Monday March 22, Susie will facilitate.
In 2020, I attended the five mindfulness trainings and transmission ceremony so that I could facilitate on a night like tonight. The ceremony helped deepen my practice, and wiped me out. I was forced to rest, and at the same time, stay with the practice that took me to a deeper place where I could ground myself and stay solid and present. Since the trainings, I take walks and recite them in my mind, sometimes tripping up on one or more, but eventually remembering them all.
This third training, True Love, is the hardest one for me. While true love sounds like the highest and happiest, most self-fulfilling as the recipient of true love, the description is full of what is hard to know and face and worry about when love is absent. I worry about the children and the victims of rape and violence and misguided sexual behavior. I want our world to be kind and loving.
What is true love? Do we overuse the L word, do we mean it when we say it, or are we putting it out there to get an “I Love You” back? When my son was just born, I said I love you. Like most new parents, I said it numerous times a day, but felt there was something lacking in the word “love”. When I was growing up in an abusive home, “I love you” got thrown around a lot. Is it like a cut flower that you give someone, a piece of jewelry? Something pretty — but where is the true love, the truth within action that really means love? I decided there is more than the L word. From that day on, I said to my son: I love you, I care about you, and I appreciate you. It became my mantra.
I look forward to welcoming you on Monday evening where I get to hold the space for you to breathe and love in our beloved sangha with our beloved Thay. What is love for you? What is true for you?
Along with the focus on the third mindfulness training, I invite you to enjoy a passage about the third body from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Art of Living.
Third body: The Spiritual Practice Body
Our spiritual practice body grows from our Buddha body. Spiritual practice is the art of knowing how to generate happiness and handle suffering, just as a gardener knows how to make good use of mud in order to grow lotus flowers. Spiritual practice is what helps us to overcome challenging and difficult moments. It is the art of stopping and looking deeply to gain deeper insight. It is very concrete. We cultivate our spiritual practice body — which can also be called our “Dharma body” — by cultivating the seeds of awakening and mindfulness in our daily life. The more solid our spiritual body becomes, the happier we will be and the more we are able to help those around us be happier and suffer less. We all need a spiritual dimension in our life.
It is up to each one of us to develop a strong spiritual practice body every day. Every time you take one peaceful step or one mindful breath, your spiritual practice grows. Every time you embrace a strong emotion with mindfulness and restore your clarity and calm, it grows. Then, in difficult moments, your spiritual practice body will be right there with you when you need it. It is there with you at the airport, in the supermarket, or at work.
My physical body may not last very long, but I know that my spiritual practice body, my Dharma body, is strong enough to continue for a very long time. It has helped me through so much. If it were not for my Dharma body, if it were not for my practice of mindfulness, I would never have been able to overcome the great difficulties, pain, and despair I have faced in my life. I have endured wars and violence, my country was divided, my society and Buddhist community were wrought apart, and we encountered so much discrimination, hatred, and despair. It is thanks to my Dharma body that I have been able to survive, and not only survive but overcome all these difficulties, and grow and transform through them.
I do my best to transmit every practice experience I’ve had to my students. My Dharma body is the best gift I have to offer. It is the body of all the spiritual practices and insights that have brought me healing, transformation, happiness, and freedom. I trust that all my friends and students will receive my spiritual practice body and nourish it even further for the sake of future generations. We need to practice well, and to continue to help our spiritual practice body grow and become more and more appropriate to our time.