in order to help that person. So meditation is quite important for therapists. If you are a good therapist, no matter you say that you are practicing meditation or not, I believe you do, because you know to look at things in order to see their nature, somehow in the depth of their nature. The difference is that in Buddhism we have elaborated many, many methods of doing that. So the practice of Buddhism is based on meditation, is based on the principle of vasana, perfumation, fumigation. And the most important seed to be planted is the seed of understanding.

[01:06]

When we look at the flower deeply enough, we see non-flower elements within it, including the garbage. And when we look at the garbage, we can also see the non-garbage elements within the garbage. We can see the flower in there. We can see cucumber. We can see lettuce. I think that the good organic gardeners, they can see that. Even if they don't practice meditation a lot, when they look at the garbage heap, they can see cucumber and lettuce. That is why they are wise enough not to throw the garbage away. They keep the garbage in order to transform them back into cucumber and lettuce. If the flower is on her way to the garbage, the garbage should be on her way to the flower.

[02:08]

And this is the most important Buddhist teaching to me. That is called the teaching of non-duality. This is because that is, and if that is not, this cannot be. So the flower is not considering the garbage as her enemy. It's important. And the garbage is not depressed. The garbage is not looking at the flower as his enemy. In fact, they realize the nature of interbeing in each other, so that is why they don't panic. The flower does not panic when she knows that she is on her way to the garbage. Yeah, I think that is important because all of us know that we are going to die someday. But there are people who suffer very much from that idea. But there are people who can smile at that idea.

[03:13]

And that makes the difference between an enlightened person and not enlightened person. You know, in my tradition, the old people, especially in the old time, they are not afraid of dying. The grandfather would enjoy very much going to the... to the carpenter in order to select the kind of wood for his coffin. They want a beautiful coffin. and they wanted to lick the wood by themselves, and then they supervised the making of the coffin. During my time as a child, I saw many aged people doing so, and they were so happy to bring the coffin home and to place it in a room close to their room. And going in and out, they look at it, smiling. They love it, because not many people have that kind of privilege.

[04:17]

So the children, if they know what their parents want, they try in order to satisfy their parents' needs. And I saw a person who, from time to time, got into it, lie down to see whether it still fit. And when they sat on the porch watching their grandchildren to play, how they smiled beautifully. They know that their children are going to carry them into the future. So they do everything in order to bring their wisdom, their joy, in order to pass it to their children and grandchildren. It's very wise. In our time, not many people can do that. and they are very afraid of dying, and they try to ignore that fear in themselves. But obviously, I know of many people who consider dying as something very natural.

[05:26]

And if you study and practice the prasna paramita, you know that nothing can die. Nothing can become nothing. To be born means from nothing you become something, and that does not happen. We observe, we cannot find the single thing that has come from nothing. That is why the concept of birth is a concept that we have invented. And we cannot pick up something that we think that will become nothing. But something must become something else. When we burn a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper doesn't become nothing. It becomes something. It becomes the smoke. It becomes the heat. Going into the cosmos, it becomes some kind of ash.

[06:30]

And it continues to be in different forms. And breaking the thought of birth and death is the practice of meditation also. And when you arrive at that, you smile at birth and death, and you know that you have never been born, and you will never die. And people who have attained that kind of insight, well, they ride on waves of birth and death beautifully and joyfully like Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, described by Chinese and Vietnamese Buddhists as riding on the tide of birth and death. Love joy may be considered to be flowers.

[07:34]

But if we meditate, we know that that flower can turn into garbage very quickly if we don't know how to preserve it. And there are couples who enjoy much love and joy in the beginning, but because they don't know how to preserve that love and joy, They don't live mindfully. That is why that love and joy turn into hatred and anger, and they stare very quickly. So we can help the process of transformation from rose to garbage, but we can also help with the process of turning garbage into rose. And there are kinds of garbage that can be easily turned back into flowers. But there are kinds of garbage that need a long time and a lot of practice in order to be turned back to role.

