With the energy of mindfulness, we can see deeply. With the Holy Spirit, we can see deeply. Mindfulness is the energy of the Buddha. The Holy Spirit is the energy of God. They both have the capacity to make us present, fully alive, deeply understanding, and loving. That is why in our daily life, we should live mindfully, we should live with the Holy Spirit so we can live every moment of our daily life deeply.

You light a candle, you eat your meal, you embrace your child, you talk to your neighbor, you do everything in your daily life as if God is listening to you, looking at you, and is aware of your actions. You do everything in the presence of God. The word mindfulness is not used in Christian and Jewish circles because mindfulness is a Buddhist word. But what is mindfulness? Mindfulness is to be aware of everything you do every day. Mindfulness is a kind of light that shines upon all your thoughts, all your feelings, all your actions, and all your words. Mindfulness is the equivalent of the Holy Spirit, the energy of God.

Birth of Understanding

In Christianity, when you love God you have to love your neighbor, otherwise you cannot say that you love God. Then you have to go further. You have to love your enemy. Why do you have to love your enemy? How can you love your enemy? In the Buddhist teaching, this is very clear. Buddhism teaches that understanding is the ground of love. When you are mindful, you realize that the other person suffers. You see her suffering and suddenly you don’t want her to suffer any more. When you begin to see the suffering in the other person, compassion is born, and you no longer consider that person as your enemy. You can love your enemy.

Love your enemies, bless them that curse you… When you look deeply into your anger, you will see that the person you call your enemy is also suffering. As soon as you see that, the capacity of accepting and having compassion for him is there. Jesus called this “loving your enemy.” When you are able to love your enemy, he or she is no longer your enemy. The idea of “enemy” vanishes and is replaced by the notion of someone who is suffering and needs your compassion.

Going Back to One’s Roots

You have to go back to your roots. You have to go back to your family. You have to go back to your culture. You have to go back to your church. A tree without roots cannot survive. A person without roots cannot survive either.

A person cannot be a happy person if he or she has no roots. We have more stability and peace and joy if we can be firmly rooted in our own ancestors and in our own culture. You have to be a family again. You have to touch your roots deeply again.

We need roots to be able to stand straight and grow strong.  When young people come to Plum Village, I always encourage them to practice in a way that will help them go back to their own tradition and get rerooted.  If they succeed at becoming reintegrated, they will be an important instrument in transforming and renewing their tradition.

Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions, and this will benefit everyone.

No single tradition monopolizes the truth. We must glean the best values of all traditions and work together to remove the tensions between traditions in order to give peace a chance.

Embracing negative energies

Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the energy of hate, anger, despair. If we know how to practice, we can bring back the energy of insight, love and hope in order to embrace the energy of fear, despair and anger. For instance, when you are angry, you can practice like this:

Breathing in, I know the energy of anger is in me.
Breathing out, I embrace my anger.

It is a wonderful practice. You just practice breathing in and out to be aware that anger is in you. You know that when you are angry it is not good to say anything. It is not good to react or do anything. Breathing in, breathing out, “I recognize there is anger in me” is the best thing to do. If you know how to do it, the energy of anger will not be able to harm you or the people around you. During this practice, the energy of mindfulness is in you, alive, because you continue the practice of mindful breathing in and mindful breathing out. Mindful breathing helps the energy of mindfulness to be alive, and this enables you to embrace the energy of anger, to recognize it as existing. You don’t have to chase anger out of you. You allow it to be in you, you embrace it tenderly, and then anger will subside, and the danger is overcome.

Mindfulness also helps to heal pain. When you are aware of your pain and you embrace it with the arms of your mindfulness, then that pain begins to transform.

Jesus and Buddha as Brothers

In Buddhism, the Buddha is not a person outside of us, but the energy of mindfulness, concentration, and insight in us.

When we’re lost in thought, we can’t be really present.  Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am”; but most of the time, the truth is more like “I think, therefore I am not really here.”

The Kingdom of God is not situated in space and time. You do not have to die in order to enter the Kingdom of God; in fact you are already in it now and here. The only thing is that you don’t know that.

If you are fully present in the here and the now, you need only to make a step or take a breath in order to enter the Kingdom of God. Happiness is possible in the here and the now, and once you have touched the Kingdom, you don’t need anymore to run after objects of your craving. Happiness is a living thing.

