“I am here for you...” - The First Mantra...
When you love someone, you would like to offer him or her something, right? And you should have something to give because you love someone and you want to offer him or her something. And what is that something?
A Son’s Birthday Wish...
I know a young man whose father is extremely rich. He is a big business man - very wealthy. That morning, he asked his son, “Tomorrow will be your birthday. Do you want something? I will buy it for you.” Of course his father loves his son. He would like to give him something - a birthday present. But the young man did not know how to answer. He did not need anything. He had plenty of toys. He knew that his father was extremely rich and could afford to buy him anything, including electric trains or something like that. But he did not feel that he needed anything so he could not answer.
He was a little bit confused because he did need something but he could not find it out. But that something is not something you can buy from the market. And after thinking he found it out - he needs his father. His father is very busy. His father is a successful business man, but he is so occupied. He did not have the time for himself, for his wife or his child. He was not available to himself, he was not available to his wife, to his son and that is why his son suffered. He has a father but he does not feel that he has a father because his father is extremely busy, although very rich, and quite powerful. But very busy.
And his father is very seldom at home and even when he was at home he was not truly there. His mind was thinking of something else - his business, his success. So the times when he was sitting there, he was not really there. And the young man felt very lonely - he needed his father. When you love someone you need him or her close to you, but his body was there but his mind was not there. So that is the suffering of our young man. And after some kind of reflection he found it out and he said, “Daddy, what I need is you. I don’t need anything from the market. You are so occupied, so busy.”
In the Buddhist teaching, the most precious thing you can give to the person you love is your presence - your self - your lovely presence - your fresh, pleasant presence.
When you love someone you have to be there for him or for her. Think about it, how can you love if you are not there. So my definition of love is “to be there”, and “to be” that is a big thing - how to be there, and Buddhist meditation can help you to be truly there. And if his father knew something about meditation he would know how to be there for his son. He would stop his thinking, he would breathe in mindfully and breathe out mindfully and he would smile. It would take only 5 seconds, or 7 seconds for him to be completely in the here and the now for his son.
So if that business man knew the practice he would stop his thinking, he would breath in mindfully, and in no time at all he’s there and he could look into the eyes of his boy and say, “Darling, I’m here for you,” and that’s the biggest, the most precious gift that you can offer to the person you love.
Remember, when you love someone you should be there for him or for her. You should make yourself available to him or to her. That’s the best gift, or present that you can make to him or to her.
In Plum Village we practice the first mantra. A mantra is a kind of magic formula that when you pronounce it, it will create a miracle. And the first mantra of Plum Village the children like very much because they can practice it very easily. It is like this, “Darling, I’m here for you. Father, I’m here for you. Mother, I’m here for you. Daughter, I’m here for you.” It’s easy. But in order for the mantra to work you have to be there, because “I’m here” is not a declaration - it is a practice. You have to be really there, otherwise you are not telling the truth.
Sometimes your body is there, but your mind is not there. You cannot say that you are there. Your father is sitting there, his body is there but he is absorbed in his business - his worries, his thinking. And you don’t feel that he is there for you. You may like to approach him, to pat on his shoulder and say, “Anybody home? There’s a house, but there’s no body in the house.” So that will help your father go home to himself, and become be available to you. And then when your father wakes up, and he has brought his mind back to his body he will look at you, will recognize you there. He will look at you and say, “Darling, I am here for you.”
So “I am here for you” is a practice. And you can very successfully practice if you know how to breathe in mindfully. When you breathe in if you don’t think of anything. If you only pay attention to your in-breathe, and then you bring your mind home to your body and you are there. That is the miracle of “being there.” And that is performed with only one in-breath.
Or you may like to practice walking meditation. If you make one step like this, breathing in, and pay attention to your step, then you also bring your mind home to your body - and become truly there. One in-breath or one step is enough to make you available in the here and the now. And if you are truly there you can offer your presence to the person you love, “Darling, I am here for you.”