[08:43]

When you throw a banana peel into the garbage can, You know that you are throwing a banana peel in a garbage can. That is the practice of meditation. You know what is going on. You don't do that in a meditation hall. You do it in a dining hall or in the kitchen. And you do it mindfully. That is what I call the practice of meditation. You do it with a lot of peace because you know that takes no time at all. for the banana peel to go back into a flower. But when you throw a plastic bag, you know that you are throwing a plastic bag. You feel a little bit uneasy because of the fact that you are mindful of what is going on because it may take much more time. And people say that when you throw a plastic disposable diaper,

[09:50]

into the garbage can, you know that it could take from 400 to 500 years for it to degrade. And because of the practice of mindfulness, you refrain. You know what to do and what not to do in order not to create the kind of garbage that will cause suffering for a long time. And all of us know that nuclear waste is the worst kind of garbage, and we are making a lot in the world. It takes about 250,000 years to turn them back into flowers. And the practice of mindfulness alone can save us from this situation. Concerning our person, we have flowers and garbage within ourselves. But from the Buddhist point of view, we are acceptable.

[10:53]

We are not afraid of our garbage. And we know how to cherish, to appreciate the presence of our flowers. You have understanding, you have joy, you have peace. It means you have that part of flower in you. But you also have hatred, you have despair, you have anger in you, and you know that that is the part of the garbage in you. But from the standpoint of Buddhist teaching, you know that you can transform the garbage into flour again. That is why you don't panic. You cherish the lettuce, the cucumbers, but you also cherish the garbage.

[11:58]

You don't throw them away because you know this brings the other. So to preserve the garbage in ourselves is the Buddhist principle of therapy. We don't want to throw it out. We don't want to get it out of our systems. Because if we get it out, we have nothing left in order to make our flowers grow. Nirvana is made of samsara. That is a very well-known saying in Buddhism. And Buddhism is made only of non-Buddhist elements. I think Western therapy has the tendency to get things that they don't want out of their body, of their mind.

[13:04]

A therapist might behave like a surgeon, thinking that the best way is to make a surgery, to pick the wrong thing and to throw it out. Peace activists in the West are thinking of doing peace like that. They think that if we can throw our atomic bombs outside of our planet, that is good. But they don't know that it is our body, our mind, that are the roots of atomic bombs. Dealing with the roots is the problem. So if we have a nodule, a kind of tumor in us, even if it is benign, it's not maybe benign, they say that in order to be safe, it's better that you undergo a surgery and take it out.

[14:32]

Better, even if you run only 5% or 10% risk. for it to turn into a cancerous nodule and then it's better to... And I know that many people who have got cancer have been practicing and have practiced and using herbal medicines, and they have been able to transform the situation. And the cancer is gone. So operating, I mean, to operate, to open and take it out, may not be the only way. And I think therapists in the West are inclined to do that way. Anger is energy, like hatred, like delusion, and it is rubbish.

[15:39]

But there are ways in order to preserve these kinds of energies and to transform them. During the war, I wrote a very short poem about my anger. I think I might ask Rashani to sing it to you. The poem is very short. But when Betsy Rose made it into a song, she added more words. And she made it more dramatic and less strong than the original. But people like that better because they feel closer to it. The original is something like this. I hold my face in my two hands. Well, the American bombers just destroyed a village that we have helped rebuild.

[16:40]

And... They have destroyed four times the village and have built four times that village. It was very close to the demilitarized zone. I hold my face in my two hands. No, I am not crying. That's the second line. No, I am not crying. I hold my face in my two hands in order to keep my loneliness warm. Two hands to nourish, two hands to protect, two hands to keep my soul from leaving me in anger. That is my thought. And I'm holding my anger. I'm not expressing it. I was taking good care of my anger because I know that what I have to do is to transform it into the kind of energy that is needed for my country, for my peace, for the peace of my country.

[17:58]

Dasani is here? Please come. I hold my faith in my two hands.

