The Flower Smiling to Me

Dharma Talk at Thai Plum Village International Practice Center.

13 August 2015

Documented by Jibzy Sunshine

Photos from Facebook: Thai Plum Village

Flowers are the manifestation of life and, also as for sunrise, sunshine, love of the mother, kindness of the father, good friends, or lovely children. Every manifestation is beautiful. It depends on each person how to understand. Since we were born, we can touch many manifestations of life. Everything comes and goes. We need to flow with manifestations. We need to realize that life is fragile. Everything else are also fragile. Life is impermanent.

Many of us live our life against our wishes, against our dreams. In a modern world, things are more complicated. We are not capable of master our life and ignore each other with some distractions. We have lack ability of communication; no one wants to understand each one, no one wants to listen, no one wants to speak their mind. They isolate themselves with high-tech gadgets causing a hectic life. Seem like everyone around us try to live the life at the same level. Everyone want to be rich or wish for an American dream.

If we are too busy,  we would have no time to take care our family. If we want more power, fame, money, busy life like that consumes a lot of time to achieve. If we live in a blind, we are a stranger to ourselves. We live in a fast speed society to reach the top because we crave for many things. Things that we think it would bring us happiness.

Is it true that marriage would make us happy? It could get heavy and heavier until we could not handle it anymore. If we cannot communicate with our family members, we would feel alone and lonely. The construction of Asian families is extended family with 3 generations living together in the same house. There are grandparents, parents, and children. But, there is no more of such a kind of family in nowadays. Life gets more complicated. We stress out so much from accumulating many things in our mind. Artists or authors who practice mindfulness can help the society to have a better communication.

Published bad news generate bad impacts to society and have a bad influence on people. Communication between people get harder  and very difficult. So, each one of us must change and learn more of what other life skills that we need, not only expertise we could get from schools.

Many people come to Plum Village and think that here is comfortable, easy, and good to practice. However, we are not here for any comfort. We need to practice to look deeply inside to see ourselves clearly which directions we want to go for the next chapter of life.

Sangha of Plum Village is a community of Buddhist practitioners. It is constructed based on Asian concept. When Vietnamese monks came to Thailand, we learn Thai culture such as Thai language. We adopt many things to be more harmony with the present environment. When we practice, we should spend time to understand what is in front of us. Learn to live simple, enjoy life, do not need more than what is really necessary. We need to practice more diligent to see who we could become. Do we have a clear vision of our future yet? We need to practice to organize our life and to master our life. We must aware of who we are and what we are doing at the moment. Collective energy with Sangha can encourage more awareness and happiness.

The important question is how to stay awaken and awareness.

The answer is that we need to moderate everything in life. Be aware of every moment. We can wake up in the morning with gathas and smiles. Learn how to smile right away first thing in the morning. We can put beautiful flowers beside us in order to remind us to smile. Start a new day, wake up with smile, vow to live our day with mindfulness.

"I vow to live peacefully in the here and now. I will be attentive to what I am doing"

Otherwise, we are wasting our time living a meaningless and careless life.

Another answer is that we need more disciplines. Train ourselves the rightful methods to organize our life. If we don't have enough disciplines, life can be messed up. You have to put effort to do things, try harder to be able to control ourselves, control our emotions. Learn how to use many kind of tools to cultivate happiness.

Why we do walking meditation? Because we need to aware of each steps. Practice, be mindful, be aware all the time. Everyone have their own difficulties, obstacles in life. We need to know how to deal with things that can change anytime.

When we are here, living wakefully. Aware that modern life bring us a lot of garbages so that we really need to be more selective and be able to see things clearly whether there are positive or negative impacts. We need to learn how to take care ourselves physically and mentally.

Body and mind are one thing. They cannot be separated. When we take care our body, we are taking care of our mind at the same time or vice versa.  

To wake up, this t is time to take care our physical and mental health  before it is too late. For example, many companies allow employees to take a short nap during breaks. With total relaxation, our body can rest fully. When we are sitting at our office, we have to allow our body to relax bit by bit each time, let go of anything in our mind, rest, reduce stress, be aware if we have any pain or tension in our body. The practice of mindful breathing will help us a lot. If our body get sick, we cannot occupy a clear mind. If our mind is weak, our body will be weak too. Thus, we need to learn how to relax ourselves whenever we feel tensions.

"Breathing in - we aware that we have pain at our arms. Breathing out - we relax and release  the pain of our arms."

Boost up health and happiness in life.

Take care of our feelings. Learn to control feelings. Sometimes, we can feel that feelings come from our body.

Body and mind are one. Allow our body to relax. By breathing in and out, we know how to release tensions and get more clam. Our body is a kingdom that we need to learn how to take care and maintain peace. Listen to our body so that we can realize our feelings. When we get angry, we can take a walk to calm down. By walking meditation, we can count our steps and use beads to count. These techniques would help us to be more aware. Everything we touch, we can feel it clearly. If we have anger, we should be able to take a look of the root of our anger that cause reactions.

We need a strong will to transform of ourselves with more mindfulness and awareness. There are 3 steps of being aware;

1. Reflection.

We have to reflect of what is in our mind. Clear our mind with awareness of the mindful breathing in every situations. Then, love and forgiveness can be born. Think before we speak. The bad words can destroy our relationship with others and it is really hard to restore the communication back once it has been broken. When we are peaceful enough, we can reflect clearly of what has happened. Reflect on ourselves first to see the root of our anger, sadness, and other emotions.

2. Decision.

We have to make a decision to realize which action that we choose to do and be able to see the impacts or consequences of our actions. Then, we will know how to deal with the situations.

3. Motivation.

Keep motivation of the practice by thinking about the benefits of our actions. If we are doing good, the good seeds inside of us would grow nicely as well as we need to water the good seeds continuously and ignore the bad seeds.

Our time on earth has its limit. We should appreciate the time we spend together. We should respect each other. When we get angry, pause and think for a moment: what that person would be in the next 300 years? What we would be in the next 300 years? Does it really matter to get angry? We get so used to judging people, blaming others, and making complains. Those habit does not help. We need to look at other way or other alternatives to helping ourselves and others. Learning to be awake is a key and also it could take a lot of time to practice. Therefore, do not rush or hurry! :)