I imagine, I visualize that every psychotherapist is a leader of a retreat. A retreat in which people have the time to stop in the present moment, to enjoy the blue sky, to make peaceful steps, to smile at each other. I think each therapist should be able to animate, to nourish, to help a community of joyful people. A Sangha, a joyful Sangha, consisting of healthy people mentally, in order to... It's like growing flowers. Psychotherapists have to grow flowers. Because when you have a person who needs to heal and to grow, the best thing and the easiest thing is to bring him or her to that community.

[01:12]

And even if you don't have to make a lot of effort, the healing will come naturally. This is my experience. You know, refugees who came from Southeast Asia, they have a lot of pains within themselves. Many have lost their father, their mother, their children. You can imagine the blocks of pains in themselves, but once they come to Plum Village, they don't show any of these. They are advised to practice breathing, smiling, looking at children. trying to make the children happy, because in Plum Village, we put the children at the center, and we tell other people to participate in making the children happy. And by doing so, the people get happy, get happiness. And we do not stress much on what is wrong.

[02:20]

We do, but very discreetly. Because people who are deeply disturbed will be noticed by our workers. And they arrange so that people can come and see me or see other friends who are good enough to help them. And we deal with them in sessions of consultations, advices and help. But the majority would not see these things going on. The majority participate in joyful life, mindful life every day. So we organize a lot of festivals for children for allowance. every time there is a full moon, we organize a full moon festival. And we organize a rose festival. We organize a lot of festivals. They have the capacity of handling and planting wood seeds.

[03:25]

And many people, many families come home completely well, completely transformed. And there are many broken families who rely on Plum Village to continue. Because every time they meet with difficulties, they always refer to Plum Village to seek advice and help. And their children always come to Plum Village during the summer in order to get the strength for the rest of the year. Last year, there was a young lady, 60, who came from England. She's a very good-looking girl. And when she came, we did not know that she was mentally disturbed. She had come to England without parents.

[04:29]

She had got Samuel Reynolds, during the past as a child. Her mother left her at a very early age. And her father also remarried. So she didn't like, she didn't love her mother. And she came. We didn't know that she had seen a therapist three years already, during three years before she came. But she was put among other young people and lived like that, without any special care. After one month, we went back to England. She was staying with other non-accompanied children, taken care of by British social workers. And they saw her completely transformed. Not only she did not show any sign of maladaptation, but she could also help other children around her.

[05:35]

And we just received a request from that organization in England to send 40 children from village this summer. We know that we are not capable of handling 40 at the same time. Because the principle of Plum Village is that we should have healthy, happy children as the majority. We can only have the disturbed children as just a small minority in order to be effective. Otherwise, the opposite may occur. So the existence of healthy, joyful communities is very important. Many of you have written to me and asked me to talk about this. I believe that psychotherapists in our time have to do like that.

[06:49]

They have to take a lead. They have to organize the communities of joyful living, joyful, mindful living, beautiful community, healthy community. The first thing is that the therapist herself would profit from that community. You would like to go there. Yeah, to be nourished. You take care of the flowers. And after you have a lot of flowers, your work will become much easier. Imagine that your community only has disturbed people. Very difficult. And if we reorganize therapeutic communities where we only gather the people who are not healthy, that would be very difficult. Maybe we have to do the other way, organizing good, healthy, joyful communities and put a number of people we need to help into that.

[07:59]

And very soon, members of the communities become helpers. First, they help without knowing that they are helping. That's the best kind of help. Suddenly, you select a number of people, you know that that one needs special care. Suddenly, and then the person who needs care does not know that that person is going to help him or her. That's the way it is in the village. So the patient does not have the feeling that someone is helping him or her. But suddenly she found that that person is so sweet and put so much time in taking care of her, and that is very good. And that is something I think deeply rooted in the Buddhist tradition, I take refuge in the Sangha.

