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November 17, 2013. 82-minute dharma talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh from Stillwater Meditation Hall, Upper Hamlet of Plum Village. This is the first talk of the 2013-2014 Winter Retreat. We begin with two chants from the monastics.
Rebuilding our health – mental and physical. Our society seems to be not very healthy. Some come to our retreat to heal and mindfulness can help you heal. If we are mindful, we may see that we are running. Running into the future. We have a habit of running. So our mindful breathing can help us to stop the running. Breathing is an art.
Mindfulness has to go with insight. Insight can get you out of your suffering. This winter we will look at the 51-mental formations. The first five are called universal.
- Contact
- Attention
- Feeling
- Perception
- Volition
Then we have five particulars.
- Intention
- Determination
- Mindfulness
- Concentration
- Insight
Right now we are talking about mindfulness. Our consciousness has two parts – store and mind. Our mental formations can move from one part to the other. Each formation is known as a seed in the store consciousness. There are conditions that cause a seed to manifest in your mind. Mindfulness is the capacity to see what is going on in your feelings, your perceptions, and around you. We can also use the mindful waking to heal and stop the running. We can allow nature to heal us.
The earth is not just the environment, the earth is ourselves.
A good mental formation is ease. We need to practice to cultivate this kind of energy. This is one of the seven factors of enlightenment.
An opposite mental formation is called restlessness. Mental excitement. This prevents out mind from applying itself to good mental formations. Our society suffers from restlessness and that is why we run after the consumption, the internet, work, etc.
Mindfulness to release stress is good, but it is not enough. We need the insight in order to be able to truly release. Without the insight we will not stop running.
Time is more than money, time is life.
In this winter retreat, we will look with a critical eye at the manifestation-only.
Thank you for sharing the gift of your teaching.
Thank you for the insight of my anger at time of bereavement
Beautiful and simple profound teachings. Thank you with all my being :).
I can only agree with the others here. These online teachings have transformed great suffering and crisis in my life over the last three months. Also, they have helped many, many others, we have started a sangha here in Germany so the your effort in collecting these videos has brought great relief already after such a short time to so many people. If there are links to German-language videos I would be interested so that I can share them with my friends. Please let me know if you need support with your work, I would be more than happy to help.
When the German talks by Thay occur, I will post here; search for German in the search box.
I am so happy for Venerable Master Thay He has shown me the Way as Lao Tzu Peace and Joy no longer seem fake