Our true home is in the present moment.  The miracle is not to walk on water.  The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment.  Peace is all around us – in the world and in nature and within us – in our bodies and our spirits.  Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed.  It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice.  We need only to bring out body and mind into the present moment, and we will touch what is refreshing, healing, and wondrous.

In the Psalms, it says, “Be still and know that I am God.”  “Be still” means to become peaceful and concentrated.  The Buddhist terms is samatha (stopping, calming, concentrating).  “Know” means to acquire wisdom, insight, or understanding.

In Buddhism, faith means confidence in our and others’ abilities to wake up to our deepest capacity of loving and understanding.  In Christianity, faith means trust in God, the One who represents love, understanding, dignity, and truth.

Blessed Are The Peacemakers

Peace activist A.J. Muste said, “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”  He meant that we can realize peace in the present moment with each look, smile, word, and action.  Peace is not just an end.  Each step we make should be peace, should be joy, should be happiness.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” To work for peace, you must have a peaceful heart. To preserve peace, our hearts must be at peace with the world, with our brothers and sisters.

Any real peace process has to begin within ourselves, within our own group and our own people. We should not continue to blame the other side for not practicing peace. We have to practice peace to help the other side make peace.

Washing Dishes

To my mind, the idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur to us only when we are not doing them. Once we are standing in front of the sink with our sleeves rolled up and our hands in warm water, it is really not bad at all. I enjoy taking my time with each dish, being fully aware of the dish, the water, and each movement of my hands. I know that if I hurry in order to go and have dessert, the time will be unpleasant, not worth living. That would be a pity, for every second of life is a miracle. The dishes themselves and the fact that I am here washing them are miracles! It may take a bit longer to do the dishes, but we can live fully, happily, in every moment. Washing the dishes is at the same time a means and an end – that is, not only do we do the dishes in order to have clean dishes, we also do the dishes just to do the dishes and live fully each moment while washing them.

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A friend recommended this book, and it came at the perfect time. I was overwhelmed with sense of heaviness and discouraged by the seemingly endless cycles of bad news punctuated with unprecedented gun violence, racial injustice, police brutality, political hypocrisy, habitat destruction, species extinction, and finger pointing, all while millions are experiencing poverty, isolation and pandemic illnesses. Oh, so much suffering!

Pema’s wisdom lightens my burden and I see where I need to open my own heart, work to free myself from stuck habitual patterns, stay present with my pain/emotions and not let it escalate into action, be conscious of process of polarization that increase our feelings of separateness.

“An awakened heart begins with the wish to be free from whatever gets in the way of our helping others.

Suffering comes from confusion of mind.

People are cruel and hurt each other out of ignorance of our interconnectedness with each other and our own basic goodness.

Countless animals and people are suffering at this very moment. But how much can we do to prevent that? If we’re on the roof of a monastery witnessing boys stone a puppy, maybe all we can do in that moment is to not turn away and let the unfolding tragedy deepen our Bodhicitta.

Then we can let ourselves get curious about what causes people to hurt animals in the first place. Instead of seeing the boys behavior as something alien to us, we can look for its roots within ourselves. Does the aggression or blindness that lies behind such acts dwell within our own heart. If we can find common ground in this way, then maybe the next time we encounter something similar will be in a better position to communicate. And when we fully awaken to our true nature, we will have a much better ability to influence others.

The supreme vision of Bodhicitta is to help every single living being awaken to their true nature. The only way to accomplish this first by attaining enlightenment ourselves.

When we’re really in touch with longing to help others, and our lives are committed to that purpose, we can consider ourselves among the most fortunate people on this earth.

If you have a tendency to feel aggressive toward the fly, you can go with that feeling, slap and kill the fly. That becomes a further means of blockage, sowing more seeds of aggression and insensitivity, which hinders process of awakening the heart.

On other hand, even if this goes against tendencies, you can try having a friendly response, you can look at it in a kind way, let it fly away.

This transforms the fly’s visit from an annoying event into opportunity for sowing seeds of kindness and tolerance, and appreciating the sacredness of life. It turns into a small way of becoming more open hearted and open minded. Freeing yourself.

We are not doomed. We can begin right now. There’s always something small we can do to alter our habitual response a little bit, it can be taking a few conscious breaths or walking around the block to change the energy, interrupt process of escalating our suffering in the same exact habitual way over and over.

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