[09:10]

Because the Buddha is important because he's the teacher. The Dharma is the way shown by the Buddha. But without the Sangha, it's very difficult to practice. So applying the principle, I take refuge in the Sangha, improve psychotherapy, I think that is something you can do it. That sangha may be a Catholic sangha, may be a Jewish sangha, but it must be a mindful, happy, joyful sangha. You don't need to be Buddhist in order to do that. And if you are Buddhist, try not to be Buddhist in the appearance, because that will turn people off. Like the other day I said, when you practice walking meditation in a park, try not to show that you are practicing walking meditation. Do it like as if you don't practice.

[10:14]

Practicing the non-practice is the highest kind of practice. When you practice mindful living, transforming yourself, making yourself happy, peaceful. You can transmit all these experiences to your clients without saying that, this I take from Buddhism. You don't have to. And you don't need Buddhist terms either. Because I myself, I have written many books for young people without using a single Buddhist term. And if you examine them deeply, you see it comes from a Buddhist experience. In 1964, I wrote a book, Parking with the 20-Year-Old People. And I wrote half chapters about school, about parents, about love, marriage, religion.

[11:28]

And I did not use wisdom, and they don't know. that I was using my Buddhist insight in order to help. So many people wrote to me, many young people wrote to me thanking me. That work was very popular in Vietnam, and it was a book deeply Buddhist in the content, but no Buddhist term at all. So you can do that if you find that in the practice of Buddhism you got a lot of good things, positive things. You are free to transmit these things. Don't think that the practice of Buddhism is the practice of sitting. No. Sitting is only one way of practicing. You can practice by cooking dinner.

[12:33]

You can practice by changing diapers for your baby. You can practice by going to the toilet. Yes. And if you think that The patient would not be able to sit in a lotus position. Invent the Christendom position for them. When I first came to this country, I met a Buddhist, a Zen Buddhist, who talked to me with enthusiasm about the lotus position of sitting in. I asked him whether he knew the Christendom position. He said, no. And he was very, very curious.

[13:36]

He kept asking me about it. I said, you go home tomorrow, you come and I tell you. So I think that if you are a therapist, you have profited from the Buddhist practice, you should invent the chrysanthemum position for your patients. The practice of mindful living, the practice of Buddhist meditation, as you see in these dasik texts, is not the practice of sitting alone. Sitting is only a small part. You have to practice 24 hours a day. You observe your body, your feelings, your mind at all times.

[14:46]

And you use the breathing in order to focus your attention on your work. If you are a surgeon, you can practice breathing while doing the surgery work. If you are a gardener, you practice breathing while gardening. And that is the practice I talk about, not sitting, because many people sit just because they want to avoid confrontation with life. They want to hide themselves like a rabbit in his home. So don't practice like that. We practice like people punching the pillow. There are people who are disturbed and who come to a Buddhist center, and some teacher seeing, having some insight about him or her, ask him or her to sit a lot, day and night. are to make 1,080 prostrations each morning.

[15:47]

And it helps. It helps because the energy of that person is translated into that kind of hardship movement, heart movement. So the person feels better. But that is only temporary relief, just like punching the pill. And many people get very, very hurt in their muscles while sitting, but the teacher says, keep sitting, keep sitting. And they have to make a lot of effort. They suffer bodily. That is why they suffer less mentally. That teaching, I do not want to say bad things about it because it has helped a number of people. I only want to say that Buddhist practice is not only that. When you sit for hours, well, that is the kind of refuge you seek in order not to confront life again.

[16:55]

You are afraid. So don't just sit like that. Sit like you sit on a lotus flower, happy. Don't sit like in a dark cave. And that is not my saying, that is saying of the Zen Master in the past. If the artist painted the Buddha sitting on a lotus flower, it means he is sitting beautifully, happily, joyfully, lightly like on a flower. And in our daily life, we sit like on burning charcoal. And in the meditation hall, if we sit not softly, we sit in a dark cave, like that Zen Master said. It's not pleasant to sit in a dark cave, even if you can avoid life at that moment. So I would like to invite you to deepen your study of Buddhism, the Buddhist practice, the practice I call practice of joy, because as I see it, the base of our practice is non-duality.

