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How to Discover our own Refuge
© Thich Nhat
Hanh
Dharma
Talk given by
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This
talk was transcribed by Maxine Phillips
You
are invited to sit beautifully, upright, and practise mindful breathing,
breathing in and out. Breathing in, I feel calm, breathing out, I feel
happy.
[Bell]
(Please breathe with us)
Good
morning, my dear friends, today is the 11th of July in the year 2005, and we
are in the Upper Hamlet, Dharma Cloud Temple. I would like to talk to you
a little bit about the Buddha, about who he is. First we have to say that
the Buddha is not a god, he is a human being like us. This is very
important to know. Buddha is not a god. The Buddha does not claim
to be a god, a creator of the universe, and he is a human being like all of
us. As a young person, he suffered like us, like we do, but because of
his practice, he could transform his suffering, he could develop his
understanding and his love, and he could became a teacher, a wonderful
teacher. He has helped many people transform their suffering, to
cultivate great love, great understanding, and the best way to look at the
Buddha is to see him as a teacher, a big brother. At the age of 80, he
died. But that was not the end of him, because he had taught many, many
disciples, monks and nuns and lay friends. These monks, these nuns, these
lay people, they have also practiced like him, they have also been able to
transform a lot of their suffering, they have cultivated love, and
understanding, so they are like the continuation of the Buddha. So the Buddha
is continued by his friends, his disciples. And now, as we gather here,
we have to look at ourselves. We have accepted the Buddha as our teacher,
we follow his way of practice, so that we can transform our suffering,
cultivate our love, our understanding. So we are also the continuation of the
Buddha. I’m very proud to be a continuation of the Buddha, because I am
doing what he did during his life: transforming suffering, cultivating love and
understanding. So I am a continuation of the Buddha, and when you look
into me you can see the Buddha in me. But when you look into yourself,
you see that you are a continuation of the Buddha also, because you are
determined and you have accepted the Buddha as your teacher. You learn
his way to transform your suffering, to overcome your suffering, and to
cultivate more love, more compassion, more understanding, more insight, so that
we become happier, so that we become more capable to help the people around us
to suffer less, and to be happy. So we must see ourselves in the best way, to
look at ourselves as a continuation of the Buddha. The Buddha has never
died. He has continued throughout 2,600 years, and now we are his
continuation, each of us, not only Thay, but all of you are the continuation of
the Buddha. You continue the
When
the Buddha was about to die…it means that his physical body will not be there,
but his dharma body will be alive forever, and we carry within ourselves the
dharma body of the Buddha, so the Buddha never died. When he was 80 and
he knew that he had to get rid of his old body, he was a little bit worried
that his disciples and students and friends would cry, because some of us are
still weak, and when our teacher dies, we cry. The Buddha knew that after
his passing away, many disciples would cry and miss him, because these
disciples had not seen the dharma body of the Buddha – they had only seen the
physical body of the Buddha. There are at least two bodies of the Buddha,
and I want you to recognise the dharma body. The physical body of the
Buddha only lasted for 80 years. Mine may last more than that because we
live in a time when there are more doctors, there are more medicines, more
care, and that is why many of our physical bodies can last a little bit longer
than the Buddha’s! So the physical body of the Buddha only lasted for 80
years. That’s not too bad! But his dharma body may last a very long
time. It depends on us whether the dharma body lasts a long or not very
long time. Dharma is the teaching, the truth, the practice, and while he
was still alive, he tried to transfer the dharma to his disciples, to his
friends. The way to develop compassion and love, the way to look deeply
in order to understand better, deeper, that is the dharma, and the Buddha did
not do anything except show the dharma, transfer the dharma to the next
generation, and Thay is trying to do the same! The whole day, he doesn’t
want to do anything else. He wants to show the dharma and transfer the
dharma to his friends and students. It’s a very nice thing to do because
the dharma helps. When you suffer a lot, when you are angry, when you are
in despair, when you feel very lonely, then if you know how to take up the
dharma and practise, you feel much better after a few minutes, and that is the
dharma body of the Buddha. The physical body may die after 80 years, but
the dharma body may live forever. And as you receive the dharma body into
yourself, you practise the dharma, the dharma helps you to suffer less, to be
happier, to be more compassionate, and then you also have a dharma body, and
your dharma body is the continuation of the Buddha’s dharma body. Is that
clear? And I want to tell you that you have a physical body, but as a
student of the Buddha, you also have a dharma body, and you have to take care
of your dharma body. That dharma body does not only serve you, but it
serves many people in society and in the future, so take care of your dharma
body by the study and the practice of the dharma. And Thay cares very much
about his dharma body.