I remember when I was in China on a teaching tour I also taught the children to practice the mantra, and they do it very well. So today you may like to try it out. You go to your mother or your father, you breathe in mindfully, smiling and you look into the eyes of your mother and you say, “Mother, you know something?” And then when she asks you what, you say, “Mommy, I am here for you” and that can make her happy and you happy at the same time very quickly. This mantra, I guarantee that it is effective, if you are truly mindful and concentrated. The mantra always works - it always works for Thay.
“Darling, I am here for you.” The father can practice with his son or daughter. The daughter can practice with her mother or father. And that is Buddhist teaching. It is not difficult. The first mantra, “Darling, I am here for you.” And that present you cannot buy from the supermarket. You have to offer, to make yourself - your presence.
“I am” is a practice -- not a declaration.
There is a French philosopher, Descartes, he said, “I think therefore I am.” I doubt very much that if he is lost in his thinking that he is really there. When you think too much you are lost in your thinking and you are not there. So the truth is that, “I think therefore I am not there.” I’m not sure that the philosophers told us the truth. In fact, you have to stop thinking in order to be truly there. Stop thinking, and just breathe in and focus your attention on your in-breath.
“I know you are there...” - The Second Mantra
When you love someone, you value, you cherish his or her presence. You know that her presence is very precious for you. Imagine that she is not there, that she is dead, or she is lost somewhere in the world - you suffer. But in this case, she is still there, he is still there alive for you. So that is a source of your happiness. Your beloved one is a source of your happiness. So the second mantra is to recognize his presence or her presence as something so precious to you.
So the first mantra is to offer your presence. The second mantra is to recognize the presence of the other person, the person you love. It goes like this:
“Darling, I know you are there - alive, and that makes me so happy.”
You know something; to be loved, you feel that you are loved when the other person recognizes your presence.
If the other person does not know that you are there, does not recognize that you are there, does not cherish your presence, does not value your presence you don’t have the impression that you are loved.
Suppose you are driving in his car and you are sitting next to him, he thinks of everything - except you. You do not exist for him - his attention is elsewhere. So you are ignored by him, you don’t have a feeling that you are loved.
To be loved means to be embraced by the attention of the other person.
When the other person is aware that you are there, it is something very precious.
So while driving, he can say something like, “I know that you are sitting close to me, and I’m so happy.” That is the second mantra, and that makes happiness possible right away for him and for her. Again, the second mantra is very effective and you don’t need time. It can bring happiness right away.
“Darling, I know you are there, and I’m so happy.” You recognize his or her presence. But you can recognize his or her presence only when you are truly there, so make your presence real first and then you are qualified to recognize the presence of the other.
Love always begins with yourself. If you are not there, how can you love? How can you recognize the presence of your beloved one?
This is the Buddhist teaching on love: to be there and to confirm, to recognize the presence of the other person.
“I know that you suffer, and I am here for you...” - The Third Mantra
The third mantra you need it, when you notice that the other person suffers; something does not go well with him or with her. And because you are “there”, because you practice the first mantra - you are “truly there” - and you know what is happening to your beloved. She does not feel well, she suffers. And because that is the person you love, you should do something in order to help him or her suffer less.
The third mantra goes something like this: “Darling, I know you suffer. That is why I’m here for you.” When you suffer and the person you love does not know it - you suffer more. But if your beloved knows you suffer, you suffer less right away. So the third mantra can bring a relief very quickly - even if you have not done anything to help him or her. Just pronounce the third mantra and the other person suffers less right away; “Darling, I know you suffer. And that’s why I am here for you.”
So today, I hope the young people will discuss a little bit on this and apply these teachings. And you might like to try out these, at least the first two mantras today. And you can even use your telephone to practice the mantra. Because the other person may not be here in the retreat. You breathe in and out, mindfully, in order to be “truly there” before you compose the number. And when on the other end you hear his voice you say, “Darling, Daddy, I know you are there, and I am very happy.” You can make use of technology to practice Buddhist meditation also. You can even send an e-mail. So let us try these mantras today, and maybe tomorrow one or two of you will report to us your practice.