[18:18]

Please remember flower and garbage. They make each other's. And even if we see garbage in ourselves, we are not afraid of it. We accept it. Only equal footing with the flower. And that is the starting point of the Buddhist practice of meditation. You are not afraid of the garbage. And in the practice, you find no enemy at all. No enemies. If there is one enemy, that enemy is forgetful living, living in forgetfulness. And we just practice mindful living in order to get out of that mindlessness.

[19:35]

Mindlessness is ignorance, is delusion. And speaking of mindfulness, living a mindful life, happy life, well, the only... enemy, if we can call it enemy, is illusion, mindlessness. So if your base of practice is non-duality, I think I would like to invite a psychotherapist to contemplate the non-dualistic practice of psychotherapy. There's nothing to throw out. Everything you can accept, everything you can postpone, there's no end of it. And even suffering can help, can educate us to be happy. The non-food egg, if we can enjoy it, because we have had a food egg.

[20:43]

And then if the practice is based on non-violence, and then the practice should be non-violent, So we practice nonviolence vis-à-vis our feelings, vis-à-vis our body. You should not do violence to your body. You should not hide it out. You should not punish it for the sake of the well-being of your feelings. When you have pain in your muscles, your body is trying to tell you something. That is the language of your body. If you have pain on your shoulders, your body is speaking to you. And practicing meditation is to be aware of what is going on. If your body is speaking to you and if you don't listen to it, you are not practicing meditation.

[21:47]

So tend to it. Take care of it. Change the position of your leg, of your foot, of your feet. Do it gently, following the breathing in and out. You don't lose your time meditating. You are meditating while changing the position of your feet. If you feel that you want to scratch that, and if you resist, well, the good sound comes stronger. It wants to tell you something. So why don't you be kind? with your body. Breathing in, I'm going to scratch it. Breathing out, I'm scratching it. Breathing in, it's okay now. What is meditation for me? And trying to stick deeply like this, resisting, is the opposite of meditation.

[22:52]

And when you are angry, be kind for your anger, because you know that anger is yourself at the moment. Take good care of your anger like you take good care of your baby sister. Take good care of your anger like you take care of your baby. That is the teaching, the Buddhist teaching. You should not fight the anger. To meditate is not to transform oneself into a battlefield, root fighting evil. No. That is the opposite. That may be true in some other traditions, but totally wrong in Buddhism. To practice meditation is to accept both flowers and garbage. Because you know that the two are interconnected. One makes the other. The flower is on her way to the garbage, and the garbage on her way to the flowers.

[24:00]

And you can still have peace, happiness, happiness both. And the Buddhist say, samsara is nirvana, is about that. And therefore, you can handle suffering with care, with kindness, because suffering is important. The only thing is that most of our suffering is useless. Because of our illusion, of our delusion, we create unnecessary suffering, the unnecessary kind of garbage. And if your practice is non-violent, it can only be joyful. So your practice is a joyful practice. And if we follow this principle of practice, we'll be transformed and we'll be a source of happiness, of joy to other people.

[25:12]

And I believe that if a therapist organizes a sangha, 20 people, 30 people, practicing walking, drinking tea, having a meal, have a ten-lit city, either in the lotus position or in the crescent moon position. Do not imitate other people. You are free to invent the kind of practice that fits to your environment. You don't have to call it Buddhist-inspired practice. I think that you can draw many good things from the Jewish and Christian traditions to the practice. Remember that Buddhism is made only of non-Buddhist elements. So if you belong to the Christian or Jewish tradition, roll back.

[26:19]

and find out the wonderful elements in there for your practice. And if you have that community with you, that sangha with you, your work of helping the suffering people will be much easier. And I say this not out of a sutra, but out of my practice in Vietnam as well as in Europe. And if we practice like that, there will be no distinction between the secular world and the spiritual world. Because in Australia, a Catholic priest told me that he was surprised to see me describing spiritual things in terms of drinking a cup of tea. drinking a cup of tea in mindfulness, that is very spiritual to us.