We
have to feed the dharma body by our practice. We have to take good care
of our dharma body so that it will be vigorous, solid, because when the dharma
body is strong, we don’t suffer. You suffer because your dharma body is too
weak, and when you come to Plum Village, you learn ways in order to make your
dharma body strong by the practice of the dharma every day, by the practice of
walking mindfully, sitting peacefully, eating happily, and so on. So the
dharma is not just a dharma talk. The dharma should be the living dharma.
A book about the dharma is the dharma also, but it is not the living
dharma. The living dharma is seen in our daily life. While you
walk, you sit, you smile, you work, you speak, the dharma should help you to be
more joyful, calmer, more compassionate, friendlier, and when others see that,
they recognise it is the living dharma. It’s not the dharma through words
in a book or speech – it’s the living dharma, so when you smile to the other
person with compassion, and forgive him or her for the mistake he had
committed, then you are expressing the living dharma. You don’t say
anything, you just look at him or her and smile with compassion; you are
expressing the living dharma. And that’s more precious than the oral or
written dharma, you see? And by doing things like that, looking at other
people with the eyes of compassion, or forgiveness, or helping people to suffer
less, you are generating the living dharma. The living dharma always
makes you happy and makes other people around you happy. And that is why
it is very nice to receive the living dharma from the Buddha, from your
teacher, from your big brother or big sister in the dharma, so that you may
begin to cultivate that living dharma in you. The dharma body is like a
tree, like a plant, you have to take care of, to cultivate every day so that it
becomes a strong plant, a strong tree. It will bring flowers and fruit
that make you happy and make people around you happy. That is why taking
care of the living dharma in you is very important. And that is why the
So
when the Buddha was about to die, I mean as a physical body, he was a little
bit worried that a number of his disciples would cry, would suffer, because
these people had not seen very clearly his dharma body. That is why he
gave this teaching…please listen.
When
he was 80, and he was afraid that some of his disciples would cry too much
after his physical body disappeared, he taught like this, “My dear friends,
there is a beautiful island within, that you may take refuge in every time you
suffer. Don’t take refuge in anything, in anyone, except in the island
inside.” And this is a very wonderful teaching. At that time he was
in the city of Vaishali. I have visited this city several times.
When you cross the Ganges River, you arrive at the city of Vaishali. And
he met with groups of students in Vaishali, and he went to visit many other
sanghas, small communities of practice, monks and nuns and others, and he met
with dozens of groups of friends and disciples like that, and he spoke about
taking refuge in the island within yourself. Don’t take refuge in
anything, anyone, but take refuge in the island within yourself. The
island within yourself is for you to discover. It’s a very safe place.
It’s a place where you feel calm, you are not disturbed, and you feel
happy. You feel protected. Every time we feel we suffer so much, we
feel we are attacked by every side, we feel that no-one loves us, that everyone
wants us to suffer, every time we fail in everything we do, then we have to
remember there is a very fine, beautiful place that we can go home to in order
to take refuge, and that place, you have to discover…it is not located in
space. It’s easy to go to Paris, because Paris is located in space.
You look at the map, and you see in what direction Paris is, you just go in
that direction and you find Paris, but this island of self, this refuge where
you can feel safe, feel happy, feel connected, feel calm, that island of self
you have to discover by your practice.