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The Fruit of Meditative Insight - Right View
My dear friends yesterday we heard that mindfulness and concentration always brings insight. Our insight can help liberate us from our afflictions, our fear, our anger and so on. Mindfulness is a kind of energy, concentration is another source of energy, and insight is a kind of powerful energy that has the capacity to liberate.
Sometimes in Buddhist literature the expression, Right View, is used. Right View is one of the eight elements of the Noble Eightfold Path. There is Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration and Right View. After Right View we have Right Thinking, Right Speech, and Right Action.
There are two more elements of the Noble Path; Right Livelihood and Right Diligence. There is a sutra when the Buddha gave a brief description on Right View. He said:
Right View is the kind of view that is free from the notion of Being and Non-Being.
Right View is the kind of Insight that is free from Discrimination; from the tendency to think dualistically.
Suppose we look at this marker, and we can say that this end represents the “above” and this the “below”. Or if we put the marker horizontally we can think of the “left” and the “right”. In our mind the left is something opposite of the right. The above is something opposite to the below. Being is the opposite to Non-Being. Life is the opposite to Death. Happiness is the opposite of Suffering. And sometimes we want just one and we don’t want the other.
We only want happiness and we don’t want suffering. Suppose we think of the Kingdom of God or the Pure Land of the Buddha. We have the tendency to think, to believe that in the Kingdom of God there is no suffering, there is only happiness. And according to the Buddha, that’s not Right Thinking. Because suffering always goes with happiness together. Like life and death; we only want life we don’t want death. We want to eliminate death and keep only life. And that is not Right Thinking.
It’s like we want only the left and we don’t the right. The fact is that if politically you are on the left, you cannot wish the right to go away - because if the right is not there, the left is not there either.
In Plum Village we grow Lotus flowers in all our Hamlets, and we know very well that without mud there will be no Lotus flower. You cannot grow Lotus flowers on marble - you need the mud. Looking into a Lotus flower you see something very pure, very fragrant and you don’t think, you don’t have the impression that the Lotus flower can be made of mud that does not smell very well, that is not very clean.
Looking deeply with mindfulness and concentration you can see the mud in the Lotus flower - without the mud the Lotus flower cannot be.
The same thing is true with suffering and happiness, life and death. Death always goes in couple with life. If there is no death, there is no life. Like if there is no mud, there is no Lotus flower.
And the biologists can practice looking deeply with us. When the scientists look into our body they see that birth and death happen in every moment. There are cells in our body that die in every moment in order for other cells to be born. Without dying, birth is not possible. Birth and death are happening at the same time, and they always go together.
Because we don’t want to look deeply, we think that now is life and death will be later; in 30 years, 50 years, 100 years. But in fact, left and right exist at the same time. Above and below exist at the same time.
So when God said, “Let there be light,” the light answered, “I have to wait.” God then asked, “But what are you waiting for?” And the light answered, “I am waiting for darkness, because we can only manifest together.” The same thing is true with Being and Non-Being. There are theologians who say that God is the ground of Being. And we may ask if God is the ground of Being, then who will be the ground of Non-Being? In fact, God transcends both the notions of both Being and Non-Being. You cannot ascribe to God the notion of Being - if you do, you do not have Right View.
Birth and death happen in every moment of our daily life. There are many cells who die in each moment, but we don’t have enough time to organize funerals for them. There are many cells who are born every moment, but we don’t have no time to celebrate their birthdays. Death is happening right now, right here - not something sometime later. We are experience death and dying in every moment, why are we afraid of dying? The left and the right rely on each other in order to manifest. Whenever there is the left the right is there right away.
Inter-Being
In Buddhism there is the term Inter-Being. The left cannot be without the right. The right cannot be without the left. Suppose we try to eliminate the right. We use something to cut it out and throw it away, but then a new right forms immediately. So right and left they lean on each other in order to manifest, that is why light has to wait for darkness in order to manifest - at the same time. And we should train ourselves to look at reality this way.
