering, we wanna have empathy. So we say, oh, it's okay, it's okay. You know, we use noise to cover up maybe our own awkwardness and our own discomfort of pain. And even we are shameful of our own guilt that can arise from what we're hearing. And one thing that I've learned and one thing that I'm working with, when we talk about feelings and emotions and mental formations in Buddhism, we have to learn to be responsible for them. I was very annoyed with the kids in one of the days. We were in New Hamlet. And I shared this publicly, you know, during the Dhamma talk, but it was my practice. And I was standing up there, all the monks and nuns were gathering and we're coming up to offer a chant. And the chant is beautiful. It's with musicians, monastic musicians. And it's the soul that brothers spirit have like given to these chant. So it's a real offering from our hearts. And the kids were just rowdy. They were just noisy, fidgeting. I just wanted to grab a microphone and just to scream, shut up. (laughing) And then I wanted to just like, if you don't wanna be here, get the heck out of this hall. And I just wanna physically carry this one kid out, carry this one kid out, 'cause I can see the ring leaders that are in the whole community. And it was almost like, I don't know, almost like 150 or 80 kids in the hall. Like they took a path of the New Hamlet hall, which is now the smallest hall in our hamlet. And of course, I did none of that dear listeners, you know, this was always my mind, my own podcast, was inaction and my own frustration was very present. And believe it or not, I still had a smile. And in that moment, I really recognize all of the noise that was inside of me. And I didn't wanna make the kids responsible for my feelings. I wanna be responsible for my feelings. This is the difference between a practitioner and one that is not a practitioner. Somebody that does not practice will blame all the kids for their emotions. But I wanna take accountability for the emotions that are being present in me. And I'm practicing and I'm breathing with them and I had a mantra. And we have a goth that says, "I love this to you, Abhuda to be." And I really see that these kids are the hope and the future of our civilization. Who knows, some of these kids will become presidents of our world, will become leaders of our world. Or just a happy couple, a happy parent that will continue to shift and change our culture. And so in that moment, I was contemplating them and seeing them as the future bodhisattvas of our times. And I changed right away. And so because I've been practicing for 25 years, I can allow myself to let all of my noise be present for my silence and that silence is my awareness. And I don't let the anger and I don't let the frustration overtake me where I would grab the mic and scream or I would physically move a child out which I absolutely could have done, would have done if I wasn't a practitioner. And what I was very happy was was, I didn't put my emotions on the others, on the children. And this is a practice that we are learning in our times, especially in the practice of decolonization and practicing with colonialism and racism. And I learned this when I was in Fiji. One of our great elders shared from her practice of the way L is in is to listen to your pain and suffering. And mindfulness is to name the suffering as is true name. And this elder with a lot of mindfulness, compassion and pain was able to name her suffering in front of the community. And her suffering was recognizing that deep in her, hate in her pain, there's a hatred. And she said, I hate white people. And it's not the ones that are in the hall. It is just recognizing that pain from ancestral suffering. Right? And of course, that opened a hole and there was a Pandora's box for all of us to feel the pain of our world, the pain of those of us who are people of color, who have been colonized by the Western powers. And then there are those on the other side, those who are white, who the shame comes up, the guilt comes up, the pain comes up from their ancestors, what their ancestors have done. And then we had a deep listening and one of our monastics who is white shared that they would like to represent all of the British ancestors because England has colonized Fiji. and particularly where we were at the retreat with the one of the slave dogs and the pain and the guilt that manifested in our monastic was a pain that the body was shaking and the monastic said, "If you allow me, I would like to just post-trade and begin a new." And the friends, the alien, their friends, their specific alien friends said, "We don't need that. We absolutely don't need that. We just want to be heard. We don't want to be given that guilt and shame for us to take care of." What we're just asking for is that you know our pain and you know that we don't want to show up in spaces to be tokenistic. And even in a word of sorry, if not done skillfully, can be seen as a tokenistic act. And our only request is that everybody takes care of their pain and emotions and mental formations and don't put it on us, which is 99% of the time. What happens is that now we have to take care