I
would like to tell you a story that will help you to understand better the
practice of taking refuge in the island of self. About 30 years ago, I
was practising and living in the northern part of France and there was a
hermitage called “Les Patates Douces” and I went to a solo retreat in that
hermitage, and that morning, it was beautiful, and I decided to spend the whole
day in the wood. The hermitage was situated in a kind of forest called
“La foret d’Othe” and I like to do walking meditation and sitting meditation in
a wood, so that morning, I decided to spend the whole day in the wood. I
brought with me a bowl of rice, some sesame seeds, a bottle of water, and off I
went to the forest and wanted to stay the whole day there. I enjoyed it
very much, but at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon black clouds began to gather
and I knew that I could not stay longer in the wood, that I had to go home to
the hermitage. Before I left the hermitage I had opened the door and all
the windows so that the sunshine could come in, and now the wind had begun to
blow and I knew that I have to stop my stay in the wood and go home to the
hermitage to take care of it. When I arrived at the hermitage, I found
the situation not pleasant at all. The wind had blown very hard, and all
the papers I put on my table were blown a little bit everywhere, and then it’s
cold, it’s miserable in the hermitage, cold and dark and disorder, it’s a
mess! The first thing I did was to go and close all the windows because I
didn’t want the wind to continue its work of destruction, so I closed the
windows and I also closed the door. And then I made a fire in the chimney
and when the fire began to come alive, I began to collect all the sheets of
paper on the ground and put them on the table and then took the little brick I
had to put on it, and tried to make the hermitage tidy, in order. By that
time, the chimney was very pleasant already. By that time it was warm, it
was pleasant, it was cosy in the hermitage and I sat by the fire, I toasted my
fingers, and I listened and enjoyed the wind and the rain outside. And
that is my practice.
There
are days when you feel that it’s not your day, everything goes wrong. And
the more effort you make, the situation becomes worse. Of course you have
gone through days like that in your life. You fail in everything, you
suffer, you get angry, people blame you, you are not happy, you are
frustrated. And you tell yourself that you have to make more effort, but
the more effort you make, the worse the situation becomes, and then you know
that it’s time to stop, it’s time to stop everything, it’s time to go home to
yourself and take refuge in yourself. You have to close your windows, the
eyes, the ears; you have to close the five windows. You should not be in
touch with the outside any more; you have to close the windows of your
hermitage. Because there is a hermitage within yourself – that is the
island of self that I want you to discover. If you continue to be on the
outside, then you continue to suffer, you know. That is why in moments
like that, you have to go home to the island of self, and the first thing you
do is exactly what I did with my hermitage, to close the five windows.
And you know that eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, are the six windows you
close. Don’t look, don’t listen, don’t touch, and don’t think. Stop
everything in order to prevent the strong wind from the outside to continue to
blow in and to make you miserable, because the eye is a window, the ear is a
window, the mind is a window, and if you keep them open, the wind of suffering,
the wind of disturbance will continue to come and make the situation worse and
worse. Don’t try any more. Stop trying and shut the windows.
You shut also the door, and you have to go to the chimney and make a
fire. You want to get a feeling of warmth, cosiness, and comfort by
practising mindful breathing, going home to yourself. And rearrange
everything, your feelings, your perceptions, your emotions, they are all
scattered all over, it’s a mess. You have to recognise each feeling, each
emotion, and you have to collect them like I collected all the sheets of paper
that were scattered a little bit all over. Practise mindfulness and
concentration, and tidy up everything within yourself. You are going
home, you have gone home to your island of self, and you are transformed into a
place that is cosy and pleasant for you to take refuge in. Everyone has a
hermitage within, very safe, very cosy, very comfortable, very calm, and they
have to go home to that hermitage. The expression that the Buddha used is
“dípá atta dípá saraná.” “Atta” means self, “dípá” means island, and
“saraná” means refuge. “Taking refuge in the island of
self.” This is the dharma talk that the Buddha gave when he was 80 to
many groups of friends and disciples. If you rely on the outside, you get
lost. That is why you have to go home and rely on something that is
reliable, that is the island of self.
[Bell]
(Please breathe with us)
There
are many ways to go home to the island of self. One of the ways is to
practise mindful breathing and concentrate on your breath. You will
discover the island of self. The other way is to do walking
meditation. Every step brings you home to the here and the now, and then
you can open the door of the island of self and go into it. In Plum
Village, we have written a few songs about the practice of taking refuge in the
island of self. Maybe we ask Sister Chan Khong to sing to us. We
have it in French, we have it in English, and we have it in German and so on…
Sister
Chan Khong sings:
Breathing
in, I go back to the island within myself
There are beautiful trees within the island
There are clear streams of water
There are birds and sunshine and fresh air
Breathing out I feel safe
I enjoy going back to my island.