When we meditate on suffering, and happiness we know that happiness is made of non-happiness elements. It’s like this flower. This flower is made only of non-flower elements. When we look deeply into the flower we see the sunshine. Sunshine is not flower. It is a non-flower element. And without that non-flower element a flower cannot be. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower has to Inter-Be with sunshine. We can see a cloud inside. A cloud is not a flower. It is a non-flower element. But without a cloud no flower is possible. If there is no cloud there will be no rain and nothing can grow. So that is how we know that the flower Inter-Is with the cloud.
In the flower we find the presence of time, space, the earth, minerals, the gardener. There are many non-flower elements that have come together in order to help the flower to manifest. And if we withdraw, or remove all of these non-flower elements there is no flower left. So we can say that a flower cannot Be by herself alone. She has to Inter-Be with everything in the cosmos. A flower Inter-Is with non-flower elements.
Happiness is like a flower. Happiness is made only of non-flower elements. And we should meditate on that. It’s like the Lotus flower which is made of non-Lotus elements, including the mud.
There is a very close relationship between happiness and suffering. We should not run away from suffering in order to seek happiness. The teaching of the Buddha on the Four Noble Truths reflects this.
Happiness is made of elements like understanding and love. If you don’t understand someone. If you don’t see his suffering and difficulties, you cannot love him and make him happy. If a father does not understand the suffering of his son, the difficulty of the son it is impossible for that father to love and make his son happy. So understanding is very crucial.
To love means to understand.
If you cannot see the suffering and the difficulties of the other person you cannot love him or her, or make him or her happy. This is very certain. So what we can say is that understanding first of all is to understand the suffering, the difficulties, the afflictions; because there is suffering, there is difficulty within ourselves. And since we have the tendency to run away from our suffering, our difficulties we have no chance in order to understand our own suffering.
And therefore the Buddha advises us not try to to run away from our own suffering. We have to come home to ourselves, and embrace our suffering and look deeply into it. And thanks to this kind of deep looking, understanding will arise and compassion is born. Understanding and compassion make happiness possible.
According to the teaching of the Four Noble Truths, the First Noble Truth is “ill-being” or suffering. And that truth should be understood. When the truth of suffering is understood, compassion and love is born. And happiness is possible only when understanding and compassion are there.
Imagine that in the Kingdom of God there is no suffering. Imagine there is no mud for you to grow Lotus flowers. I do not want to send my children to a place where there is no suffering, because in such a place he has no chance to cultivate understanding and compassion. And without understanding and compassion, a person cannot be a happy person. So suffering is the mud that can help create the Lotus.
If you have suffered that is good, because you now have some ingredients. If you know how to make good use of the suffering, you can create happiness. If you know how to handle the mud, to make good use of the mud you can very well create Lotus flowers. Lotus flowers are made of non-Lotus elements including mud. Happiness is made of non-happiness elements including suffering. Therefore the understanding of suffering is crucial to create happiness. And if we try to always run away from suffering we have no chance. That is why the Buddhist teachings begin with afflictions, suffering. Look deeply into our own suffering so that understanding and compassion can arise.
So we can have another definition of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is a place where there is understanding and love, and happiness. And in order to cultivate understanding and love you need suffering.
The Kingdom of God is a place where people are not overwhelmed of suffering. The Kingdom of God is a place where people know how to make good use of suffering in order to create happiness, because if there is no suffering -- there is no happiness.
That is the non-dualistic way of looking at things. You cannot just choose only life, happiness and ban death, ban suffering.
We know that a good practitioner should know how to create joy and happiness. A good practitioner should also know how to handle suffering. Creating happiness is an art, but to handle suffering is also an art. To handle suffering is an art, and if you know how to handle your pain, your sorrow, your fear you know how to create happiness. The two things are just the same thing; to learn the art of happiness and to learn the art of handling suffering.
It’s the same thing.
