Beginning Anew Practice
Dharma Talk at Thai Plum Village International Practice Center.
15 August 2015
Documented by Jibzy Sunshine
Photos from Facebook: Thai Plum Village
Living in
materialism society could reduce our capacity to restore a good communication
with our family members. In Plum Village, every month we would practice the
precise precepts. Before that time, monastery must practice "Beginning
Anew" in order to express their regrets to Sangha, to renew ourselves, and
to remind us to be better and better. Using the metaphor of renewed water in a
flower vase, to renew ourselves and our practice we need to clean the vase from
time to time so that the vase won't get dirty.
With today's
world, we can get caught with many things in a busy day. Everything changes in every
moment. Even cells in our body also renew and change days by days. We have
ignorance if we cannot see things clearly. Often, we think things will never
change but the truth is that everything is impermanent. We could delude by our
wrong perception most of the time. Therefore, we should learn to wake up our
mind and our body. Practicing the teaching of the Buddha is to prevent making
ourselves suffer and avoiding hurting others. When we practice we get the
insight, we have less sufferings. These practice helps us to have a clear and
calm mind to see things clearer.
The practice
of "Beginning Anew" is being aware of our breathing in and out, and
to be mindful every moment. Thus, we can see the true beauty of the person in
front of us if we have a solid mind.
In life, we
have too many of worries, negative desires. We expect people what we want them
to do. We put others into a prison of our wrong perceptions. So, we should ask
ourselves sometime; are we a free person or are we too busy? Can we let others
to be free?
Being a new
person and a beautiful person is easy if we know the way to practice without
ignorance, worries, attachments, and fears. By our breathing, we can renew
ourselves. We come back to ourselves truthfully. What are the good qualities that we have? Only
when we know how to stop our wrong perceptions, we can see them clearly.
We come back
to "ourselves". Ourselves is the whole universe. We need to look
deeply inside ourselves and say thank you to the whole universe and everything
that made who we are today.
Total
relaxation makes us aware of our body. We can feel whether we are weak or
strong, healthy or not so healthy. Our body and mind can create the whole
universe. Why we do not realize that? Is it because we are not cherished our
body and our mind enough? Do we treat ourselves badly and unkindly? If we do
so, we let our ancestors down and make the next generation of us feel
disappointed. Therefore, we have to live with awareness and gratitude, live
with a calm mind. We also need to live our life for our ancestors, our children,
our grand children, and our next generations.
We exist in
this world with our ego, a separated self. Looking deeply at ourselves, we are not
ourselves at all. Life goes up and down all the time because we have a wrong
perception and forget to discover our body and our mind. We should try to fix
our body and our mind to be a beautiful person. By breathing in and out, and
taking time to come back to ourselves completely, we could heal and nourish
ourselves.
This
physical body contains our ancestors in the past so that we have to treat our
body and mind kindly and respectfully. The more we see ourselves, the more we can
see and be able to understand others well. When we renew ourselves, we shall
see others in a new way as well. It is so magical to be awaken and be aware of
what is going on at the present moment.
Again, we have
to practice to understand ourselves to have a better understanding toward the
world around us. Use the mud to make a
lotus, turn sufferings into happiness. The Buddha disciples' career is to love,
to have compassion, and to understand others.
True love
always bring true happiness. Keep going the practice to be more patient and to
renew our relationships all the times. The more we listen to each other, the
more we have a better understanding. In order to do that, it would take a lot
of time to build such a good relationship with others. So, we have to practice
right away. Do not wait until bad situations happen in our life. If we know
what would make others happy, we should do it right now because we never know
if the person will suddenly die.
If we
confront with difficulties in life, we need to practice beginning anew inside
ourselves first, and then ask the person who we want to make a new beginning
with. If the person is not ready yet, we should wait for their consent; or we
can write an email or a letter to them explaining whatever is in our heart with
3 steps as the followings.
1) Watering
flowers; give details and clarify how we appreciate the person, what we love
about the person
2)
Expressing our regrets (or our incompetent skills)
3)
Expressing our hurts in a peaceful, skillful, and humble way
--------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. From my
point of view, we all learn from our mistakes. This "Beginning Anew"
is truly a wonderful process to refresh any relationships in the attempt of
making amendment and learning more about what would make us a better person at
the present moment mindfully and never go back to our old habits that harm
ourselves and others. On the other hand, we should open our heart and listen
deeply with compassion when someone want to express their feelings with us. For
me, I can say I'm working on it; learning to forgive and love unconditionally...
:)
Comments
Post a Comment