Thank
you Sister Chan Khong, everyone…
We
remember the teaching of the Buddha when we are tired, when we feel that we are
not solid, we feel we are victims of the environment and victims of our
emotions, and then what we should do is to go home right away, to the
hermitage, to the island of self. And with the practice, we will discover
that is the safest place to go back to. And after some time being in the
island of self, in the hermitage of self, you recover yourself and then you are
in a much better position to get in touch with the world outside. And
Thay has said that it takes time, it takes practice in order to recognise, to
find our island of self, because the island of self is not exactly in the
body. When we say inside, that does not mean exactly inside the body, it
is not really located in the body. We have a better chance to find it in
the dharma body than in the physical body. And everyone has that
island. No waves can reach that island, so standing on the island, we are
very safe, we recover ourselves, restore ourselves, become strong, and then we
are ready to go out again, to help. And so even if you are still very
young, you know that there is an island within yourself. Every time you
feel you suffer so much, nothing seems to go right, you have to stop making
efforts, you have to go home to that island right away. And taking refuge
in the island for five, ten, fifteen minutes, half an hour, you know that you
feel stronger, much better within yourself. Taking refuge within
ourselves… “Monks, you should know how to take refuge in the island within
yourself”…that was his teaching.
I
think the young people can stand up and make a bow and go out and
practise.
[Small
bell] (Please breathe with us)
Dear
Friends, one of the ten epithets that Thay uses to describe the Buddha is Sugatha,
and it may be translated in French as “Le bienheureux”. It means that the
Buddha is a happy person, the happy one. It means that it is possible to
be happy and according to the teaching and the practice happiness can be there,
can be touched in the present moment, in the here and the now. The freer
you are, the happier you are at the same time, because freedom is the ground of
happiness, and freedom here means freedom from afflictions. When you are
caught by sorrow or by regret, caught in your sorrow or in your regret
concerning the past, you are not free. You are not free from the
past. You keep thinking about the past. And because you don’t have
freedom, you suffer. That is why we have to free ourselves from our
sorrow, or our regret concerning the past, so that we can establish ourselves
in the present, because in the present, there is life, with all the
wonders. It is regrettable if you are caught in the past, and you are not
capable of touching all the wonders of life that are available in the here and
the now. The practice should be able to liberate us from the past. Of
course the sorrows, the suffering of the past are still there within our body,
within our mind, and we have to learn how to recognise them, embrace them
tenderly and tell them, “It’s OK. We will be able to take care of each
other.” And out of this suffering, out of this pain, we can create the
flower of peace and happiness. When we visit the lotus pond, we know that
these beautiful, refreshing lotuses are born from the mud. Without the
mud, the lotus cannot come to life, and suffering plays a role in creating
happiness. We cannot grow lotus on marble, we have to grow it in mud, so
happiness is born from suffering. Happiness is the lotus flower, and the
suffering is the mud. So the practice is how to make use of the
suffering, make use of the mud, to create the flower, the happiness, and this
is something possible. If you are an organic gardener, you know that you
don’t want to throw away the garbage because the garbage can be transformed
into compost to nourish the plants, the flowers, the vegetables. And
suffering and happiness are both organic. Happiness, if you don’t know
how to handle it, will turn into suffering very soon. The love, in the beginning,
that you cherish so much, if you don’t know how to take care of it, it will
turn into something sour. And that is why flower turning into garbage is
what happens every day. We have to learn the art to maintain the flower
longer. We have to learn the practice in order to make our love, our
happiness last longer. And if it happens that some of them turn into
garbage, we should know how to turn them back into flowers. For someone
who has wisdom, insight, when she looks into the heap of garbage, she can
already see the flowers in the garbage. If the flower is on her way to
the garbage, the garbage also may be on her way back to the flower. And
according to the teaching of the Buddha, both suffering and happiness are of an
organic nature. And something we do know is that you cannot recognise
suffering unless you have suffered. Suffering is a kind of background
that can help happiness to be seen clearly, because sometimes happiness is
there but you cannot recognise it and you continue to suffer. Suppose
this is something black, and if you want to see it clearly, you should put it
against a background that is white. But if you put it on something that
is darker, it is harder to see. Happiness is like that. If you look
for it in the background of suffering, then you can recognise it and suddenly
you become happy.
