The Fifth Mindfulness Training
shows us the practice
of mindful consumption of edible foods,
and the practice of mindful consumption
of sensory impressions.
Last week we had a retreat for
Hollywood entertainers.
And we told them
that we need them to help us
with the practice.
They should try to provide us with films
that water the good seeds in us.
And it would be very helpful
if they refrained from making the films
that water the seed of anger,
and violence and fear in us.
They listened very very deeply.
Because they have the good seed of wisdom
in them.
And this week I'm going to meet with
a group of
producers of film
in Hollywood.
Please pray for me.
[laughter and clapping]
I told them that
there is already a
Statue of Liberty
in the East Coast.
But in the name of Liberty,
we have
produced so many items of consumption
that are very destructive.
And that is why
I propose that a
Statue of Responsibility
be built in the West Coast.
And one person in the retreat
stood up and said,
"Well Thay, I will do it!"
He's a sculptor.
So during that retreat
I did my best to water
the seed of compassion and understanding,
responsibility, in these people.
And let us continue to help them.
The third source of nutriment
that the Buddha talked about
is called volition.
The deepest kind of desire that we have
in our selves.
Because the life of a person
is motivated by that desire.
If you don't have any desire
you cannot continue to live.
The desire may be very wholesome,
or very unwholesome.
Siddhartha Gautama who became a Buddha
he was motivated by a very strong desire:
to transform himself
and to help the world.
He was supposed to become a king,
a politician.
But as he observed,
he saw that
his father was very helpless.
Having the power of a king in his hand
but he was helpless.
There's a lot of corruption,
lots of difficulties,
misery in the country
and with that political power
he could not do much.
Because there are afflictions,
fear, hate, violence, anger in them
so politicians are very limited
in their power to act.
So Siddhartha did not care about
becoming a king
and having a lot of power.
That's why he left the palace
seeking for a path of transformation
and healing.
And that desire was so strong in him
that he was able to undergo many hardships
and finally he succeeded
in becoming an enlightened person
with a lot of understanding
and compassion.
And he did not feel tired at all
during the 45 years of
teaching, practicing and helping people.
And he helped everyone.
Kings, ministers, rich businessmen,
and scavengers, slaves,
he helped everyone!
And he accepted all kinds of people
in his noble Sangha.
In his Sangha there's no caste.
There's no race.
There's only a race of enlightenment.
The noble Sangha.
You are
the noble Sangha of the Buddha.
You are the beloved Sangha of the Buddha.
No discrimination.
And if you practice
mindfulness, concentration,
and insight
you bring the
element of nobility
into your daily life.
That is why
the Sangha is called
a noble Sangha.
If your deepest desire
is to have a lot of fame,
a lot of sex,
a lot of consumption,
that desire can bring you a lot of suffering.
That is why we have to look deeply
into our deepest desire
to find out whether it is
wholesome or unwholesome.
If you are motivated by a desire
to transform yourself,
and to help your people,
your community to transform,
to bring joy
and hope
into their life,
to live in the spirit,
in the wisdom of non-discrimination,
capable of protecting themselves
from complexes
and suffering
so that your community will be
a powerful instrument for social change,
then you have the best kind of volition.
That gives you
an infinite source of energy.
You become very alive,
very dynamic in your daily life.
And you make your community
into a dynamic community
because your community also has
the deepest desire for social change.
Social change,
social justice,
equality
can be obtained
with the transformation
of our consciousness,
of our collective consciousness.
Because consciousness is at the base.
If we are not capable of changing our selves
our way of thinking,
our way of perceiving,
if we are not free
from wrong perceptions,
then any kind of action
no matter how direct they are,
will not bring the kind of result we want.
Actions like sit-in,
teach-in,
pray-in,
wait-in,
will be meaningful only
when they are born from our freedom,
our compassion,
our understanding.
If you have
the wisdom of non-discrimination,
if you have
the energy of understanding and compassion
then these kinds of actions can
bring about the result very quickly.
Social change
is only the outcome of
the change of our consciousness.
Then this is why this practice should
be done right away!
In our family, in our community.
In your community of Pure Land practice,
organize to do it.
To practice it in your family,
in a community.
In your church,
Baptist or not,
you practice the same.
The same kind of practice.
