Forgiveness - Thay Phap Nhat

Martin Günther / pixelio.de

Do you want to run away from the past? Do you want to get rid of the image of the person who has hurt you?

Sometimes you even want to punish or revenge the people who make you suffer. You feel like you are not able to forgive their words or behaviors, and your heart hurts every time you think of them. Or maybe you thought you had forgiven the person, you thought your wound was healed, but after some time when you face the person again, the pain is back, somehow it is still there. You still haven't forgiven. The pain the person caused you is still affecting your present, or even future. So how can we obtain the real forgiveness and let go the hurtful past?

The real forgiveness is to recognize the sufferings of the people who caused you pain, recognize that all what they have done to you comes from some deep reasons conditioned by the unhealthy environment of which they created, or inherited from their parents and grandparents. They probably didn't want to do those things to us, they didn't mean to hurt us. They said those mean words, or did those hurtful things, because they are the victims of what they say and do. When we are able to see this, forgiveness and loving kindness will naturally come into our heart. This forgiveness and loving kindness will be the nectar of compassion healing the wounds. In order to see those things, we need time to practice looking deeply.

Love yourself and learn to take care of your emotions – Thay Phap Nhat

If we don't know how to love ourself, how to take care of ourself, how to understand ourself deeply, it will be difficult for us to love another person. Therefore it is very important that we learn to come back to ourself. First of all we need to truly be there for ourself. Often we are not there for ourself, we work very hard, we don't have much time for ourself. We have to earn money, raise our children, and there are many things that we worry about. We even forget that we have a body. That's why we have to be there for our body. We can use the first mantra from Plum Village: „I am here for you.“ In many traditions, for example in the tibetan buddhism, mantras are sacred words in a foreign language that we don't understand. In Plum Village we continue the tradition of using mantras, but we use our own language so we can understand the words. So the first mantra is: „Darling, I am here for you.“ First of all we are here for ourself. We need to learn how to relax our body. When we have strong emotions, like anger or fear, our body can get sick. That's why we need a technique that can help us calm our emotions. When we are angry, we have the tendency of wanting to speak immediately in order to express our anger. We want to react immediately. In the past we have done that many times. Later we often regret what we have said, and we wish that we wouldn't have said it. But in that moment it is already too late. We vow that next time we will not react again in the same way. But the energy of anger is so strong that next time it makes us say something unkind again. We suffer from that, and the people around us suffer as well.

Deep Love and True Love - Thay Phap Nhat

Bettina F. / pixelio.de

Our ideas about love can be sorted in two categories. There is a love that transcends birth and death. God can never die. The essence of being will never die either. On the other hand, beauty will pass. Where there is happiness, there must be suffering as well. Trust is impermanent; maybe we trust one person today, but tomorrow we won't trust him or her anymore. When I am satisfied, I have enough, I might want more after a short time.

There are two categories of love. We can call these two kinds of love „deep love“ and „true love“. Deep love can grow, it can become deeper over time. True love is already there. God is already there. The essence of our being is already there. When we are breathing in and out, all trees are breathing with us, the whole universe is breathing with us. We are already in a flow.

In order to arrive at true love, we have to cultivate deep love first. I would like to explain an example about deep love. In our life, we have relationships with other people, for example with our friends or with our wife or husband. Here we speak about all relationships in our daily life. The love that occurs in our relationships needs to be cultivated. We have to take care of this love, so it can develop. In true love, this is different. True love is the love that we have for God. We flow with the river of life. In this love, we dwell in freedom. We are fully present in the here and now. In this love, there is always peace. True creativity also arises from this love. In this love, there is always respect; it respects even simple things like a small flower or a ray of sunlight.

Who are you?

Annamartha / pixelio.de

Thay Phap Nhat

We can answer the question „Who are you?“ on many different levels. Let us first speak about the first level: Someone comes to us and asks: „Who are you?“ We might think: „I am this body.“ And if we have some psychological knowledge, we might add some more things: „I am not only this body. I also have feelings and perceptions.“ If we are a meditation practicioner, especially a practicioner of mindfulness meditation, we can observe our mind in our daily life. And we will see: „I am not only the body, the feelings and the perceptions. I also have mental formations.“ If we add the level of philosophy, we can see that there is one more „thing“ belonging to us, and that is our consciousness. So that is who we are: Body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness.

We can as well use another terminology. Some people who are practicing some spiritual practice and already have some deeper knowledge will give us another answer to our question „Who are you?“ They will say: „I am body and mind.“ Body and mind inculde feelings, perceptions and mental formations. I have met many people who stop at this point and don't go further. They say: „I am body and mind.“ But there is another level that goes deeper than that sentence. To me, it is important not to stop at this point. We can go a little further, a little deeper. Here, we cannot define anymore or determine. There is only the direct experience of what we are. We cannot experience it on the level of thinking. It transcends the level of our head. How can we know this level?