of your pain because we share our pain. And that experience that I had this year has really shifted me, Joe, and has really enlightened me deeper in the practice of when Thai, when Thai art teacher says that we have to know how to suffer. If we all know how to suffer, the world will suffer much less. Because when we know how to suffer, that means we are mindful of our suffering, of our emotions, of our feelings. We're not going to put it on you now. I'm not going to put it on my brothers, my sisters, my family. I'm not blaming anymore. I want to take into account that this is also my suffering and my transformation and my healing is also your transformation, your healing, my history's healing and my future's healing. And also the healing that is present here and it's very real. It's an act the three times in the present moment. And I see this because I have a nephew now. I'm a monk. And he is one of the happiest new descendant in our family. And it's because my dad, my mom, my sister and I were all practitioners. We've been doing a lot of work with our own pile of dung that we have received and that we have created ourselves also. And because of that transformation, when Kihon was born, I can see him not having to transform those pain and suffering. He will still have some of it. And he will have his own when he grows up. But the work that we are doing in the act of healing, it bypasses time and space. The act of healing is silence itself. The act of I'm suffering, I'm going to go take care of it. It's actually very respectful. Recently one of our sisters died and we allowed the silence to be there so that we can all just grieve. And I remember we're all sitting in the courtyard of the monk's resident. And it was just tears. And then one of our elder brother was howling in his crying. It was like ugly crying, I would say. But it was so beautiful what the brothers all did. One came up and hugged the brother in silence, not saying any words. Just being with the immense grief and all the other brothers just coming back to their grieve. Some cried along and some just like you said, were in the silence to give more space of silence. So the feelings and the emotions can present itself. So it doesn't become a sickness later on. It's not being suppressed and repressed. So there's so much to learn in silence and our teacher has instructed us some days we should practice noble silence. And we can, even if the community is not in noble silence, but we've been so busy, we can put a name tag instead of our name, we say noble silence. And Thai instructed this and I was listening to some of his damataks. And he used to give a lot of orientation, but later on he allowed them, he wanted them and asked us to give orientation. And he said, in the practice of noble silence, have a notebook with you and see when you want to say something, write it down. And the next day, see what you wanted to say. And a lot of times you said, oh, I actually didn't want to say that. That was just my complex speaking. So there are like physical practices for us to be aware of our mind. But then Thai is also like, I don't want our community to just practice to be in the mountains in silence because we can all be in complete silence and cut off from the world and have our own peace. But then when we engage the world, we don't know how to be silent. That is not engaged Buddhism. That is not applied Buddhism. So the middle way is very important. And we have to know the skillfulness of silence, right? Silence is not too then suppressed or then to also bypass what is going on. So there's a space and time for everything in our practice. [silence] Brother, thank you for that deep sharing. And just to use that word silence is about depth and about seeking something closer to what feels true. So I was talking to a friend who's a coach the other day. And she said, what coaching has taught me is to let go of all my judgments because I'm always wrong. She said, she works with CEOs that the CEOs who are the loudest and seem the most sort of secure and confident that when you deeply listen are the most insecure and the most sort of anxious. And that we tend to trust in the surface rather than in the depth. And I know through my own coaching practice what I am creating for people is space. Is in a sense, as I think about, I'm creating silence for them. So they are talking into their own silence. And what people do when they talk to their own silence is they listen to themselves. Sometimes for the first time, I find people's greatest insights are not necessarily my reflections or my questions, although those can be helpful of course, but it's that in their own listening to themselves in silence because there's speaking into silence and silence is presenting itself back to them that they are able to more fully see themselves. And so brother, I just want to come back to you mentioned earlier about people are scared of going into the depths. For most people, I know if you strip away all the surface layers, what is it that people really want to know is who am I? And what am I doing with this life of mine? What is my purpose? What is my purpose or what is my path? And