Getting in touch with the Kingdom,
everyday,
several times a day.
Learning how to handle the suffering
individual and collective,
for transformation and healing.
These are the basic practice.
And if you succeed in transforming
your self,
your community,
and then social change will come about
very easily.
And many people looking at you,
looking at your way of life,
see that you embody the practice
of non-discrimination,
of compassion.
They could join you.
And you'll have a lot of allies.
Even if they do not belong to the same kind
of culture.
And this is
the points that we have to discuss in
our dharma discussions.
One day
a leader of
a Native American community
came to me.
We met in Vermont
and he invited me to join him
in speaking to Europeans and others,
speaking about the plight,
the suffering
of Native Americans.
To draw the people's attention in the world
to that suffering.
I invited him to sit down
and to have a cup of tea with me,
and very slowly,
I tried to tell him:
that the first step is not that.
The first step is that he go home
to his community
and help his community to practice.
This kind of basic things.
Like the Five Mindfulness Trainings,
creating brotherhood, sisterhood,
awakening,
to free our selves
from wrong perceptions,
from wrong discrimination,
from discrimination.
Because
discrimination does not only exist in them.
Discrimination does exist in each of us.
We have both Hell and Paradise in us.
They also
have Hell and Paradise.
So if we are capable of touching paradise
and transforming hell in us,
we will be able to help them
touch the paradise in them
and transform hell in them.
They are no longer our enemies.
They are the people we want to help.
But we have to help our selves first.
It's not a problem of protesting.
Because we can see them as victims
of their wrong perceptions,
of their own ignorance,
and fear, and violence.
And that is why
to me it's very, very crucial,
it's very urgent to go home
to our selves
and to our community
and begin the real practice.
The practice of mindful consumption--
so that we can heal our body,
we can heal our consciousness,
our mind.
This kind of practice,
of mindful consumption,
not to use alcohol,
not to use drugs,
not to use items of consumption like
television programmes, books,
that can bring toxins in us,
is at the base
at the foundation
of our practice.
And at the time
when our young people
no longer use drugs,
and consume these toxic items,
we become a
living Dharma talk.
We can come and help those still in prison
because of the fact
that they consumed drugs,
committed violence,
because they had violence in them
but they did not know how to
handle violence in them
that is why they got into prison.
We have to try ways
to come and help them.
In my tradition,
in the ancient times,
Buddhist temples
worked in farming:
agricultural Zen.
"No work, no food."
So we farmed our land
and supported our community.
And we went to the government
and we asked them to
hand over to us
a number of prisoners.
We made the commitment to teach
these prisoners.
We accept them
to our community.
We would give the work for them,
farming to do,
and they learned the practice
of the Five Mindfulness Trainings.
And the government,
the authorities,
believed in the Buddhist tradition
because we had succeeded many times
to transform,
to teach our prisoners.
And finally we helped these prisoners
to get married,
to have a plot of land,
to build a house,
and to start their life.
In the past
we had been able to do things like that.
I think in our time
we can do things that are similar.
The young men and women
who have so much violence
and fear in themselves,
and also their seed of craving is big,
they don't know how to handle these seeds.
They committed
crimes.
They have done wrong things.
They got into prisons,
and they should be helped.
We should have a programme to help them
to transform.
We could talk to the government,
to the correction institutions,
that there are better ways to help
a young person to transform
than to put him in prison.
We can organize communities
of mindful living.
We can guarantee for these people.
We can help them transform
and become good citizens
of the society.
This is in the scope of our practice.
The practice of mindful living,
practices of transformation and healing.
This practice described by the Buddha
is not only to help the individual.
In fact the Buddha urged us
to practice this as a community.
And when the community embodies
the spirit of the Dharma,
then the community can have an impact
on society
and produce social change.
And it looks like each monk,
each lay person
in his beloved Sangha,
becomes a kind of social worker.
Social worker in the broadest sense,
broader meaning.
When you can help a person
to see his path
and to get motivated by the desire
to transform and to do good,
you are a social worker.
When you organize a dharma discussion
or a day of mindfulness
and help people to touch the Dharma,
to taste the
joy of the practice of peace,
well you are doing social work.
So the spiritual and the social realms
they are not separated.
Whatever you can do in the spiritual realm
will benefit deeply
the social realm
and so on.