Peace in Me - Peace in the World (Dharma Talk in Hamburg, February 7)

Thay Phap Nhat

I would like to tell you a story that is taking place several hundreds years ago. In that time, the surface of the earth was covered by thorns and sharp stones, and the people's feet were often hurt by them. The King wanted to protect his people, and therefore he invited several wise men to come to his palast in order to find a solution for the problem. One of the wise men suggested that the whole earth could be covered by carpet, so the thorns and stones could no longer hurt the people. The other wise men also liked that idea. But it seemed that it was impossible to play out that idea., because oodles of carpet would be needed. Luckily another wise man had another proposal to offer: Each person could get one pair of shoes. The thorns would not be removed, they would still be there, but the people would be protected from injury by their shoes. The king liked that idea, and everyone agreed. This story reminds me of the peace in oneself and the peace in the world. We have the idea that we want to make the whole world become peaceful, and that is really a good idea.

True Meditation - Thay Phap Nhat

Building our Relationships - Seminar with Thay Phap Nhat in Bremen

The happy inner child

Kurt Heller/ pixelio.de

 Sometimes we have an image of ourselves that we get caught in. We don't know how we can liberate ourselves from that image. Maybe we have created that image when we were a little boy or a little girl, when we were living together with our family. During that time we have also been hurt by the people living around us, and that is why in everyone of us there is a wounded inner child. Our teacher does often invite us to embrace that wounded inner child, so that the wounds within us can heal. But I can also see another aspect It is true that we can come back to our inner child, take care of its wounds and in this way we can reconcile with our inner child. But if we focus only on the wounds, we might forget that in everyone of us there is also a happy inner child living beside the wounded inner child.

The Path to True Love - Seminar on 30./31. Juli in Hamburg

Your Inner Master

A person who has achieved enlightenment, we may call „awakened“. It means that this person is awake. When we are in a dream, the things around us will not be clearly visible for us. When we wake up from sleeping, we often cannot remember the content of our dream, because the things in the dream are not clearly perceivable for us. It is the same with our day dream. If we live our life, and we are not able to see the things around us cleary, then we are actually dreaming – although we are awake (in the sense of not sleeping). How can we become truly awakened, like the Buddha? We call the Buddha an „awakened“ being. „buddh“ means „awake“, and the name „Buddha“ means „the awakened one“. The Buddha was also called „Gautama“ - that was his name.

As I am not an intellectual person, I don't have much knowledge. I am a lazy monk – I know that very well. I don't know how the right side and the left side of brain are working – maybe I will learn these things one day. But I know very well how our consciousness is working. Our consciousness is a very powerful tool. If we know it deeply, we can achieve a lot, and we can use our full potential.

Questions & Answers 3
from the Seminar „Peace in daily life“ with Thay Phap Nhat

Q: Are there actually no emotions in the present moment? Is there no emotionality in what is happening in the present moment?

A: There is no seperation between the absolute level and the relative level of reality. The present moment includes the emotions that are arising in it. We can observe in the present moment that a strong emotion is coming up. We know that the emotion is there, and it will not vanish just because we know it. 

Furthermore we can observe that because of this strong emotion we want to say something. In some cases we are able to calm down and we refrain from saying something. Also this is observable. In the present moment there are three things always present: Our body, our mind and the environment. When there is an emotion arising in us, this emotion belongs to the realm of the mind. While it is arising, we can at the same time observe our body. If for example there is anger coming up, we recognize that our face is becoming red, our heart is beating faster and our breath is getting shorter. As we are observing these things, our body will calm down again. The more we observe our emotions, the more experience we have in dealing with them, and the better we will understand them. 

Once we know our emotion well enough, it will still come up, but it will not be as strong as before. After some more time we will recognize: „If I continue to talk with this person, my strong emotion will come up again.“ Thanks to this realization we will know when to withdraw from the conversation. In this way we can keep our inner freshness alive. In order to be successfull in this practice of looking deeply we need some training. 

The more we observe our emotions, the more we can understand them. This is not only true for anger, but for all kinds of emotions. In the same way we can learn to understand the situations in our life, and thanks to this we have the opportunity to choose the direction for our life. Our mind is like a CD-Player. If our CD-Player is playing a music that we don't like, why don't we change the CD?

read more: https://www.facebook.com/Thich-Phap-Nhat-1013577255397412/

Questions & Answers 2

from the Seminar „Peace in daily life“ with Thay Phap Nhat

Q: You say that it is not possible to suffer in the present moment. I understand that a big part of our suffering is coming from the past. But I also often experience a strong feeling of happiness in the moment I am reminded of happy situations from the past. Does this mean that this happiness connected to the past isn't true either? Does it mean it isn't real?