yeah, people are terribly fearful of that. And the way I like to characterize it sometimes is people don't, and this is actually related to our new book, "Carme in the Storm." Because actually, in my experience, most people are searching for home. Most people feel that they don't feel, most people's experience life is that they don't feel at home, that they've had to create a version of themselves, often in childhood and through their work and culture to be accepted. And that their home feels a place that is no longer welcome and they don't even know it. And yet people's deepest wish is to come home to who they are. It's like him. And I like to characterize it. There's the book, "The Alchemist by Paul Quill." which is about, you know, you have to go on a long journey in order to find that the treasure you were searching for was under your feet where you first started. And the first, and I know we've talked about this before, but the first Dharma seal of Plum Village, which shows it's a Plum Village teaching, is I've arrived I'm home. And yeah, most people are really terrified of coming home because they don't, it's like on one level, of course they know it. And because you wouldn't want to come home if you didn't know it. I mean, you've got to know it at some deep level. But people have traveled such a distance that they no longer feel that home is who they are, even though they know it's who they are. It's like there's a sort of confusion there. And I'm just wondering how silence can help us to recognize home and to know that there is a place where we can feel alive at peace, present. And it's already here. And I love that about Thai teaching. It says actually there's nothing, and you've mentioned it as well, there's nothing to learn, there's a lot to unlearn because actually when we strip away all the fears, judgment, sufferings, home is already there. It's already present. It's never gone away, but we traveled a long way from it. And the truth is when you unlearn, you learn so much more. Kayao is speak about our animal ancestors. He says that when an animal is injured, the animal knows that it needs to rest and be still. Because that's when the true healing comes. The body has its own insight. We are a database of a lot of wisdom. Our whole evolution of human beings is through survival and through insight, why we still exist. And why we have the consciousness we do, the capacity we do. But we forget some of our fundamental wisdom and practice of wisdom. And that is to learn to do nothing. In Plum Village, we have a lazy day. It is the toughest day for so many people. People get scared. What am I going to do? There's no more schedule. And then you overplan, you over get ambitious with the day because now I can do. And lazy day is a drastic revolution from our mainstream doing society. Like there's a saying, don't just sit there, do something and tie with, have a counter. Don't just do something, sit there. And so the animal, when it is injured, it knows that the resting is the deepest art of healing. And the humans, we've had that insight. Remember when we were young, we had a fever. Our mother knows and our teachers know we can't go to school because we're number one will infect all the other people. Number two, we won't be able to learn because our body is exhausted. We are our bodies going through a crisis. And what do we do? We stay home, we rest, we sleep, we get a hot soup and we're pampered with love. And that love is just the resting itself and the showing up of somebody who cares for us. And now, I mean, I do this too. And we all do this. We're exhausted. We're tired. But we convince ourselves. That time is money showing up so that I don't miss out FOMO and so on and so forth. And we keep doing we keep pushing our boundaries. And so Tai teaches us in the first art and the first domicile of plum village is to dwell happily in the present moment. And this is why concentration is so key in the three trainings of the Buddha's art form of meditation. Mindfulness is not enough. You have to have a concentration. You have to dwell in the present moment. You have to stay within your contemplation to have insight to then ripen. Most of us, we could be mindful, but then our mindfulness is very limited. It's shallow. It's one of plum villages. Examples is we can look at a very beautiful sunrise on Tai's deck. And we can have a moment, oh, the sunrise is there. Wow. And then we get carried away. What's next? Our body doesn't know how to be. It doesn't know how to dwell. And just enjoy this miracle of seeing the dawn. Right? So the silence is just a language of speaking on. How to how to how to heal how to listen and the deepest question, when can you ask those question? It's not when you can plug yourself in and listen to a whole track list of songs and stories and podcasts and doma talks. It's when you actually sit there and be quiet and have a conversation with yourself. Ask yourself the question. Tai said, we have to ask ourselves the ultimate question. What is my deepest desire on this planet? My life is limited. It's not limitless. It's limited. I can live 70, 60, 80, 100. But that's it. When it in the in the in the