What is the Purpose of this Human Life?

Summary

The talk, delivered at the Full Moon Meditation Hall in the New Hamlet of Plum Village during the Winter Retreat on 5 December 2013, centers on the Buddhist practice of living deeply and understanding the true quality of life. The speaker begins by reflecting on longevity in nature, mentioning turtles and redwood trees, and contrasts their long lives with the roughly 100-year human lifespan. This comparison is used to raise a fundamental question: what is the purpose of a human life, and how can one avoid wasting the precious time given? The speaker emphasizes that both young and old people should ask this question early, rather than waiting until old age to regret a life spent superficially. A major theme is that quality of life does not come from money, fame, power, or sensual gratification. Instead, it comes from the ability to live each moment deeply with awareness, compassion, and understanding. The speaker argues that many people pursue comfort, prestige, and success while losing the time needed to care for themselves and their loved ones. In contrast, the speaker presents monastic life and mindfulness practice as a way to reclaim time and live meaningfully. Historical examples from Vietnam and Buddhism are used to illustrate this point, especially King Trần Nhân Tông of the Trần dynasty, who gave up his throne to become a monk and practice on Núi Yên Tử. The speaker also recalls the Buddha’s travels and a respectful meeting with King Prasenajit, showing how spiritual life can be active, engaged, and socially connected rather than withdrawn. The talk then turns to Plum Village practice and the role of gathas, short verses used to anchor mindfulness in daily life. The speaker describes the monastic training of aspirants and explains that there are many gathas for waking up, drinking tea, sweeping, brushing teeth, and even using the toilet. The first gatha, “Waking up, I smile,” is presented as a way to recognize that each day is a gift of 24 brand new hours. The speaker stresses that every breath and every step should be treasured, and that mindfulness practice is not about ritual alone but about cultivating the capacity to be present and not waste life. Another major section focuses on meditation and the mechanics of calming the body and mind. Walking meditation and sitting meditation are described as practices for generating peace and happiness in the present moment, not as means to achieve some future reward. The speaker explains that calmness leads to concentration, and concentration supports insight, which in turn liberates and heals. Mindful breathing, especially the 16 exercises of mindful breathing, is presented as essential for harmonizing body and mind and dealing with frustration, sleepiness, and suffering. The speaker repeatedly emphasizes that practitioners should not rush, should walk as free people, and should become masters of their own steps and breaths rather than acting like machines shaped by habit energy. The latter part of the talk is a detailed teaching on the Yogācāra concept of alaya, or store consciousness, and the nature of seeds. The speaker explains that self and phenomena arise from store consciousness and that it receives, maintains, and manifests seeds. These seeds include images, names, and habits of discrimination. The talk discusses the relationship between seed and formation, using examples such as water becoming rain, snow, ice, clouds, rivers, and tea. The speaker highlights several characteristics of seeds: they coexist with their manifestations, they are impermanent and continuously changing, they maintain their own nature, and they wait for sufficient conditions to manifest. The four conditions—main cause, supporting conditions, continuity, and object of perception—are also explained. The speaker then broadens the discussion to include the idea that wholesome and unwholesome seeds interpenetrate rather than existing as isolated opposites. The talk brings in the Avatamsaka Sutra and the notion of collective and individual manifestation, arguing that every phenomenon contains both dimensions. The speaker also addresses the debate among Yogācāra masters about whether seeds are innate, newly planted, or both, and proposes a non-dual perspective in which seeds are neither simply new nor old, neither increasing nor decreasing. This is linked to the Buddhist teaching of emptiness and even compared to the scientific law of conservation of energy. Finally, the speaker returns to practice and ethics. The talk explains that insight, happiness, and liberation must be nourished continuously or they can fade, just as depression or suffering can return if conditions are not maintained. The Buddha is presented not as a distant ideal but as a being made of non-Buddha elements, just as a lotus is made of mud, sun, and water. Likewise, the earth is not outside the practitioner; it is interbeing with the practitioner. Touching the earth is described as a way to realize one’s connection with Mother Earth, ancestors, and all life, and to understand no birth and no death in a deep sense. The talk concludes by reaffirming that the path is to cultivate wholesome seeds, reduce unwholesome ones, and live each moment with awareness, while recognizing that in the deepest sense there is no increase or decrease, only interdependent transformation.