[27:23]

Eating our breakfast in mindfulness, that is very spiritual. So living mindfully, happily, peacefully like that is already a very high spiritual life. And you see everything as spiritual. You go to the toilet, you do PT, that's very spiritual. If you are mindful of what you are doing, you throw garbage into the garbage can, you are mindful of it, that is very spiritual. And I just said that therapists should be engaged in the work of peace.

[28:25]

And his or her community, Sangha, should also be engaged in the work of making our societies saner and making our planet a a safer place to live for us and for our children. I don't think that we can do otherwise. We have to reserve some of our time participating in this kind of work. I learned that in the Bronx, New York, there is a society that tries to collect the newspaper thrown out in the streets of New York City. and recycle them. And they reported that each six months, they can save something like 45,000 trees.

[29:28]

And the amount of trees in the Central Park in New York City is only 25,000. So actions like that are manifesting mindfulness. And actions like that are taken a little bit everywhere. And we psychotherapists, we have to be aware of what is going on in that domain, flowers, and we should lend a helping hand to that kind of work. We know that nuclear waste now is a threat for for many people, for the American people, because 40 states in America are being contaminated by that kind of garbage. And we are not mindful about it. We would not try to do anything about it.

[30:28]

And our well-being depends on that kind of work. And the well-being of our patients, our clients, also depends on that. So we should not only direct all our energy and attention to one direction, surrounded by trees.

[32:13]

And it's so pleasant to sit among the trees and play among other children with our grandfather, our grandmother, our uncle, because the family at that time was big. And now most of us live in the cities where we find ourselves in a box, very high, very close to the sky. And we don't have trees up there. We are surrounded by concrete walls. And we get sick very easily because we are too alienated from our mother earth. In the old times, we, with our fingers, we touched the earth, the soil. We plant our vegetables, we play with the soil. Now, children don't play with the soil. And they are not in touch with trees, water, rivers. And that is why we become easily sick mentally.

[33:17]

There are cities where you cannot find many trees. And one day I visualized that a city without trees, only one tree left in the middle of the city. You know that in the past seven years we have destroyed by acid rain more than five thousand trees in the forest. I'm not going to survive. And make... Thank you.

[35:48]

Amen. Maybe I have a brother or sister. Our therapist should help us to go back to our big family.

[38:35]

In my tradition in Vietnam, the deepest hope, the deepest joy that the aged people have is to be able to hold their grandchild in their arms. When your children have grown up, The only thing you wish that is that you have the opportunity to hold the baby in yourself. You become parents again, grandparents. And the people in Vietnam, they know that the deepest aspiration of the people, of the old people, that is why they leave the children to the care of their father and mother. When you grow old, you have wrinkles on your skin, and your body grows cold. It's so nice to hold a warm and tender baby in your arms, and that is the deepest joy of all people.

[39:39]

So everyone in my country, when they grow old, they... You... They would suffer very. So some of them, when they come to the West, they see that all people put into as in, yeah, where they had to live separately from their children and grandchildren. That is a very big shock for people of my country. They say that this is to make the aged people suffer a lot. And in our culture, we respect the aged people very much. But if they continue to live in the West, they will have to do the same thing. And they don't want to do it. And I told them that maybe they should try to keep that beautiful tradition in the West.

[40:45]

in order to share with their Western friends. Try to show them that the very young can be very happy with the very old. In our country, it is the grandfather or the grandmother that tells the fairy tales to the children, not the father and the mother. And they are very attached to each other. Sometimes the parents say that you spoil them a little bit too much, but that's not so serious. And that you don't need internal formation to do, and then they want to leave away from you.

[41:48]

If parents practice joy and peace and take care of their children, they become a source of comfort and support for their children.

[42:00]

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