scale of this universe, we are little specs. And our time on this earth is very limited. What is my deepest wish that I would like to leave behind for the planet for the next generation. We have our daily concerns, which we have to apply. We have to have a have to pay the bill, the mortgage, the food, electricity. And then we have to think about the seven generation down the line. Right? So there are daily concerns that we have to contemplate. We have to plan out what they think through. And then on the ultimate level, we have to look at what is our deepest desire. It can be deepest desires, you know, because we look at missions and go as part of the path. Our insights are part of the path. They are not the end. They are a cultivation means for us to continue to walk on the path. We never few finish. We're never done. One time a month as Tai, Tai, when do us monastics? We get to retired. He said, never. We are like fine wine. The longer we are stored, the more richness and taste and flavor and smell we have. That is to speak about we have more insights to offer. And that insight may not be words as we've been explaining. The insight may just be presence. Brother, one of our elder brother, brother turtle as Paz would call him. His default is to be gentle and slow. But when he's on the soccer field, he's the captain. He's fast. He's calculated. He knows how to direct all of us. And then in the deepest moment of crisis, just him showing up allows everybody to be at ease. And he's not saying anything. He's just like, I'm coming home for food for the funeral. Don't worry. Just to know that your elder brother is going to be present. That is a communication. That is a virtuous presence. And he doesn't take up space. Brother, I'm one of the luckiest abbot where I have such elders around me that doesn't get jealous. That doesn't, it's not trying to outperform anyone. It's allowing all of us young ones to have our voice, to speak up, to show up in meetings, to organize. Doesn't mean he doesn't share. But when he shares, it's like, okay, you kids, let me tell you how it's done because I've been here over 30 years now. Right. So there's a difference. But his base that he gives us in his silence. He still shows up for the gathering. He still shows up for the meeting. And most of the time, he's in silence. But it's just we feel safe when he's there. If our contribution is a little bit off, he will bow in and will offer his contribution. And in that way, I never feel like I'm tiptoeing around an elder, around an executive, let's say, in the business world. He's one of our executives, you know. But I can feel like I can just feel. flow and move. And I can get that support. And I know when I'm doing something that is not right, he will call me in and he will shine the light. So to tell me that, oh, those words or those action are that intense you have, maybe it's not so aligned with our true purpose as as plum village. Thank you, brother. That brings to mind. One of my elder brothers in in blood family, my brother David, it's he's had that role for me all my life, which is that he's always been a safety net for me. And and and I know that if I've ever needed someone or faced a real difficulty that he would be there the next day, whatever was going on in his life, I knew he would be there. And I actually never needed have never needed him an emergency in my life. But the quality of my life has been significantly improved because I knew he was there. And I think so much of life is is about actually about feeling safe and about knowing that we're not on our own and we're not as sort of that that we're going to be supported. And and that's been and I love the phrase in plum village, I know you're there and I'm very happy. You know, it's just I know he's there and it brings enormous happiness and safety to my life and and just how important it is to have. We don't need lots of people like that. It can be just one person in our life that we know is a refuge or one community that we know is a refuge in plum villages considered a refuge for many thousands of people. Brother one last thing. So when I, so I was working in New York for five years, very busy hectic life, lots of sounds, lots of noise, lots of lots of things to look at. Cacophony of sound sites, everything New York is. And then, Paz and I left New York to come to live next to plum village and we because of the COVID and the pandemic, we were stuck in lockdown in Mexico for three and a half months in a very small town. It was in full lockdown and all I could do every day was go and walk in the desert like scrub for three to five hours. And so for, you know, for more than three months, I was every day before sunrise walking in silence in a land of silence because there was no one about and it was in desert scrub, no human beings there, just the occasional buzz of an insect. And that changed my life. It transformed my life to be, you know, the plum village saying, you know, no way to go nothing to do. I had nowhere to go. I had nothing to do. And it was transformational. And then, after three and a half months, I came to live in plum village and I've had that experience of being