Weekend of Mindful Gardening 2017 @THAI PLUM VILLAGE

Dharma Talk at Thai Plum Village International Practice Center.

12 November 2017

Documented by Jibzy Sunshine

Last weekend, I had a chance to attend 'Weekend of Mindful Gardening' at Thai Plum Village International Practice Center during 10-12 November 2017. Not only the practitioners were able to practice mindfulness, we also took care to the monastic gardens at vegetable plots.

On Sunday moring, the Dharma teacher shared his diet experiences during his practice in Plum Village France. He mentioned that the most common obstacles to practice mindfulness during sitting meditation are that the session maybe too long. Some practitioners may feel bored, pain, difficult to sit still due to physical limitation, or they are not be able to stop their thinking easily.

When you are hearing ‘Breathing in, come back to your breath.’, it maybe only one time that you are able to follow. Some say you can count your breath 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, until 10 and repeating the counting again and again. From his experience, he tried to count but sometimes he lose his counting and he needed to redo again. Therefore, he suggested we should count only 1, 2, and 3 so that you can come back to your breath and stop thinking.

Whenever he has to make a dharma talk and communicate in English. He often felt shy and nervous because he speaks Vietnamese and French. English is his third language. He comes back to his breathing. Also, if you want to be creative, you also have to come back to your breathing. When we face with troubles, many emotions may occur at the same time. We come back to our breathing, come back to our body, our heart to control our turbulence feelings and stop our thinking.

In monastery, there are a lot of bells. We learn new habits to cultivate positive energy. When we hear the sound of the bell or sound of a singing bird, we stop and breathe. To have a good habit and good energy, you have to make yourself eager to breathe. For example, if you run uphill with very steep road in high hilly areas, you may feel exhausted, tired, then may lose your breathe. You have too many things to do, to take care of. As such, you need to have enough strength and energy to carry out your days. The Dharma teacher recommended to do exercise daily.

Option 1: Qigong is the most powerful exercise. Or you may exercise by touching the earth 108 times in the morning. Usually, it will take about 30 minutes. However, if we don’t have much time and want to spend time less, you can do H.I.I.T. exercise in option two.

Option 2: High Intensity Interval Training (H.I.I.T.) means short heavy exercise, then stop to relax and do exercise again. We may combine H.I.I.T. exercise with touching the earth 24 times to be more effective. Your body will be able to relax by laying down and do total relaxation, focus on your breathing. So you can calm down quickly. Then do it again.

Option 3: Using Japanese way by drinking 2-3 cups of warm water after you wake up. Then do exercise by touching the earth 54 times and aware of your body. You will feel your body absorb water and become your blood. If you have more blood, you will have more energy. You can introduce touching the earth to another person to do it slowly first. Relax, smile, and be full of energy.

In our daily life, we may face with difficulty, competitions, tense, and stress. When we practice, it is very important to relax, realize our breath, and smile.  

Our breath and our blood share the same root of being fluid. When some air enter to our body, it is similar to water pumping. When we are breathing in, our blood flow all over our body. When we are breathing out, we make a space in our abdomens. If we have more bloods, we have more red cells to transport oxygen to every body parts. If we feel too tense, intensity in our body will block the blood circulation, or the blood will become thicker.

Take a deep breath in. Have a long breath out. Relax more, then you smile. From the dharma teacher’s point of view, relaxing is more important than practice mindfulness seriously. The better way to be lazier is that you don’t eat too much. If you have less intake, you have less to digest, and have more time to relax your body. That morning, he said he didn’t have breakfast because he was preserving his energy for his dharma talk, not for digestion. Thus, he chose to come back to his breathing instead. He also used to read a book saying even you have eaten a lot of food in one meal, few hours later you are still hungry. He takes that into practice by eating less. It is normal for him to feel hungry all the times.

He suggested we eat what are easy to digest. Even your food is easy to digest and you feel hungry again. It also means you have blood to feel our organs to nourish our body. The nutritious are not going to our stomach only.  Some people eat less nutritious foods in a massive amount to fulfill quickly such as breads, sweets, deserts, etc. He suggested to eat less rice to feel more energy to feed our brain. Nowadays, our world has a lot of psychological problems. We have many machines to work for us. We use less and less energy or otherwise, we maybe too busy with overworking. After meal, some body still feel tired, feel sleepy. He/She may need some coffee after meal. This is an indicator that we ate too much. 

In Plum Village France, when the dharma teacher did a retreat in the mountain, he adopted light diet. For breakfast, he would eat only fruits. He suggested that we should eat only when we are hungry and drink when we are thirsty. For lunch, he would have vegetables and a half bowl of rice. For dinner, he would have only vegetable soups. If we need to make an effort, we should not eat to make our stomach empty. If we do a lot of exercise, we should eat more vegetables, more fibers, less rice, and less meats. Our exercise must take place before meals because if we already have a meal, it will be very difficult to move our body. The marvelous thing about hiking or other exercise is that you will sleep well and your body will recover very quickly.

Credit Photo: Thai Plum Village Facebook

Somebody may concern about lacking of protein when we eat a lot of vegetables. However, if we eat too much protein, we put our body in danger. Milk is considered a rich nutritious food. The problem is our body does not need much of rich foods. If we have too much, we will get sick. While our body cells must be renewed, our stomach should be empty to repair other body parts; the energy should not to feed only digestion system.

To stay young, we have to practice mindfulness, relax, and eat vegetables. In our times, many people have health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, cancers, etc. These are symptoms that occur from our diet of wrong eating. When we consume white rice, it will be digested into sugar. Therefore, when you are eating white rice, it would be equal to drink a bowl of syrup. Many years later, the person may get diabetes. Cancer: if we takes too much sugar, it will circulate to feed germs or cancer cells in our body. It would be better if we eat brown rice and chewing well enough because brown rice contains vitamins, minerals, and proteins. We also can get proteins from other sources such as beans and ripe fruits. If we get proteins from animal products, these nutritious will go to feed cancer cells. If we get proteins from vegetables, we have to eat many kinds of vegetables to have enough nutritious to nourish our body. The good news is vegetable proteins enough for our good cells, but not enough to feed cancer cells because our bodies are not rich anymore.

Bonfire on Saturday night: singing, music, grilled corns and sweet potatoes! :)
Credit Photo: lily t. mahakunachirakul Facebook

In our practice of mindfulness, we raise awareness to have compassion for our descendants and to set a good example. If we are able to maintain good practice, we can be a role model of not over eating. As such, mindful eating is necessary. Be aware that a pleasure from foods in a present day can be harmful and dangerous in the future.

In conclusion, relax more, smile, and stay in the practice of mindfulness.