..續本文上一頁hythm of your practice.

　　I am blooming as a flower, I am fresh as the dew. I chew according to this gatha also. I also use the gatha: This is the Pure Land, the Pure Land is here. This also is a song that is available in Vietnamese, but our friends who do not speak Vietnamese have not had a chance to learn and to practice it. Thay Doji has tried to translate it into French; but because he used the Vietnamese music, it does not sound very natural to the French ear, so I hope that someone will help with new music. Each line has only four words:

　　Day la tinh do

　　Tinh do la day

　　Mim cuoi chanh niem

　　An tru hom nay.

　　But la la chin

　　Phap la may bay

　　Tang than khap chon

　　Que huong noi nay.

　　Tho vao hoa no

　　Tho ra truc lay

　　Tam khong rang buoc

　　Tieu dao thang ngay.

　　I chew my food with this poem. And the meaning is this:

　　This is the pure land;

　　The pure land is right here.

　　This mindful smile helps me

　　To establish myself in the present moment.

　　Look, I see the Buddha as a red leaf,

　　And the dharma as a cloud.

　　My Sangha is everywhere,

　　And my true homeland is just right here.

　　Breathing in, I see the chrysanthemum blooming;

　　Breathing out, I see the bamboo bending.

　　My mind is totally free,

　　And I enjoy it day after day.

　　During that time of breathing, you keep the Pure Land alive, in the here and the now. Yesterday I said that it”s up to you to choose either hell or the Pure Land, because both hell and the Pure Land are there in every cell of your body. If you allow hell to manifest, it will manifest. All of us have experienced how hot hell is, but if you want to choose the Pure Land, you can do that. Just make use of your breathing, your walking, in order to make the Pure Land manifest. With these methods of walking, of breathing, of eating, you keep the Pure Land alive. You don”t have to die in order to enter the Kingdom of God; in fact, you have to be very alive to do so. With full awareness, when you become fully alive, you only need to make one step, and there you are—in the Kingdom of God.

　　So I repeat this gatha:

　　This is the Pure Land

　　The Pure Land is here.

　　This mindful smile helps me

　　To establish myself in the present moment.

　　Look! I see the Buddha as a red leaf;

　　Look! I see the Dharma as a cloud.

　　My Sangha is everywhere…

　　Everything I see, I identify as elements of my Sangha--the blue sky, the clouds, the leaves, the trees, the birds, the pebbles, the path where I practice walking meditation-- everything belongs to my Sangha. I don”t have to go back to my hometown in order to find my Sangha. My Sangha is everywhere. Everything around me supports my being awake. Every sound, every sight supports and maintains me in the Pure Land. My lack of mindfulness alone can bring me out of the Pure Land, but everything else around me is supporting me in order to nourish me in the Pure Land.

　　My Sangha is every where,

　　And my true home is right here in the here and the now.

　　Breathing in, I see the chrysanthemum blooming,

　　Breathing out I see the bamboo bending

　　My mind is fully free,

　　And I enjoy it day after day, month after month.

　　Please make use of that gatha, rewrite it in German, in Italian, in English, in French. We offer it to our friends as a gatha of practice for our walking meditation, our sitting meditation, and our mindful lunch.

　　There was a nuclear scientist who lived in England, named David Bohm. He used the terms "the explicate order" and "the implicate order." His insight is similar to the insight of the historical dimension and the ultimate dimension. He said that in the explicate order, you see things outside of each other. A table is outside of a flower, and you are outside of me. But the other dimension of reality can be called implicate order, that is, if you look deeply, you see that the , flower is in the table and that the table is in th…

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