living next to this community, living in a geographical, a huge spaciousness. There's hardly anyone living around here in nature. Still, you know, having my issues to deal with like restlessness or whatever, but feeling a lot of space and joy. And yeah, the people I coach are often in the opposite place of feeling overwhelmed, incredibly busy, no space in their minds. And I was reminded of a, which I brought along out this morning, a one of the pieces within the Tower Ching, which is the sort of famous Taoist book written by Lao Tzu in 400 BC. And I just want to read it because I think it speaks to the life we live and maybe the answer. So he wrote, and this is a translation by Stephen Mitchell, and he wrote, "Colors blind the eye, sounds deaf in 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." And I'm brother just finally, I'm just for those people who feel that they have no space and that they have no silence, but want their heart to be as open as the sky. What would you say to them? Because there's something I, and the way I work with people is to say they're always moments of spaciousness and that we don't create space in order to do something, we create space for the sake of space in order. And I love at the start of some of the walking meditations. One of the brothers will say something like, "You know, we're walking for the sake of walking. We're not walking to get somewhere. We're creating space for the sake of space in order to create space." But for those people who feel no space, what would you say is a way forward for people just to find a place in themselves where they can rest? It's to learn to create space. We have nature as a wonderful home to have silence, and the silence in nature is very unique because it's not complete silence because you hear the birds, you hear the rustling of the leaves, maybe in your footsteps, the leaves that you step on, the branches that you break. And the silence of the nature, it's very noble because it is very authentic. All the sounds are so authentic. It is not being created to please anyone, the silence of nature and the voices of nature speaks its language to us. So learn to create that space. And when we need support, enter into nature. I know the city, not everybody has these conditions. I know I'm very privileged. I'm very aware of this. And those who don't, you do have a deep island within to cultivate. And the silence of the heart to listen to the voices, to guide the voices within us, to learn to quiet the mind. I love this word that I use, learn to quiet the mind. It's not yet rid of the mind, which I feel is a misperception of meditation. It is to learn to guide and to cultivate the mind. Our thinking, our fears, our anxiousness can be guided with our mindfulness of walking, acting. If the sitting in stillness is very difficult, we can enact, we can garden, we can clean our homes, we can do, learn to do calligraphy. All of these hobbies, that's where the Zen gardens were created. That's where archery, martial arts was brought into the monasteries because sometimes sitting still is not peaceful. We learn to use our body as a home to channel and guide our minds. Our teacher always says when you're angry, don't sit there, channel it somewhere else. Write about it, speak about it. If your musician create a song about it, play notes, do a sculpture out of it. There's so many ways that we can channel it. And it's not a way to, it's not the only means, as you are enacting these ways of skillfully learning to channel our feelings and noises. We can do it in stillness. Don't plug your headphones to hunt. Do it as it is just. And then slowly you can see yourself getting more comfortable with the silence. Yes, when your mind is so overstimulated, put on headphones, noise cancelling, put on a good playlist. Sometimes I use Thai's voice. It's to help guide. And then there's also a moment where I also hear myself saying, okay, now I can be quiet. I can let go of that. There's so many practical instruments and tools that can support us. But the ultimate home destination is our own true self. And that's where we're learning to be comfortable in. There are some discomfort. Yes, but don't be of, learn to not be afraid of it. I was so happy yesterday. I finally played basketball with the teenagers after three years, after a tour of ACL for recovery. But then there's always this fear. And I have to story because I know the feeling of my ACL being snapped. I know vividly that feeling of my need dislocating. And I have a story of that of colliding. in bodies. But I want to overcome that. And how do you do? You go and you meet the beast. But you do it much more skillfully. You do it much more mindfully. You'll have to be as ambitious as before. You can be a playmaker now. You can learn to be a wonderful pastor, but you're still very engaged in the sport. So I think this is all a metaphor for us to learn to be friend our fears, learn to be friend our discomfort. Zen is all about entering into the stream of the world. It's not to run away. At the beginning, yes, you can create conditions to have space from. Especially in our tradition, it is to engage into life, not to run away