The Buddha Has Suffered

Summary

The talk presents a sustained teaching on the Buddhist practice of transforming suffering through mindfulness, concentration, and compassion. The speaker begins by challenging the common assumption that a Buddha does not suffer. He explains that the Buddha is not a god but a fully awakened human being who has learned the art of suffering. In this view, suffering is not something to deny or escape; it is something to understand, embrace, and use as the basis for transformation. The speaker uses the image of mud and the lotus flower to show that suffering can become the ground from which compassion, understanding, love, and happiness arise. A major theme is the contrast between the Buddhist path and ordinary habits of avoidance. The speaker describes how people often use television, eating, magazines, news, and other distractions to flee from their inner suffering. Instead, the practice is to return home to oneself, recognize suffering, and look deeply into its roots. This is linked to the Four Noble Truths: suffering, the making of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path leading to cessation. By listening to suffering with attention, understanding arises, and understanding naturally gives birth to compassion. Compassion is presented as a healing energy that first heals the practitioner and then helps others. The talk then turns to Avalokita, the bodhisattva of deep listening, known in Vietnamese as Quan Am and in Chinese as Quan Yin. Avalokita is described not as a deity in the sky but as a capacity present in every person: the ability to listen deeply to one’s own suffering and the suffering of others. The speaker explains a communal chanting practice in which the name of Avalokita is chanted three times. The first chanting invites practitioners to return to their own suffering; the second turns attention to the suffering of those nearby; the third extends awareness to suffering throughout the world, including violence, division, and hatred in many regions. This is framed not as prayer in a conventional sense but as mindfulness of suffering, which generates compassion and collective healing. Another central section focuses on the Sangha as a healing community. The speaker emphasizes that when people breathe, chant, and sit together mindfully, they create a collective energy of mindfulness, peace, and compassion that can penetrate body and heart. He encourages practitioners to surrender to this collective energy, release bodily tension, and allow fear, anger, despair, and loneliness to be embraced. He also notes that one can send this energy home to a sick family member simply by silently calling their name. The practice includes mindful crying, which becomes healing when accompanied by awareness and breathing. The second half of the talk shifts toward the teachings given to children during the summer opening at Plum Village, specifically at the Still Water Meditation Hall in the Upper Hamlet on July 29, 2013. The speaker explains the meditation of signlessness, animitta, using the example of a corn plant and the grain of corn. Just as the grain continues in the plant, ancestors continue in each person’s body. This leads to a teaching on non-self and interbeing: one is not a separate self, but a continuation of ancestors, family, and society. The speaker says that when one smiles or walks mindfully, one’s ancestors smile and walk with one. The bell of mindfulness is introduced as a key practice. When the bell sounds, practitioners are invited to listen so deeply that the sound penetrates every cell of the body and all ancestors listen together. The speaker offers a short verse used in Plum Village: “I listen, I listen. This wonderful sound brings me back to my true home.” The true home is identified not as a geographic place such as Paris, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, or even Plum Village, but as the here and now. In the present moment, all the wonders of life are available. The bell helps practitioners return to the body, release worries about the past and future, and experience freedom, peace, and joy. Walking meditation receives extensive attention. The speaker teaches that every step can bring one home to the here and now, and that walking can be practiced with the verse “I have arrived, I am home.” He explains that one can adjust the number of steps to the breath—two-three, three-five, or four-six—depending on what feels most nourishing. The essential point is not speed but arrival: each step should be fully present, solid, and free. He contrasts this with the habit of running, which is driven by the belief that happiness lies in the future. Mindful walking reveals that the conditions for happiness are already present. The speaker extends this teaching to ordinary activities such as cooking breakfast, brushing teeth, and even using the toilet, insisting that all can be done in the kingdom of God when performed with mindfulness. The talk also explores ultimate reality through the language of the Kingdom of God, the Pure Land of the Buddha, and Nirvana. The speaker says these are not abstract notions but realities available in the present moment. He uses the image of a wave and water to explain no birth and no death: the wave is not separate from water, just as a person is not separate from the ultimate. With mindfulness and concentration, one can touch the nature of no birth and no death in every step. The speaker mentions places such as Wutai Shan in China and Grdhrakuta near Rajagriha in India as examples of walking meditation practiced on mountains, and he also describes a retreat in Hong Kong where many participants committed to walking mindfully from home to public transportation and work. Overall, the talk presents a coherent practice-centered vision of Buddhism in which suffering is embraced rather than avoided, compassion is cultivated through deep listening, and daily life becomes the path to healing, freedom, and awakening. The speaker repeatedly returns to the idea that the present moment is the true home, and that through mindful breathing, chanting, walking, and community practice, practitioners can touch peace, joy, ancestors, the Buddha, and the ultimate reality itself.