Enjoying the Space Outer Space

Summary

This talk, given on 2 December 2012 at the Full Moon Meditation Hall in New Hamlet during a winter retreat, focuses on the practical and doctrinal foundations of mindfulness practice in the Plum Village tradition. The speaker begins with a strong emphasis on walking meditation: practitioners are asked to walk without speaking and without thinking, dwelling fully in each step and in the present moment. The point is not merely silence, but a deep stopping of mental turbulence so that each step can become concentrated, nourishing, and healing. The same principle is extended to sitting meditation, eating meditation, working meditation, and even ordinary activities such as brushing teeth or chopping vegetables. The central message is that happiness, peace, and joy are available in the present moment if one knows how to stop and touch what is already wonderful and positive. A major theme is the distinction between right thinking and habitual, unhelpful thinking. The speaker explains that while right thinking can bring insight, most thinking is repetitive, entangling, and even harmful, especially when it revolves around suffering, abuse, resentment, or fear. To illustrate this, the talk introduces the idea of entrusting problems to store consciousness, a deep layer of mind that can hold seeds of wisdom, experience, and ancestral inheritance. Rather than endlessly stirring problems with discursive thought, one should plant the question in store consciousness and continue practicing mindfulness. In time, a solution may arise naturally from that deeper level. This is presented as a Zen-like way of working with difficulty: not forcing answers, but allowing stillness and practice to mature insight. The talk then expands into a teaching on the “fourth nutriment,” or collective food. The speaker explains that consciousness is fed not only by physical food, but also by the environment, social atmosphere, media, and collective mental energy. Collective consciousness includes both wholesome and toxic influences. Crowds filled with anger, violence, quarreling, and unkind speech can intoxicate a person’s mind, even if that person does not consciously agree with them. The speaker gives the example of a Vietnamese physician who preferred to return to Vietnam rather than remain in the United States because the Vietnamese community there was saturated with conflict and negative speech. In contrast, Plum Village is described as a place where people try to nourish one another and avoid feeding harmful seeds. The talk stresses that everyone has seeds of hatred, violence, fear, and suffering in store consciousness, but a good environment helps wholesome seeds grow while preventing harmful seeds from being watered. A vivid section of the talk addresses the tendency to “chew” suffering repeatedly, especially old abuse or trauma. The speaker compares this to a ruminating animal chewing cud: one brings up painful memories again and again, intensifying despair and exhaustion. This repeated mental chewing is described as unhealthy and dangerous, and the Sangha is presented as a supportive environment that helps practitioners stop this cycle. The speaker links such rumination to depression and even suicidal despair, urging listeners to return to the present moment and consume the healthy nourishment of mindful living instead. The second half of the talk shifts into a doctrinal explanation of a sutra on nirvana and the “space outside of space.” The speaker discusses the distinction between the historical dimension and the ultimate dimension. In the historical dimension there are births, deaths, actions, actors, and formations; in the ultimate dimension there is no birth, no death, no acting, and no composing. This is not nihilism, but a deeper way of seeing reality in which phenomena are understood as conditioned and empty of separate self-nature. The speaker uses examples such as rain, wind, and a flower to show that what appears as a single thing is actually made of many conditions. Rain does not need a separate “rainer,” and walking does not require a separate walker; there is only the action taking place, empty of an independent self. The talk also discusses the Sanskrit term samskara, translated as formation, conditioned thing, or conditioning. The speaker explains that conditioned things are both produced by causes and also help condition other things. Nirvana, by contrast, is unconditioned. The speaker connects this teaching to the Buddha’s insight into emptiness, or sunyata, and argues that the Buddha taught both the world of phenomena and the unconditioned ultimate dimension. The discussion references the Kaccayanasutta, the Udana, and the Dhammapada, and argues that these texts support the view that nirvana is not eternal death but freedom from fixed notions of existence and non-existence. Finally, the speaker situates these teachings within Buddhist history, mentioning Theravada, Mahayana, Sarvastivada, Nagarjuna, Shariputra, and King Asoka. Shariputra is praised as a major organizer and transmitter of the Buddha’s teachings, while Nagarjuna is credited with deepening the teaching of emptiness. The talk concludes by emphasizing the need to restore the Buddha’s true meaning carefully, because transmission can be distorted. Overall, the talk combines practical mindfulness instruction, psychological guidance, and philosophical teaching to show how present-moment awareness, right view, and emptiness can transform suffering into liberation.