[19:02]

I hold my faith in my two hands. To cast off my thoughts while we see me Deeper than crying I am not crying I hold my faith In my two hands I hold my pain In my two hands

[20:14]

To keep my loneliness warm To breathe in my heart and breathe Shelter my heart From the breeze and thunder You have prevented my soul from flying in anger. I hold my faith In my two hands I hold my faith In my two hands

[21:29]

Holding the wing that bears the force of the king. Shelter the pain from the windstorm that rages. Or leave the place where tomorrow may not forgive. When something triggers your anger, your anger from being a seed becomes a zone of energy burning in your body, burning in yourself.

[23:18]

The Buddhist practice is to Go back to the breathing and recognize anger as anger. Breathing in, I know that I am angry. Breathing out, I know that I am angry. And the Buddhist attitude is to take care very kindly of your anger. You don't suppress it. You don't run away from it. You just breathe and hold your anger in your arms with the most tenderness you can afford. And you breathe on your anger. Breathing in, I know that I'm angry. Breathing out, I know that I'm angry. And you continue to practice right there. Not saying anything, not doing anything, just practicing breathing. Breathing in, I know that anger is still in me.

[24:21]

Breathing out, I know I am angry at this moment. And if possible, you practice walking meditation while doing so. Anger is still there, but it's already different. It's like you throw a stone into the river. The stone will sink. But if you have something else to help, like a boat, then you can have many kilograms of stone the fear of having them sink. When you practice breathing and you produce awareness about your anger in yourself, you are taking care of your anger in the way the Buddha taught.

[25:26]

You should not be angry at your anger. If you are angry at your anger, then anger will be doubled and you suffer more. So instead, you bring about the mindfulness of your anger and that is the sponsor of your anger. What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is the awareness that something is going on. And you produce awareness in yourself in order to take good care of your anger. Your anger is like this. And if you leave it alone in yourself, it will be very destructive. you will say things, you will do things. And if you don't say things, you don't do things, it still continues to destroy, not in this direction, but in this direction.

[26:30]

So what you do is to bring out the awareness of your anger in order to protect and to sponsor it. Breathing in, I know that I am angry. But now I know that I am angry. And there, anger is no longer alone. Anger is with something else, that is your mindfulness. And mindfulness, to us who practice Buddhism, is the Buddha in person. Because mindfulness is the awareness of what is going on, and that is the very essence of Buddhahood. If you are aware of what is going on, then very soon you will see into its true nature and you will be emancipated. It's like when you contemplate a flower in the morning, a tulip flower, a lotus flower.

[27:39]

In the morning the flower still glows like this. And when the sun dries and begins to shine on the flower, it still keeps like this. But if the sun keeps shining on the flower, something will happen. After one hour and two hours of shining, well, the flower will have to bloom. The sunshine tries to penetrate deeply into the flower. And our mindfulness is like that. If you keep breathing and sponsoring your anger, the particles of mindfulness will enter, infiltrate into the body of the anger. The sunshine is a source of energy made of particles called photons, and they penetrate into the flower. And at some point, the flower cannot breathe.

[28:43]

It has to open itself. and show its heart to the sun. If we keep practicing maintaining mindfulness, breathing on our anger, taking good care of it, using our compassion, our understanding to shine on anger, very soon our anger will crack. and be able to look into the depth of our anger. Anger is not very pleasant to experience. It's like raw potatoes. But you know that if you don't have raw potatoes, you don't have cooked potatoes.

[29:47]

So you put the raw potatoes into a pan, you pour the water in it, and you put it on the fire. And then you put a cover on it. The fire underneath is mindfulness, the practice, the continued practice of mindfulness. You see the sunshine continuing to shine on the flower. And the cover is your concentration. If you want your mindfulness to be strong, to be powerful, in order to take good care of your anger and then practice concentration, it means that at the time when you are practicing mindfulness on your anger, you should be somehow alone. You should not listen to television, you should not talk to other people, especially to the person who has just helped the seed of anger to manifest, it's better that you turn around.

