Full Life

Throw out the concept of 'spiritual' and of 'everyday life.' There is only Life, undivided and whole. ~ Adyashanti

“There is a big vacuum inside of us, so we look for things outside us to fill up the vacuum. We think that new and exciting things will work, but they do not seem to have an effect. We are consuming more and more, but we do not feel fulfillment. We need love, we need peace, but we do not know how to create love and peace. We know there must be a lifestyle that will create love and joy, but unless we know how to create that kind of life, we will continue to buy things.

Suppose you know how to enjoy walking meditation. With some training, you know how to bring your mind back to your body so that your mind and your body are together. When your mind and body are together, you are truly there. You can recognize that the rain is wonderful, the trees are beautiful, the air is fresh, and you can enjoy breathing in, breathing out, and touch the wonders of life in this present moment. In fact, if we bring our mind home to our body, if we know how to stop our thinking, then we will be established in the present moment. We are mindful of our body, we are mindful of what is going on in our body and around us, and we are in a situation to touch the wonders of life that are available in the here and the now. We are able to see that there are a lot of wonders in our body, in our mind. And when we reach out to the environment, we see that there are so many wonders also. This present moment is full of wonders. Because you don’t know how to touch these wonders, you don’t know how to appreciate life, to appreciate what is there. So you look for something that you think will make you happy…

I don’t think I have deprived myself of anything I like by choosing to be a monk. In fact, I enjoy the life of a monk… The life of a monk is much easier than the life of a lay practi¬tioner because as a monk you live in a community and you follow the community in sitting meditation, walking meditation, eating on time. We don’t deprive ourselves of anything. In fact, we have a lot of joy living together. We have a lot of time to build brotherhood and sisterhood and that sustains us…

The presence of children in a community is very wonderful, and you don’t have to be father and mother in order to enjoy the presence of young people or children. I became a monk at the age of sixteen. I don’t feel that I suffer because I don’t have children, because I have so many spiritual children, monastic and lay…

The hardest thing may be to learn how to say no to requests of having retreats, of organizing retreats. This is the most difficult thing we in Plum Village have to face. Everywhere people ask us to come and organize a retreat, but we cannot always say yes. Our heart is broken when we have to say no, but we have to preserve ourselves to continue for a longer time. If there is one hard thing in our life, it is to say no, because the need to have retreats is felt very clearly everywhere.

How do you attract young people to follow? We don’t try to attract young people at all; they just come. Many of the young people have experienced romantic love and they have suffered. When they come to our retreats, they see that there is brotherhood and sisterhood. That is what we need the most in our life. We can be ourselves, we can be nourished by the energy of brotherhood and sisterhood.

To create a community and to build brotherhood and sisterhood to nourish us is a very important thing. You can devote your life to doing so. Instead of going to big cities and breathing air that is polluted, we can create many small communities in the countryside and try to live in a way that can help protect Mother Earth. We can work, we can garden together like in Plum Village. You can use your talent to serve the community, building brother¬hood and sisterhood. The Five Mindfulness Trainings will be the directive, representing the lifestyle. If young people come to us, it is not because of the Dharma talk we offer; it is the joy, the happi¬ness generated by brotherhood and sisterhood. Our daily practice is to generate the energy of love, brotherhood, and sisterhood.

Establishing small communities like that, we will truly generate the energy of brotherhood, sisterhood. Young people are capable of seeing that. Many of them will devote their lives to Sangha building to help generate the energy that you cannot buy in supermarkets…

Do we need to be rich? Do we need to make money? In Plum Village we also need money, but not to buy things, to consume things. We seek financial support not for buying new and exciting things but to have more places for practitioners to stay during a retreat, or to bring more monastics to a retreat, or to build a medita¬tion hall, or to build monastic quarters. When we go to a city, we need money to buy tickets for Dharma teachers, monastic brothers and sisters, because we know that transformation and healing in a retreat requires the presence of enough Dharma teachers and monastic practitioners.

It’s very clear that spiritual practice can bring a lot of happiness and love and fulfillment. You don’t need a lot of money to be happy. If there is more financial help, then many more people will profit from the practice. If we are limited by financial condi¬tions, the number of practitioners will not increase. But we do not sacrifice our practice, our spiritual life for the sake of financial realization…

Of course we have to reduce consumption. We have to con¬sume in such a way that can reduce the suffering of species on Earth. This is very clear. But we have to reduce the population also. To be a monk or a nun is one of the ways to reduce over¬population, so I am calling for you to join us as monks and nuns. And if we can create small communities, and we can establish schools and take care of the children of other couples, we don’t miss our children. Although I do not have blood children, I feel that I have a lot of children, and they give me a lot of joy and energy and freshness. I think we have to act on two levels: we have to go down in consumption and go down in population, and this is possible. And we don’t have to deprive ourselves of anything, including the presence of children in our life…”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, March 18, 2012, Plum Village