The
other day, yesterday, we said that we feel that happiness is somewhere there,
but we cannot touch it, but we know it is there, because when it is gone, we
know very well that it has gone. It is no longer there. That is why
when happiness is still there, we should be able to touch, to recognise, and
with what can you touch and recognise happiness? Can you touch happiness
with your finger? It is by mindfulness that we can touch happiness and
recognise its presence. To me happiness is the capacity to be happy,
mindfulness is the awareness that happiness is there. Happiness should
become the object of our awareness in order to be a real thing. When you
are a young person, you can run very fast, you can jump; you can do many things
that a young person can do. But being a young person, you may not realise
that you are young, until you grow old, and you begin to regret that you have
not profited from your youth, you see? There are those of us who have
plenty of conditions to be happy, but we are not capable of being happy because
we are not capable of recognising these conditions of happiness. And what
helps us to recognise the conditions of happiness is our awareness, is our
mindfulness. If you have lived through a war, if you have suffered
because of the war, it will be easier for you to acknowledge, to recognise
peace when it is there. There are many youngsters who have not lived
through a war; they don’t appreciate the peace that is there, and they try to
look for war, and that is why mindfulness is very important, mindfulness is the
source of happiness. Cultivating mindfulness is cultivating peace.
You can cultivate happiness.
Suppose
someone has toothache during the night, and she suffers very much. She
cannot sleep. And she knows that she has to wait at least until 9 in the
morning in order to go to the dentist to get some relief. And during the
time of suffering, she recognises a fact, she is awakened to a fact, that not
having a toothache is a wonderful thing, is happiness. But in this very
moment, not many people in this meditation hall have toothache, but we are not
happy with our non-toothache! Our non-toothache is one condition of
happiness. And we have plenty of these conditions. Our eyes are in
good condition. We need only to open our eyes in order to get in touch
with the paradise of forms and colours. See – our eyes are a condition of
happiness! But we do not seem to be happy with having eyes in good
condition. Our heart is functioning normally, and that is a basic
condition of happiness. There are those whose only wish is to have a
normal heart like ours because they risk having a heart attack at any time, so
their deepest desire is to have a normal heart. But those of us who have
a normal heart, we don’t seem to be very happy, because we lack
mindfulness. So, breathing in, I recognise that my heart is there, I am
aware of my heart, which functions normally. Breathing out, I feel happy to
have such a heart. So mindfulness is the base of happiness. You
recognise these conditions of happiness in you and you recognise these
conditions of happiness around you against the background of suffering, and
that is something we can practise.
[Bell]
(Please breathe with us)
There
are times when we are very sick, we are not allowed to get up and to go out,
and we are too weak to do so. We are confined to our room, in the
hospital or at home, and we know that the morning is very beautiful. The
birds are singing, but our condition is not good enough. We have no
strength in order to go out and enjoy the sunshine and the birds. We are
confined to bed for ten days or twenty days, and our deepest wish is that we
get well so that we can open the door and walk out into the garden and enjoy
everything there. Now, as we are not sick, we are not confined to our bed
in hospital, we have the freedom and the happiness of going out, walking in our
garden, recognising every tree, every bush of flowers, and making beautiful and
peaceful steps, touching the beauties of life around us, but we don’t enjoy, we
don’t remember that we enjoy health, we enjoy solid feet, we enjoy our lungs,
and if we think of the time when we were very sick, when we wished very much to
go out for a walk in the garden, then suddenly we feel happy, and we enjoy
right away. So suffering can serve as the background for us to recognise
happiness, and that is why suffering plays a role in happiness, like the mud is
crucial for the making of the lotus flowers. And this is an art; even if
you have plenty of conditions of happiness, you are not happy because you don’t
know how to recognise these conditions of happiness against the background of
suffering.
And
then suffering can also help us to be more understanding, more compassionate -
the role of suffering - because in Buddhism, suffering is talked about as a
noble truth, a holy truth, because if we know how to look deeply into the
nature of suffering, we can see the path, we can get the insight, that is why
suffering is a noble truth. And we have to recognise the role of suffering in
life and in happiness, like the role of the mud in the making of the
lotus. We should not adopt that naïve attitude of running away, trying to
run away from suffering, because if you run away from suffering, you cannot
encounter happiness. Happiness can be seen right, can be touched right in
suffering, and this can be experienced by your own daily life. Many
people think that the kingdom of God is a place where there is no suffering –
there’s only happiness. I don’t agree with them, because I don’t want to
send my friends and my children to a place where there is no suffering.