[30:54]

You'll be yourself, alone, walking or sitting, practicing breathing on your anger. And the moment you begin it, It seems that you don't see any difference, but there is already a difference. When mindfulness is born, there is already a difference. When the pot of raw potatoes is put on the fire, the water begins to be warm. Although it's not boiling yet, but it starts to be warm. And if you can keep it on the fire for some time, it will begin to boil. And 45 minutes or one hour later when you uncover it, you smell something delicious, the potatoes are cooked. The same thing is true with your anger. You can cook your anger and you can transform it into something else quite useful to your body and your mind.

[31:56]

And as you look deeply into your anger, you see the root of your anger. And you do the work of transformation just by planting the seeds of understanding in you. There was a 14-year-old boy who practiced in Plum Village. He told me this story. He came to Plum Village once a year and stayed for one month to practice. And then he brought the practice home and practiced with his sisters and brothers. He told me that when he was 11, he was very angry at his father because he could not understand his father. Every time he'd fall down and get hurt, his father would get very angry at him and shout at him. He could not understand because to him, when someone gets hurt, he would need care and compassion.

[33:06]

And anger doesn't help at all. And when my sister got hurt, also she was shouted at by her father. So he told himself that when he grows up, he will be quite different. When my son falls down and gets hurt, I would not be angry at him. I would come to him, pick him up, and try to say very assuring things to him. I would be very different from my father. And that kind of determination is quite remarkable. But just a year ago, I had a very interesting experience. I would like to tell you that is what he reported to me. His sister was playing with another little girl on a hammock.

[34:13]

And suddenly they fell off the hammock and her sister got very hurt. And then blood was running here. Suddenly he found that he was very angry at his sister. He wanted to shout at her, to say that, how stupid you are. Why did you do that? But fortunately, he stopped in time. He did not do that. He said that because he had practiced breathing and practiced mindfulness in Plum Village, that is why he recognized anger as anger. And that is why he could stop in time to breathe. And while some other people were taking care of the wounded little girl, he turned away and he practiced breathing on his anger. And he walked. He told me this time.

[35:18]

Suddenly I saw that I am exactly like my father. And I know if I don't do anything for that anger in me, I am going to transmit it to my children. And at the same time, I saw something very important. I saw that my father may have been a victim like me, and the seed of anger might have been transmitted by my grandfather. And I told myself to practice in order to transform my anger into something else. And after a few months, I was able to look at my father without any anger. And I brought the fruit of my practice back to my father. And I told him that I used to be angry at him. But now I understood And I wish that he conduct this like me in order to transform this situation. And after that, the father and son became very close, like a couple of friends.

[36:22]

And what the young man realized there is quite remarkable. We usually think that fathers and mothers have to nourish children. But in this case, it is the children who can bring the nourishing things back to the father and mother in order to help transform them. There are young men or young women who believe that they don't want to have anything to do with the father and the mother. Because during their childhood, they suffer so much from their father and their mother. But if they practice, and if they see how the mind works, and how the seeds become manifested Dharma, they will understand that their father and mother may be just victims like them. And it is with compassion that they have to deal with them instead of anger.

[37:24]

There was a man who lived in Los Angeles, a Vietnamese refugee. He had not talked with his son for four years because they did not go well with each other. The man came from a very different kind of culture and society. He was born there and he was raised up there as a Vietnamese, having Confucianism as a way of life. And his son had been sent to an American school and had been exposed to the American way of life. And they could not understand each other, so they did not talk to each other. They were angry at each other. They had made each other suffer a lot. During a retreat in Northern California, I talked about understanding as the basic condition of love.

