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?

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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.