..续本文上一页ring. So we have to call tranquility, to invite it to manifest itself. When I invite the bell to sound, it is because the bell is considered as a friend, someone who helps us to come back to ourselves, become calm. That is why, when I start inviting the bell to sound, I have to pay respect to the bell like this (Thay bows), exactly as we do to our friend. We pay our respect and love to our friend, so I pay respect to the bell: I join my palms, I make a lotus flower or a tulip, and I offer this flower to my bell, to my friend. Then I take my bell and put it on the palm of my hand, lift it to the level of my eyes, and look at it, and I breathe. We have to practice to do it.

　　I started inviting the bell when I was sixteen years old, because at that age I became a novice monk. If you visit my hut in the Upper Hamlet, you can see my picture when I was sixteen years old, the picture of a baby monk. When I hold the bell in my hand, like this, I start breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in, I calm myself, and breathing out I smile. My hand becomes a flower, like a lotus, and the bell becomes a diamond, a jewel in the heart of the lotus. Have you heard the mantra "Om mani padme hum

　　" It is in Sanskrit, and it means, "Oh, the jewel in the lotus flower!" When you breathe like that, very deeply in mindfulness, with calmness, you become the lotus flower, because there is mindfulness in you that gleams like a jewel. It is a practice, it is not a prayer. Look at my hand, it looks like a lotus flower with five petals, and in its heart there is a jewel. I breathe in with that image, and then I become a lotus flower with a jewel in me. There”s a short poem that you should learn by heart, if you want to invite the bell to sound:

　　Body, speech and mind in perfect oneness,

　　I send my heart along with the sound of this bell.

　　May all the hearers awaken from forgetfulness,

　　And transcend the path of anxiety and sorrow.

　　This poem is in French, in German, in English, in Vietnamese, so if you really want to practice inviting the bell, you have to know it by heart. This poem has only four lines.

　　What do we do when we look at the bell like this

　　 We breathe, and breathing in, we recite the first line of the poem, and breathing out, we recite the second line of the poem, and so on. When we finish the poem, we become very calm, very tranquil, and we can start inviting the bell to sound. We do it like this (light sound of bell). This is not a full sound that I made, it”s only a half-sound, to wake the bell. We do it like this…we hold the stick, the inviter, in vertical position like this, and we touch the bell to announce to people that a real sound will be sounded, so please get ready to receive the real sound. We prepare the sound, we don”t want the people around us to be surprised when they hear the real sound. The purpose is to awaken the bell, and to let people know that a real sound will be invited, so that everybody can stop talking and thinking, and everybody will be ready to listen to the bell. The sound of the bell is considered to be the voice of the Buddha inside us, calling us back. That”s why in Plum Village, when we hear the sound of the bell, we stop talking, we stop working, we stop our conversations, and we get ready to receive the real sound of the bell. The sound of the bell is the voice of the Buddha in us, which calls us back to ourselves. We need to get ready to listen to that sound. You give people time, so that they can get ready: you give about eight or nine seconds before you invite the real sound. I”m going to do it, and when you hear the sound of the bell you can breathe a long in-breath and a long out-breath.

　　(Bell)

　　That”s it. When you breathe in, you say : "Listen…I listen." And breathing out, you say silently: "This s…

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