from life. So this practice is, the silence is so beautiful because it tells us how limited we are. Sometimes we think we're great. And then the silence comes and you get to hear yourself and you get to hear your fears. You still see all those, your complexes that arise. And you're like, okay, I still got a long way. And in a way, it's beautiful because life is not about one moment of success in the Zen way of looking, but there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So the way is happiness. The way is well-being. The way is meditation. The way is success. Right. It's not about accomplishing one mission. Somebody once asked me, like, okay, I've been hearing a lot from you guys. So am I not supposed to have missions now? Because if we see that life is just a journey, I said, okay, number one, I think you're over-complicating things and you're being attached to words. Right. The thing about Buddhism is all the teachings have to be used in specific places. The Buddha said, the Dharma can be a snake and bite itself. And you hurt yourself. When we speak on volition, which is goes and mission, we see that volition gives us a source of energy. But it is not the aim of happiness. Volition itself is a kind of nutrient. It's food for us. So having, I want to become a better human being. Absolutely. But I don't stop after 2025. I want to become better next year. I want to recognize my limit the next years. And I want to say, oh, I can keep out growing myself. I can, I can let go of the skins, like a snake, and then let new skins to be. So missions and goals are just meeting points on the paths. And so silence allows us to see what is leading our hearts into actions. And it's dangerous when you listen to your heart mindfully. You may see there are things you should let go of. There are things that you want to abandon because you understand that is not true happiness anymore. So in that sense, brother, silence is about generosity. Because often we are, we believe that our happiness is through achieving certain things. But actually when we go into silence, we are being generous with ourselves because we're giving ourselves the space to see what's truly important to let go of what's not. And I love that the work you're talking about is being in service. So we often think success is being at the front and leading and being the most successful. But actually, I'm getting so much enjoyment from being in service to, from supporting other people to succeed and not feeling the success is mine alone. And I see that very much with the monastics as well. It's the desire is to be in service to not to shine on your own. So brother, thank you for this. I'm aware that we haven't done a short meditation for quite a while. So it may be we could just have a silent meditation. Absolutely. But I don't know brother. If you have the energy given all you're going through just to just settle ourselves and all of us and all our listeners just back to the present moment into a space of silence and spaciousness. I absolutely have no energy. I only slept like three hours last night. But I encourage us to, after this podcast, to give yourself at least 30 minute of just silence, to digest, to let things settle, even things you don't agree with with what we said. And it's okay. You don't need to agree with everything that we said. And just to let it just sink in, just let it sink in. And I think this is an art form also. Knowing that when something we've experienced is impactful to us, be in silence. That's the most beautiful gift you give yourself, the generosity to let yourself feel, digest, integrate and just feel everything that needs to be felt. And brother, you're generosity to yourself in knowing your capacity, which is itself a teaching for everyone to say, actually, right now, no, I actually don't have the capacity. And actually, we can find it that moment for ourselves. So thank you for teaching that in this moment. So dear listeners, we hope you have enjoyed this episode. There are a number of others, I think 92 other ones now, that you can listen to and you can find us on Spotify, on Apple podcasts, other platforms that carry podcasts and on our very own Plum Village app. There's no guided in this one, but there's a lot of our previous guided meditation in the on the go section of the Plum Village app. And this podcast is co-produced with global optimism and the Plum Village app with support from the Technic Hand Foundation. If you feel inspired, please continue to support the podcast moving forward as well as the monastery with a lot of our construction projects. So please visit tnhf.org/donate. And we would like to express our gratitude to all of our friends and collaborators. For some foremost, our dear pod father, clay, our co-producer, as well as Qatar, our other co-producer, our other friend Joel on audio and editing today Georgine on Sound Engineering, Anka on Show Notes and Publishing, Jasmine and Cindy on our social media garden angels. And to all of you who continue to listen and remind us to do another episode. So here we are and we hope you continue to listen to the podcast. Go well everyone. Go well. The way out is deep.