The Art of Happiness

 

The art of being happy is to appreciate the things that we already have. This means that we are aware of these things and perceive them with mindfulness. This mindfulness in perception will help us to get in touch deeply with the treasures of the present moment. In this way, all these treasures turn into countless reasons for us to be happy. And when the conditions for our happiness are no longer available to us, we don‘t feel any regret because we have already savored and enjoyed the happiness in them.

When we come back to ourselves and observe ourselves, we will see that our mind is always running after its confusing ideas in the future. Doing that, it misses all the beauties that are a reality right here and now. We often recognize our true treasures only when we‘ve already lost them again. It is really a pity if we only learn to understand and appreciate the things when they‘ve already passed by. We should practice to appreciate the simple and usual things that are available right here and now.

If our father and mother, our grandfather and grandmother are still alive, we can be happy about that. If our children are still living with us, if they haven‘t left home yet to study in another city and to live their own life, that can be a source of happiness for us. During the time our children play pleasurably and create a lot of noise, we often feel distracted and exhausted by them. But when we bring to mind that our children are healthy and able to frolic, the joy will naturally come up in our hearts.

Every day we practice to come back to the present moment and to ourselves, we are present and awake, we recognize and appreciate the things that we are currently having. In this way, we will for sure experience a lot of joy and happiness.

In gratitude for every moment,

We discover the ultimate happiness.

With an alert mind, in touch with life

We are dwelling in the Here and Now.

- Thay Phap Nhat

This is a Happy, Miraculous Moment

Dharma Talk by Thay Phap Nhat

The Nature of No-Birth and No-Death

Realize who you really are! - Thay Phap Nhat

Body and Mind are One

Thay Phap Nhat speaks about mindfulness, awareness, body and mind during the meditation class in the Dharma Light Monastery.

Thay Phap Nhat Speaks About Dying

Dharma Talk during the meditation class on Thursday evening

Frieden im täglichen Leben - Seminar am 25.2. in Leipzig

Viele von uns fühlen sich von der Praxis der Meditation angezogen, weil sie nach Frieden und Stille in ihrem Inneren suchen. Wie jedoch ist es möglich, diesen Frieden auch im Alltag zu erfahren? Wo ist die Stille, während wir mit der U-Bahn zur Arbeit fahren, oder während wir mit unserer Familie beim Abendessen sitzen? Wie ist es möglich, unseren Alltag tief zu leben und unserem Leben Sinn und Bedeutung zu verleihen? Wir werden uns gemeinsam diesen Fragen widmen und lernen, was wir ganz konkret tun können, um friedvoll in der Welt zu leben. Wir werden Sitz- und Gehmeditation üben, einen Vortrag zum Thema hören, gemeinsam in Stille essen und die Gelegenheit zum achtsamen Austausch haben. Bei all diesen Tätigkeiten können wir unseren eigenen inneren Frieden nähren und erforschen.

Thay Phap Nhat wurde im Jahr 1984 in Vietnam geboren. Frühe Erfahrungen mit dem Tod weckten in ihm viele Fragen auf nach dem Sinn des Lebens, und so begab er sich auf die Suche nach so etwas wie „Wahrheit“. Im Alter von 12 Jahren begann er, Meditation zu praktizieren. Im Jahr 2005 wurde er von dem Zen-Meister Thich Nhat Hanh zum Mönch ordiniert und konnte bald darauf tiefere Einsicht in die Natur der Dinge erlangen. Er entdeckte eine Dimension, die über Zeit und Raum, über Geburt und Tod hinausgeht und erlebte dadurch eine tiefe Befreiung. 2013 wurde er zum Dharma-Lehrer ernannt und hat seitdem zahlreiche Seminare im Europäischen Institut für Angewandten Buddhismus (EIAB) geleitet. Darüber hinaus ist er an verschiedene Orte in Deutschland, den Niederlanden, Tschechien, Frankreich und Vietnam gereist um dort das Dharma zu lehren. Im Januar 2017 ließ er sich in Pechhütte in Finsterwalde nieder und gründete dort das Meditationszentrum „Dharma-Lichtung“. Er liebt die Meditation und die Stille und ist Autor mehrerer Bücher zum Dharma, vor allem aber in Form von Poesie. Er lebt gerne spontan und betrachtet das Leben als ein Abenteuer, das sich auf unvorhersehbare Weise entfaltet. Jeder Moment ist neu und frisch.

Zeit: So, 25. Februar 2018, 10:00-17:30

Anmeldung und Kontakt: Für die Teilnahme am Seminar melden Sie sich bitte unter der folgenden e-mail Adresse an: Dharma-Lichtung@posteo.de

Das Seminar findet statt in Leipzig im Sinn&Sein Projektladen, Zschochersche Str. 2a/Ecke Dreilindenstr.

Bitte mitbringen: Bitte bringen Sie einen vegetarischen Beitrag für das gemeinsame Mittagessen mit.

Dana: Die Teilnahme an der Veranstaltung findet auf Spenden-Basis (Dana) statt. Die Höhe der Spende liegt im Ermessen eines jeden Einzelnen.

Living fully in the present moment - Dharma Talk in Bremen, 26th March 2017

Thay Phap Nhat

To me, it is a beautiful practice to accept whatever comes to us. Usually our mind does not allow us to do that, it always intervenes. It tells us to do this, do that. Our mind always has the tendency to choose. But when we are in a dilemma, we do not know how to decide if a specific option is good or bad to do, and then we create inner conflicts. And because of these conflicts our mind and body become tired. That is very unhealthy. The way to get out of this situation is to realize that there is no need to get out. We just do nothing, we are flowing with life as it is. We welcome whatever is happening to us. We can say: “Hey, I am really happy to welcome you”. That is enough. This is the way to get out of all our problems, all our sufferings. But often we do not have the courage to do that because we feel an insecurity within ourself. We know that if we go there we will enjoy a beautiful view, a beautiful success but we are afraid that maybe in the middle of the way there is a hole and when we go there we will fall down into the hole. We are creating a lot of stories in our mind that might never happen. We are educated with the belief that we need to live in security and we are not taught that life  is always insecure. Only in insecurity we will have a chance to grow up. Only in insecurity we will discover the beauty of life. Life is really an adventure. In order to understand and to know the secret of life, we just need to be in that adventure.

Smile! Life is an Adventure - Thay Phap Nhat (English/Spanish)

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/