The Popularity of Mindfulness

Summary

This talk, delivered on the third day of a retreat themed “to understand is to love,” presents a wide-ranging teaching on mindfulness, community life, and the Buddhist path as a practical way to cultivate true happiness and true love. The speaker begins by situating the audience in Plum Village, describing monastic life as a shared way of living without private bank accounts, salaries, cars, or houses. In this communal setting, the monastics and lay practitioners offer something more valuable than material goods: collective energy, mindfulness, brotherhood, sisterhood, healing, and peace. The speaker emphasizes that the community’s real “product” is not consumer goods but the atmosphere of practice that helps visitors transform suffering, restore communication, and reconcile with one another. A central portion of the talk uses objects from the speaker’s bag as teaching tools: a matchbox, corn seeds, a candle, pebbles, and a bell. These are presented as Dharma instruments, each linked to a practice or teaching. The bell becomes the focus of an extended story about a dream from forty years earlier, in which the speaker, as a young student, was unexpectedly admitted to a prestigious music class. In the dream, the speaker discovered that the small bell in his pocket was itself a musical instrument and realized that he could “present” on music through the practice of inviting and listening to the bell. This dream becomes a metaphor for awakening to one’s own capacities and for the practice of mindfulness through sound, breathing, and calm presence. The speaker connects this to the idea of self-transformation: one must “overtake” one’s former self and continue to grow through practice. The talk then turns to the Buddha’s first teaching, the Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma, and especially the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The speaker explains the eight elements—right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right diligence, right mindfulness, and right concentration—as a path of true love and true happiness. He stresses that these elements are interdependent: one cannot truly understand mindfulness without seeing the other seven elements within it. This becomes a critique of modern appropriations of mindfulness, such as using it merely to increase profit or military efficiency. True mindfulness, he argues, must be grounded in compassion, insight, and ethical conduct. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are presented as the concrete expression of the Eightfold Path in daily life. They are described as a path of understanding, love, and happiness rather than commandments. The speaker explains that the trainings arise from insight: one refrains from harmful actions not because of external authority, but because mindfulness reveals the suffering they cause. He highlights the first training on reverence for life, the second on cultivating true happiness, the third on true love, the fourth on loving speech and deep listening, and the fifth on mindful consumption. The talk repeatedly insists that “there is no way to happiness; happiness is the way,” and similarly for peace and healing. Nirvana is described not as a distant destination but as solidity and freedom experienced in the present moment. A major theme is the relationship between understanding and love. The speaker explains that true happiness cannot exist without true love, and true love cannot exist without understanding. Understanding begins with recognizing suffering—both one’s own and that of others. He encourages couples and families to sit together and ask whether they truly understand each other’s suffering. The practice of deep listening and loving speech is presented as essential for restoring communication and bringing about reconciliation. The speaker uses the image of mud and lotus flowers to show that suffering is not an obstacle to happiness but the very condition that makes compassion and understanding possible. The talk also addresses sexuality and education, especially for young people. The speaker strongly distinguishes sexual desire from true love and warns that “empty sex” can be destructive. He argues that schools should teach applied ethics and the practice of true love in a secular language, so that young people can learn how to care for loneliness, relationships, and sexual energy responsibly. He describes efforts by Dharma teachers in France to work with government officials and the Observatoire de la Laïcité to bring this kind of teaching into public schools, while respecting secular principles. He notes that similar efforts have succeeded in countries such as India, Thailand, America, and England, and hopes that schoolteachers in the audience will help bring the practice to schools in the Netherlands. Finally, the speaker returns to the broader vision of a society shaped by mindfulness trainings, where every step, breath, and action can be an expression of compassion and love. He frames this as a deep aspiration for the younger generation and invites the audience to help make it real. The overall message is that Buddhist practice is not abstract doctrine but a lived path of ethical action, mindful presence, and relational healing that can transform individuals, families, communities, and society.