[38:41]

Prasna and karuna. Prasna is understanding. Karuna is love, compassion. If you don't have one, you don't have the other. If you don't understand, you cannot love. If you love properly and you make the other person happy, it means you understand. And if your love is making the other person unhappy, that means it is not true love. It is not based on understanding. And during the retreat there was a deep transformation in the soul of the person. I do not hesitate to use the word soul or self. He knew that he did not understand his son and his son did not understand his suffering. So he knew that he had to transform himself. I said that if you don't understand the suffering, the difficulties, the anguish, the aspiration of the other person, there's no way you can love him or her.

[39:56]

Even if you have a tremendous amount of goodwill, you can make that person suffer a lot. So please, please go back to that person, hold his hand, hold her hand, and sit close to him or her and ask this question, Darling, do you think I understand you? Have I made you suffer a lot because of my love? Please tell me. And if the person you talk to begins to cry, that is a good sign, because the door of understanding It opens again, and you can communicate again. But you have to transform yourself before you can say such a thing. You have to get a lot of courage, a lot of wisdom in order to say such a thing. And the father in Los Angeles, he had that kind of courage.

[41:03]

So he decided to recuperate his son. And on the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles, he meditated on how to talk to his son. When he got home, his son was not there. And his son came back only three days after. So he had more time to prepare for his strategy of communication. And when he heard his son coming, he stood up and he brought a chair and invited his son to sit down. That was not very usual in a Confucian family. But the young people bring a chair to the elder and not the opposite. Confucianism is like that. And then when the boy was 16, sat down, he said like this.

[42:14]

He reported to me every word. He said, son, I know that I made a lot of mistakes in the last four years. I know that I have made you suffer a lot, and that is because I did not understand you. So please give me a chance so that I can repair all that. His son made a comment, very short. He said, I don't believe it. And then he left again for three more weeks. He did believe that a miracle can happen. But a miracle did happen. But during these three weeks, it seems that the seed of that statement has gone deeply into it. his alaya vijnana had developed. So he went back, and this time he consented to sit down and talk with his father. And his father continued to talk in that kind of language, that kind of attitude.

[43:19]

And finally, reconciliation was possible. That happened three years ago. This year, when I conducted a retreat for refugees, Vietnamese refugees, in Southern California, both son and father came for the retreat. And I received them in my cabin and I talked to them because I had the feeling that I had many things to learn from their experience in order to share with other people. And if that father has succeeded in his attempt to reestablish understanding, if the little boy who brought back his insight and helped his father to understand his seed of anger, then I think all of us can do so and can help other people to do so.

[44:30]

We usually think that the seeds of suffering in us have been planted during our childhood. And if we continue to suffer like this because of that important period. But we neglect the fact that from that time on we have been living in such a way that it continues to plant seeds of suffering into us. I know of people who had difficult childhood but who can live happily because they have lived in grace by which they can plant joyful and happy seeds within their alaya, vijnana. And when we practice breathing mindfully and look into the nature of our anger, we may ask the question as, why that person has said such a thing to us, has done such a thing to us?

[46:08]

And very soon we will find the answer. And if we can see the roots of things, we'll be liberated from our anger. In Plum Village, we receive lots of news from Southeast Asia. And many of the news are not joyful. What happened in the hard labor camps. What happened in the refugee camps? What happened on the ocean with the boat people? Things like that are not very pleasant to listen. But we keep receiving that kind of news every day. And many times we know that we are not able to handle all of this news.

[47:15]

So we have to postpone the job of opening the letters in order to practice walking, sitting, smiling. And when we feel ready, we come and open the mail. One day I received the news that a 13-year-old girl was raped on a boat from South Vietnam to Thailand. And after being raped, the little girl could not, the young girl could not bear, so she jumped into the ocean and drowned. And news like that. Of course I got angry. And I had to practice breathing.

[48:19]

And sometime I got the news that 35 people on the boat were killed completely by the sea pirates. One of them survived and reported to the United Nations Commission on refugees. And there should be many boats like that attacked by pirates and killed completely without any body reporting. But that night, during meditation, I saw that I can be a sea pirate very easily. I saw myself as a baby born in a fishing village along the coast of Thailand. My father is a drunk person, very poor fisherman, and he inherited that kind of situation from his father, who was also very poor.