In a place where there is no suffering, my friends, my children, my students
have no means to cultivate their understanding and their compassion. It
is by touching suffering, it is by understanding suffering that compassion is
born, that understanding is born. And if there is no suffering, there is
no happiness either. That is why I don’t believe that the kingdom of God
is a place where there is no suffering. We can say that in the kingdom of
God, there is suffering, but there are people who can help us learn from
suffering so that we can cultivate compassion and understanding.
Understanding brings about compassion. If you are not able to understand
the suffering in yourself and in other people, there is no way for you to
cultivate compassion and love. Because compassion and love are born from
understanding, understanding can be obtained when you touch the suffering, and
you understand the suffering. So the idea that the kingdom of God or the
Pure Land of the Buddha is a place where there is only happiness, there is no
suffering, this is a rather naïve idea. We learn from suffering, and
suffering plays a very important role in helping us to be understanding, to be
compassionate, and suffering helps us to recognise our happiness when happiness
is there. That is why we should not be afraid of suffering like the
organic gardener should not be afraid of the garbage, because he knows how to
preserve the garbage and to transform the garbage into the compost.
So
the practice has two parts: the first part is to recognise the conditions
of happiness that are there, the wonders of life that are available 24 hours a
day, to recognise that the kingdom of God, the Pure Land of the Buddha is
available, and we should be able to live in such a way that every day we can
get in touch with the wonders of life and be happy. That happiness will
help us to transform the suffering, the sorrow in us. That’s the first
part of the practice. The second part, the second aspect of the practice
is with mindfulness you can recognise the suffering, the sorrow, the despair,
the pain in you, and help you to look deeply into the nature of that suffering,
of that despair, of that pain, because that is holy, and once suffering is
understood, is embraced and understood, wells of compassion inside are born,
and we are liberated from that suffering. We can transform it with our
understanding and compassion. Everything should be found in our own
mind. We are used to blaming the environment for our suffering, we want
to blame this person or the other person for our suffering, but in fact, the
suffering comes from our own way of looking at things. Suffering comes
from our minds, like happiness. If we cultivate our mind, if we know how
to transform our mind, remove ignorance, remove wrong perceptions, get the
insight, and then with that same environment, we don’t suffer any more.
And we are capable of helping other people who are still in that situation, and
who suffer. Those with understanding and compassion, in whatever
situation they find themselves in, don’t suffer, and they are able to
help. But those who have no compassion and understanding, they are
drowned in the ocean of suffering, and they think that the only way to stop
suffering is to change the people around them, but the fact is that we have to
change our way of looking, of seeing things, and this is a practice – recognise
the suffering in us and in other people, embracing it, bringing insight,
understanding and compassion in, we stop suffering, and we begin to transform
the situation. And these are two aspects of the practice. The first
- to get in touch with the wonders of life, be happy - could be done by
mindfulness. The second aspect - recognising suffering, learning
from the suffering, cultivating our insight and compassion, that is also done
by mindfulness, because mindfulness carries within itself the energy of concentration,
and together, mindfulness and concentration bring about insight, and insight is
the liberating factor. Smrti, Samadhi and Prajna – Prajna is the insight,
understanding. And if we are equipped with these three energies, we are a
happy person, we don’t suffer, and we are in a position to help the other
person to do the same.
[Bell]
(Please breathe with us)
Dear
Friends,
These
dharma talk transcriptions are Teachings given by the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh
in Plum Village or during various retreats around the world. These Teachings
cover all areas of concern for practitioners, everything from dealing with
difficult emotions, to realizing the interbeing nature of all and everything,
and many more.
This project
operates from 'Dana', generosity, so these talks are available for everyone.
You may forward and redistribute them via email, and you may also print them
and distribute them to members of your Sangha. The purpose is to make Thay's
teachings available to as many people as possible.
Please, the only thing we ask is to circulate them as they are, please do not
distribute or reproduce them in altered form or edit them in any way.