Original video’s Vietnamese title: “Thong Dong Là Thành Quả Của Sự Tu Học [CPNĐSNC1] | TS Thích Nhất Hạnh(27-11-1997, Làng Mai)”
Full Dharma talk originally posted: by Làng Mai (Plum Village’s Vietnamese YouTube channel), https://youtu.be/a6qUhZTFoK8 on Oct 16, 2022
Talk given: November 27, 1997, Plum Village France (hamlet unnoted)
Length: 08 minutes 40 seconds
Video’s note: “Bộ pháp thoại này được thiền sư giảng vào các năm 1997-1999 do hạn chế về công nghệ thời điểm đó nên chất lượng âm thanh và hình ảnh không được rõ nét lắm mong đại chúng thông cảm.”
This Dharma talk series were given by the Zen master during the 1997-1999 period. Due to technological limitations at that point, audiovisual quality is not very good. The Plum Village Editorial Team hopes for your kind understanding.
This is a short teaching video excerpted from the Dharma talk “Leisureliness Is The Fruit of The Practice” given by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh on November 27, 1997 in Plum Village France.
To watch the full Dharma talk with English subtitles and transcript, please go to Leisureliness Is The Fruit of the Practice.
Transcript
The habit of getting things done quickly
In this retreat, let us focus our attention on working meditation. Working meditation means sangha service. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done around the community, not just a few. Tidying things up. Sweeping and cleaning. Cooking and baking. Cleaning and mopping. Lots of work. There’s also typing, putting together The Plum Village Newsletter, using the computer, etc… Lots of work, actually.
But we should do all these things as a way of practice. Make sure we can always find joy and happiness, solidity and stability, and leisureliness and freedom doing them. Please pay special attention to this matter, dear sangha. We should make a great stride in this respect in order for the practice to work.
When we do something — be it doing dishes, cooking, or cleaning a toilet, or arranging the mats and cushions, we have to really get down to the practice. We resolve to never let the unwholesome habitual energy of getting things done quickly carry us away.
Thay know that this unwholesome habitual energy is in everyone. It’s also in Thay. Whatever we do, we just want to get it over with. And that habitual energy is extremely unwholesome. When we want to get things over with, you know, we are not happy at all doing them.
For that reason, we can work a bit more slowly than usual but in each moment, while doing our work, we really feel happy. While walking to the place where we’re going to work, how should we walk?
We shouldn’t let that work haul us forth. Because contained in each footstep of ours is our practice. A footstep that doesn’t have stability, freedom, and happiness in it is a footstep that doesn’t count. That’s why each footstep of yours, dear friends, each and every footstep should be consistently imbued with stability, with leisureliness and freedom, with happiness — for this practice to work.
But if there’s a footstep that doesn’t have these three things, it’s considered a footstep gone to waste. You waste your time. You waste your life. The same with each breath. While sitting in meditation, if, in each breath, there’s no happiness, stability, and leisureliness, it’s a breath gone to waste.
Just yesterday or the day before yesterday, Thay weeded the garden along the path that leads to Sơn Cốc. Well, Thay held a hoe and started hoeing the weeds the Vietnamese style. Every hoe-slicing into the earth like that consistently had solidity, leisureliness, and joy. Thay didn’t allow any slicing to happen without being mindfully aware of whether or not in each slicing there’s stability, leisureliness, and joy.
So, during the whole time Thay was hoeing the weeds along that path, each moment was imbued with happiness like any other moment.
The same with each dish that we wash. Let’s say there are sixty dishes to wash. While washing a dish, first, ask our self, “Is there any happiness, leisureliness, and stability in me doing this first dish?” If there is, that dish isn’t gone to waste. If there isn’t, that dish is considered not washed.
For that reason, if you need to wash sixty dishes, you have to truly wash all sixty dishes. Don’t wash sixty dishes but it turns out, only three or four dishes are washed in stability and leisureliness, and the rest of the dishes are not. You’re just wasting your life practicing this way.
That’s how Thay practice. And Thay hope that you will also practice the same. Thay never teach anything that Thay don’t practice.
We have this habitual energy of getting things done very well, very fast, very effectively. But that’s also a bad thing. We have to train ourselves again. If we can make it, whatever we happen to do, even if that’s scrubbing the toilet bowl, it’ll always bring us very great happiness.
Each footstep that doesn’t have stability, leisureliness, peace, and happiness in it is a footstep thrown away. A bowl that’s not washed in stability, leisureliness, peace, and happiness is a bowl thrown away. Such a huge waste. Many people out there do that. It doesn’t make any sense if we’re in a monastery, doing exactly the same, wasting and throwing a lifetime away.
So if you can do working meditation like this, working meditation becomes as important as — no less important than, walking meditation or sitting meditation, or studying the sutras. You’ll come to see that, within two or three days practicing, you’ll have already made great strides on the path of practice.
That’s why working meditation is something you should train yourself again. Those whose habit of working fast is still deeply ingrained should be more aware of this and should learn and train yourself again.
Make sure that we sweat every day
Above all else, it’s the movements of the body. Every day, make sure that we sweat. Not a day goes by that we should not sweat. Be it jogging, hoeing, or carrying things from one place to another. Every day, we have to sweat at least once. Make sure we break into a light sweat.
Otherwise, we lack exercises. Our novice nuns and monks will become ‘viscously’ weak — bit by bit, little by little. And Thay will carry bad reputation. Jog. Jog until the whole body feels a burning heat. And only stop when we’ve broken into a light sweat.
Thay also do that. Thay is over 70 now, and Thay also do that. Well, this is Thay’s instruction for all novice monks and nuns — everyone must follow this. If you’re not following Thay’s instruction, you’re not Thay’s disciples. [Thay smiling]
While you’re out in the garden working, if sweat breaks out, that’s good. If not, you have to run. Running in place is acceptable. Find a way to break into a sweat — a light sweat, for this to work. That’s Thay’s instruction. The same with the Sisters.
Out there, many people don’t have space to run. They have to run on the spot. They run in place. But we have so many beautiful paths here, why don’t we run?
🍃🍂🍁
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