[49:28]

And my mother is a woman who doesn't know how to raise children properly. So I don't go to school. I play with children on the street. And when I got 20, I became a poor fisherman like my father. And one day on the high sea, another fisherman said, well, let us just try once, because the refugees, they have some gold, some valuable. And if we can get it, if we can get out of our situation, being a poor, miserable fisherman for all our life, we can do something else. to have a decent life. And I was tempted by that kind of thing because I never went to school.

[50:33]

Nobody told me how to understand and to love. I was tempted, so I agreed. And when I saw other fishermen doing like that, I just tell myself, why don't I try like him? Everybody is doing that. So I commit the crime of raping the little girl. Now if you are there, and if you have a gun, you shoot me. I die, that's all. You don't help me. Nobody helped me when I was born. Nobody helped me when I grew up as a little boy. No one helped me when I became a poor fisherman. And now, if I do things like this because I have been raised like that, killing me does not help me. And last night, along the coast of Thailand, 500, 600 babies were born in that way.

[51:35]

And if economists, educators, politicians don't do anything for them, dozens of them will become at least sea pirates in 20 years. And when you see that in your meditation, your anger for the pirates just disappears. You know that you have to do something for them in order for them not to become a pirate. And when they become a pirate, shooting at them, that doesn't help. You make their mothers cry. Their mothers are also victims. And the contemplation, the meditation on the nature of your anger can bring about that kind of insight. And with that insight, compassion is born in you. Compassion is a source of energy, just like anger. It has been the result of your meditation. Formerly it was anger, now it is compassion.

[52:39]

And having that compassion In you and having that kind of insight, you know what to do and not what to do with the pirates, or the pirates-to-be that have been born in the last night. I told you the story of the grain of corn. In Buddhism, we talk about suchness. Suchness means the nature of a person or of a thing. When we understand the suchness of a person, we can begin to love and to help him or her. A person is supposed to have flowers and garbage within himself or herself.

[53:43]

And if we love, we have to accept both sides. It's like a bottle of gas. We know that gas is dangerous. We can die because of the gas. But we have brought the bottle of gas into our kitchen because we know that gas can help us cook a good meal. We can live peacefully and happily with the bottle of gas because we know the suchness of gas. Electricity is like that. It can kill you, but it can help you a great deal. So you have invited electricity to your home and coexist peacefully with it. So your wife, your husband, they do have their suchness. They do have the part of their flower and the part of their garbage And if we know their suchness, we'll be able to live with them happily and peacefully. If we do not live peacefully and happily with him or her because we don't know enough about their suchness.

[54:48]

If you know their suchness, you wouldn't know how to turn on the flower in her and you will profit from that. And if you are too ignorant, you will come and turn on the garbage in her. And you have that garbage to develop and you have to suffer. Therefore, understanding a person is the basic thing to do in order to help him or her and to help you yourself. And sometimes you think that you need to transform that person so that she or he will become pleasant to you. but you don't know that you also should be pleasant to her. So the first thing we have to look is to look at the flowers and garbage within ourselves. And the practice of meditation is just the practice nourishing the flower and transforming the garbage into flowers again.

[55:52]

It is a continued process, not just you have to do it for all your life. I guess the Buddha practiced that all his life also, not just before enlightenment. And he cherished garbage and flowers at the same time. Without suffering, how can you experience joy and peace? A person who does not know what is suffering doesn't know how to appreciate happiness. If you have not had any food egg, you cannot enjoy your non-food egg. Therefore suffering is useful in many ways. And you practice peace and joy and the transformation in yourself. And when you know that the flower in you is quite obvious, quite pleasant, you roll to that other person as the flower and you have the chance to help him or her.

[57:02]

You cannot go to her as a piece of garbage. You cannot do anything with that. So what we can offer each other is flowers. We have to offer our husband a flower, have to offer our wife a flower.

[57:27]

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