A: We remember a happy situation from the past, and we feel happy. We conclude that this happiness is coming from the past. But actually this feeling of happiness is taking place in the present moment. With the suffering it is the same. If we identify ourselves with our emotions, then we will lose ourselves, and we can no longer be in the Here and Now. 

In order not to lose ourselves, we need to develop the energy of mindfulness and awareness. Then we can recognize clearly whatever is happening inside of us, without losing ourselves. We don't identify with our emotion, with our sadness or our anger. The more we become an observer of what is happening, the bigger will be the gap between us and the situation. In this way we develop the capacity to choose freely with which attitude we want to act in that situation.

Questions & Answers 1 - Thay Phap Nhat

from the Seminar „Peace in daily life“ with Thay Phap Nhat

Question: How can I be peaceful in the moment there is a person in front of me who is angry and wants to harm me?

Answer: Imagine there is a well in front of you, and you want to take some water out of that well. If in that well there is no water, it is not possible to take some out. If in our heart there is no anger, and someone is saying something unkind to us, can we then become angry? The energy of anger is like the water in the well. The other person is just a kind of trigger for the anger that is already inside of us.

But there is still something we can do when another person is waking up the anger in us. In the buddhist psychology we speak about seeds that are lying in our store consciousness. Everyone of us has many different kinds of seeds: the seeds of love, compassion, happiness and joy. But there are also the seeds of sadness, anger, frustration and fear lying in our store consciousness. If we know how to water the seeds of happiness and joy in our daily life, then these seeds will grow and become strong trees in the garden of our heart. If instead we water the seeds of frustration, anger and worry, then these seeds will become stronger and they will grow. If we can see this clearly, we are able to choose which kind of seeds we want to water in our consciousness. We can just choose the seeds that will make us happy.

All the people in our environment are like a mirror, reflecting what we have inside of us. We have the right to choose with what kind of attitude we want to face the situations in our life. If we are not strong in the pracitice yet, we will need a community, we need friends who nourish only the good seeds in our heart. Once we become stronger, we will have enough inner calmness in order to deal with difficult situations.

read more: https://www.facebook.com/Thich-Phap-Nhat-1013577255397412/

People react to being called beautiful

Life Journey Of St.Mother Teresa

A Mother's Cry For Her Baby

It's The Most Touching Moment Imaginable World Inspirational

27.02.2016 in České Budějovice - Czech

Thay Phap Nhat in Spain

27/02/2016 in České Budějovice - photos (evening)

Forest Man

Thay Phap Nhat reads his Poem in Vietnamese

Peaceful Early Morning Chants With Lyrics | Music For Peace And Meditation

sharing the joy to people in Phu Dien - Tan Phu, Viet Nam

vietnamese people will celebrate lunar New Year in coming days. This morning, 04-02-2016 our friends in Sowing The Seeds of Love movement come and visited people in Phu Dien - Tan Phu, Vietnam and was distributing 115 presences for people there. we wish them have a happy new year and all the best will come to them in this new year.

Sowing The Seeds of Love (SSL) is a movement, an Organization that was found by Thay Phap Nhat and his friends in Europa

http://sowingtheseedoflove.blogspot.de

How we can bring Light into our Consciousness - Thay Phap Nhat

Our consciousness is like a dark room with many different pieces of furniture in it. Let us imagine

that we are going into that room. We cannot recognize what kinds of furniture are in the room, 

because everything is dark in there. We cannot see where our bell is standing, where the chairs and 

the table are placed, and where the mats and cussions are lying on the ground. We can walk through 

the room and touch all these different objects, but because we cannot see them it might happen that 

we stumble. The bell, the chairs, the table and the cushions are symbolizing our emotions like 

anger, fear, jealousy and loneliness. When we stumble on them, we will suffer.

But suppose that there is a small candle that we can light now, so that we have a little light in the 

room. We can see that right in front of us there is a mat lying on the floor, and we can step aside in 

order to not step on it. The energy of mindfulness is exactly like that light of our candle. When we 

have the energy of mindfulness in us, it means that there is light in our mind. We can recognize our 

anger when it is coming up, and we can say to ourselves: „I see that in this moment there is anger 

arising in me. If I continue to listen to this conversation, the anger will grow.“ Because we can see 

that clearly, we are able to to prevent our anger from being nourished even more.

Frieden im täglichen Leben - Thay Phap Nhat

Frieden im täglichen Leben - Meditationsseminar in Hamburg

Am 6./7. Februar wird ein Seminar mit Thay Phap Nhat zu dem Thema "Frieden im täglichen Leben" stattfinden.

In der Schweiz 09-01-2016 - Thay Phap Nhat