Cultivating Brotherhood and Sisterhood

Summary

The talk centers on Buddhist practice, community life, and the cultivation of wholesome emotions. It begins with a communal invocation of the Sangha, emphasizing collective breathing, chanting, listening, and the dissolution of the illusion of a separate self. The speaker repeatedly invokes refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, framing these as sources of guidance, understanding, love, and harmonious community. The opening also includes multilingual chanting and recitation, underscoring the international and devotional character of the gathering. A substantial portion of the talk explains monastic life in the speaker’s tradition. The audience is told that the retreat took place on 7 June 2013, during the fourth day of a retreat on understanding emotions. The speaker describes the structure of monastic training across Plum Village communities in Asia, Europe, and North America, including the possibility for young people to enter a five-year program of monastic training and service. The stages of becoming a monastic are outlined: aspirant, novice, full ordination, and later, potentially, Dharma teacher transmission. The speaker also explains the practice of being accompanied by a “second body” when traveling or doing errands, a safety and mindfulness practice. Monastic life is presented as a joyful path of study, practice, work, and play, with an emphasis on joy in learning languages and scriptures such as Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, and the Abhidhamma. The main fruit of monastic life is described as brotherhood and sisterhood, a durable form of love that is sustained by shared practice and service rather than private ownership or salary. The talk then shifts to the teaching of true love, presented through the four Brahmaviharas: maitri, karuna, mudita, and upeksha. Maitri is explained as loving-kindness, friendship, brotherhood, or sisterhood, and is described as the capacity to make another person happy. Karuna, compassion, is the ability to recognize and relieve suffering through deep listening and understanding. Mudita is sympathetic joy, the shared happiness that arises when one person’s joy becomes another’s joy. Upeksha is translated as equanimity, but the speaker prefers “inclusiveness,” stressing that true love does not exclude the other person or reduce their suffering to “your problem.” The speaker uses examples from intimate relationships and parent-child relationships to show that love cannot exist without understanding, and that mindful listening and mindful looking are essential practices for nourishing love. The speaker also warns that love must be fed daily through mindfulness, concentration, and insight, otherwise it can deteriorate into bitterness, loneliness, anger, or indifference. A reference is made to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s idea from The Little Prince that love means looking together in the same direction, though the speaker nuances this by saying that lovers should also look deeply into each other to see suffering and thereby generate compassion. The talk connects these teachings to the broader Buddhist idea of the four immeasurable minds or hearts, called the Brahmaviharas, which are presented as essential for healing oneself, one’s partner, and the world. A major theme is the relationship between suffering and happiness, illustrated by the metaphor of mud and lotus. The speaker argues that suffering is not an obstacle to happiness but part of the conditions that make happiness possible. Fear, anger, despair, and discrimination are described as “mud” that can be transformed through mindfulness, concentration, and insight into the “lotus” of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness. The speaker emphasizes that practitioners should not reject suffering or imagine that happiness can exist without it. Instead, they should learn to make good use of suffering, just as compost nourishes flowers. This teaching is linked to the “kingdom of God” as a place where people know how to transform suffering into happiness. The latter part of the talk focuses on the Buddhist teaching of the four nutriments: edible food, sensory impressions, volition, and consciousness. The speaker explains that what people eat, watch, hear, and think all nourish body and mind. The “Sun’s Flesh Sutra” is used to illustrate the ethical dimension of eating: a refugee couple in the desert, forced by starvation to eat their child’s flesh, serves as a powerful image for the suffering hidden in careless consumption. The speaker uses this story to argue for mindful eating, reducing meat and alcohol consumption, and protecting the planet. The meat industry is criticized for deforestation, pollution, and the suffering of animals, while the audience is urged to spend a moment before meals reflecting on whether their food preserves compassion and loving-kindness. Sensory consumption is also treated as a serious issue. Television, magazines, the internet, and everyday conversations are described as sources of toxins such as violence, fear, and anger. The speaker suggests that some acts of violence by young people may be linked to the kinds of media they consume. Volition is presented as the deepest desire that sustains a person; if it is oriented toward helping others, protecting life, and reducing suffering, it is wholesome, but if it is driven by greed, power, or violence, it is unwholesome. Consciousness is the fourth nutriment, and the speaker explains that both individual and collective consciousness can contain wholesome and unwholesome seeds. People may repeatedly revisit painful memories, becoming trapped in the “dark corner” of the past, and communities can also become saturated with collective fear and hatred. Mindfulness is presented as the way to protect oneself from these toxic forms of consumption and to help society suffer less. The talk concludes by announcing a question-and-answer session the following day and inviting the audience to remain for announcements. Overall, the talk presents a comprehensive Buddhist vision of emotional transformation, ethical consumption, communal practice, and the cultivation of love as a disciplined, mindful, and socially engaged way of life.