Walk with Me

1

I know what it is to get angry,

and I know the pleasure of being praised.

I'm often on the verge of tears or laughter.

But beneath all these emotions,

what else is there?

How can I touch it?

If there isn't anything

why would I be so certain that there is?

Is it okay if you bang the drum with the stick

wrapped like that?

Well, each stick will make

a different sound.

Try it.

Should we unwrap the other one

Shedding my hair completely

Shedding my hair completely

I make the great vow today

I make the great vow today

to transform all my afflictions

to transform all my afflictions

and to help all living beings.

And to help all living beings.

When icy winter comes,

it is unforgiving to all things young, tender and insecure.

One must grow beyond youthful uncertainty to survive.

Maturity and determination are necessary.

Seeing the courageous, solid way

that trees prepare for winter

helps me appreciate the lessons I've learned.

You need to remove that word here.

What's going on here?

I'm not high enough here.

No, that's not it.

Yes, there's always that problem.

When the garden is fully weeded

the flowers, symbol of enlightenment

have the opportunity

to continue to grow.

You need compost

to have flowers

and you need to have suffering

to be awakened.

Full stop.

Suffering is the compost.

The food of awakening.

Full stop.

You have to look for enlightenment

in the suffering.

This is why we have the expression

"Suffering is enlightenment."

And:

"Finding Nirvana in birth and death."

Here is the first precept.

You cannot have sexual intercourse.

If a Shikshamana has sexual intercourse,

she can no longer remain a Shikshamana.

She can no longer be called a nun,

a daughter of the Buddha.

If she has not had sexual intercourse

but has touched the body of someone else

out of sexual desire,

although she's still a nun,

she has not kept the Shikshamana precepts.

She has to confess and take the precepts again.

This is the first of the six Shikshamana precepts.

Is your precepts body clear?

Do you understand this verse?

"Listening to the dharma in the ultimate dimension"

I see the autumn leaves fall

occupying the whole sky.

I see the autumn moon

in every on every path all path.

"But the dharma is neither full nor empty."

And the hermit sleeps in here.

At first, it seemed like a passing cloud.

But after several hours,

I begin to feel my body turning to smoke

and floating away.

I became a faint wisp of a cloud.

I had always thought of myself as a solid entity.

And suddenly I saw that I am not solid at all.

I saw that the entity I had taken to be me

was really a fabrication.

My true nature, I realized,

was much more real,

both uglier and more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.

- The other day I asked Sister Cam Nghiem - if she felt happy.

"Am I happy?" she said.

"It's hard. I don't know if I'm happy."

And then I asked if she felt

if she felt satisfied

and she said, "Yes."

Yeah, you just keep cooking all the time,

and it can be enjoyable.

But when you run out of ideas, you get sick of it.

Maybe for others it's different

but if I do the same thing for too long, I get bored.

If it's your responsibility, you just do it.

As for liking it? I just don't like repetitive tasks.

There are times I do things

out of love for our teacher.

That helps with the boredom.

But sometimes I have to get out of here.

Then when I come back I feel fresh again for him.

We're close to our teacher. That's why we sometimes

feel bored.

The younger ones who don't get as much time with our teacher

- are probably very happy to spend every moment - they can with him.

Okay, it's ready.

Ready? Wow, you're good!

Are you going to put the napkin on the right?

No, it goes on the left.

Friends want you to appear

in the familiar form they know.

But that is impossible.

How could we continue to live if we were changeless?

To live

we must die every instant.

We must perish again and again

in the storms that make life possible.

I became a battlefield,

and I couldn't know until the storm was over

if I would survive.

Not in the sense of my physical life,

but in the deeper sense of my core self.

I experienced distraction upon distraction

and felt a tremendous longing for the presence

of those I love.

Even though I knew that if they were present,

I would have to chase them away

or run away myself.

I took out 500. Okay.

So, um

Or I could do the first week and then whichever.

- That's fine. Is that fine to do? - First week?

Children find other children.

So in your case,

- going in a young adults group won't work because you - have children.

Ah, okay, I understand.

That's fine.

- You know the score with the clock chiming, right? - You've heard about this?

Yes, someone told me about it. Isn't it every 15 minutes?

That clock chimes every 15 minutes.

Okay.

But generally in Plum Village,

every time we hear a bell, we stop what we are doing.

- And that's all about coming back - to the present moment,

Because we often find ourselves on autopilot, and

the idea is to get out of that.

It's difficult and requires a lot of training,

but here we train together.

I have a doggy,

and this doggy died, and I was very sad,

so I don't know how to be not so sad.

This is a very difficult question.

Suppose, uh, you look, uh, into the sky

Look up into the sky and you see

a beautiful cloud.

And you like the cloud so much.

And suddenly the cloud is no longer there.

And you think that the cloud

has passed away.

Where is my beloved cloud now?

So if you have time to reflect,

to look,

you'll see that the cloud has not died,

has not passed away.

The cloud has become the rain.

And when you look at the rain,

you see your cloud.

And when you drink your tea mindfully,

you can see the rain in your tea

and your cloud in your tea.

And you can say, "Hello, my cloud."

I know you have not died.

"You are still alive in a new form."

So doggy is the same.

And if you look very deeply, you can see doggy

in its new form.

When the storm finally passed,

layers of inner mortal lay crumbled.

On the now-deserted battlefield,

a few sunbeams peeked through the horizon,

too weak to offer any warmth to my weary soul.

I was full of wounds,

yet experienced an almost thrilling sense of aloneness.

No one would recognize me in my new manifestation.

No one close to me would know it was I.

Hieu, you have given me so much happiness.

When your father left, you gave me energy

so that I could continue to go to work

and live with you.

I know that what's happened is my fault.

My job is so stressful, and I don't know

how to control it.

That's why sometimes when Mom comes home late,

I don't have space to think or breathe,

and I yell at you, my child.

I promise that I will do better

and that I will breathe like our teacher,

Thich Nhat Hanh, has taught us.

I just want to say that Mom loves you a lot.

Breathing in

I enjoy my in-breath.

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