Mindfulness of Breathing (1)
by Thich Nhat Hanh
Dharma Talk given on July 24, 1998 in Plum Village, France.
Today is the twenty-fourth of July, 1998. We are in the New Hamlet. The children who have just arrived are invited to draw waves and water on a sheet of paper. We did it the first week, and I received lots of drawings from the children. Maybe it would be easier to draw waves—it”s more complicated to draw water. It”s wonderful to be a wave, because it goes up and it goes down. It”s beautiful; but sometimes it”s tiring, especially when the waves are angry or excited. Sometimes we need to be water, calm water, tranquil water. Of course, the waves are water, but the waves are not really calm. But water can become calm and tranquil, because water can calm itself. We cannot separate the waves from the water. If we remove water, then there will be no waves, and if we remove the waves, there will be no water. The two are inseparable, but there is a difference between the water and the waves, because the water can be calm.
We are like waves and water: sometimes we are excited, we are noisy, we are agitated. Sometimes we need to be calm, to be tranquil; and it is possible to be calm and tranquil. Without wind, the water can become very calm. Have you seen calm water
Of course you have. When water is really calm and tranquil, it reflects the blue sky, the clouds, the trees, and you can even take a picture of the sky by focussing on the water. Everything that you see in the water, when the water is very calm, is all reflected. We are like water, and sometimes we become waves. We have a need to become tranquil water.
In Plum Village we learn to be like calm water, and if you succeed you can do the same thing at home and at school. Sometimes at home and at school we are tired, we are agitated, we are miserable, and we have the need to transform into tranquil water. I”m going to tell you how to practice it. First of all, you need to have tranquility in you. It”s something easy. If the water can be calm, then you can be calm, too. We have to confirm that water can be waves and that water can be tranquil. We are like that, we can be excited, but we can also become very calm like water. So, calmness is in us, as it is in water. We cannot remove the tranquility from the water. The calmness exists in water, and it is the same thing for us. We have calmness in us, but we need to know how to make it manifest.
This is a small bell—we call it the mini-bell. I”m going to tell you how to invite a bell to sound, with a small instrument like this, made of wood. The tranquility in us, the peace in us, we have to call them. There”s tranquility and calmness and peace and joy in us, but we have to call them so that they can manifest themselves. This tranquility, that love, that joy, that stability, sometimes we call them Buddhahood, or the nature of Buddha in us. The Buddha is someone who is very calm, very tranquil. The Buddha is somebody who has joy, compassion and calmness, and the Buddha is not somebody made of materials like wood or gold. When we invite the bell, it”s one of the means to call the joy in us, the tranquility in us, so that we can awaken the Buddha in us. There is a baby Buddha in each of us, and we have to be aware of it. In a practice center like Plum Village, when we invite the bell to sound, we have a chance to touch the Buddha in us, we have a chance to call the nature of Buddha in us, so it can manifest itself. If we do it correctly, peace will be there in our hearts, and we will immediately become calm water, and we will reflect reality as it is. If we are not calm, the image we reflect will be a distorted image, and when the image is distorted by our minds, the image is not the reality, and it causes lots of suffe…
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