Breathe as a Free Person, Walk as a Free Person | Dharma Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, 2014.03.30

Name: Breathe as a Free Person, Walk as a Free Person | Dharma Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, 2014.03.30
Uploaded: 2014-04-06T00:32:13.000Z
Duration: 3 h 8 min 39 s

Introduction

Thich Nhat Hanh introduces the concept of mindful breathing and explains how it can help bring the mind back to the body, allowing for freedom and better decision-making.

Mindful Breathing

When you breathe in mindfully, you bring your mind home to your body.

It takes only 2 or 3 seconds in order for you to bring your mind home to your body.

Mindfulness of breath helps you get in touch with the wonders of life that are available in the here and now for transformation and healing.

And when mind and body are together, you are there, truly there, in the here and now.

Cultivating Freedom

Thich Nhat Hanh explains how mindfulness can cultivate freedom by helping us release past worries and future anxieties. He also discusses how this freedom can lead to better decision-making.

Mindful Breathing for Freedom

Concentrating on your inbreath helps release everything else - past, future, projects, worries - making you a free person.

Mindful breathing helps preserve freedom by keeping us from being pulled away by past or future worries.

With mindful breathing and walking we become free from anger, fear, jealousy, hate etc., which allows us to make good decisions.

Being Fully Alive

Thich Nhat Hanh discusses how we often forget about our bodies when working on computers. He suggests using a bell of mindfulness every quarter hour as a reminder to come back to our bodies through mindful breathing.

Mindfulness at Work

Spending hours on a computer can make us forget about our bodies and lose touch with the present moment.

Using a bell of mindfulness every quarter hour can help us come back to our bodies through mindful breathing, allowing us to feel alive again.

This practice helps release tension in the body and keep freshness, joy, and happiness.

Mindful Movements

In this section, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the benefits of mindful movements and how they can bring joy and happiness to our lives. He emphasizes the importance of being present in the moment and enjoying every step we take.

Enjoying the Present Moment

Mindful movements are not just for good health, but also for enjoyment.

Joy and happiness can be found in practicing mindful movements.

Being present in the moment allows us to touch the wonders of life around us.

Every breath and step brings us home to the here and now, which is where true aliveness exists.

Walking Meditation

The destination is not important; being present in the moment is what matters.

Mastering mindful breathing and walking can help us live deeply in every moment.

Walking mindfully from the parking lot to your office can release tension in your body with every step.

Recognizing Painful Feelings

In this section, Thich Nhat Hanh discusses how practitioners should handle painful feelings. He emphasizes that recognizing these feelings is important, rather than trying to run away from them or cover them up.

Handling Painful Feelings

The 7th exercise of mindful breathing involves recognizing a painful feeling that arises within oneself.

Practitioners should have courage to face their pain instead of running away from it or covering it up with distractions like music or television.

Generating mindfulness energy through breathing and walking can help practitioners recognize their pain and embrace it.

Exercises in Mindful Breathing

In this section, Thich Nhat Hanh discusses the 7th and 8th exercises of mindful breathing proposed by the Buddha. He explains how to recognize and embrace painful feelings with mindfulness and tenderness.

Exercise 7: Embracing Painful Feelings

Breathing in, I am aware of the painful feeling in me.

There is the energy of pain.

There is also the energy of mindfulness generated by the practice of breathing or walking.

The second energy recognizes the first energy.

The exercise involves recognizing and embracing painful feelings with mindfulness and tenderness.

Exercise 8: Calming Down Painful Feelings

Breathing in, I know that a painful feeling is in me.

The exercise involves calming down painful feelings like a mother holding her ailing baby.

Mindfulness is like a kind mother, big brother or sister holding the child of suffering.

A mother has the energy of tenderness which penetrates into the body of her baby. Similarly, mindfulness can penetrate into our pain to calm it down.

Generating Joy and Happiness

In this section, Thich Nhat Hanh explains how to generate joy and happiness through mindful breathing.

Exercise 5: Generating Joy

Exercise number 5 involves generating a feeling of joy through mindful breathing.

When you practice mindful breathing, you become fully present in the here and now.

Going home to the here and now, you will be able to recognize the many conditions of happiness that are already available to you.

Exercise 6: Generating Happiness

Exercise number 6 involves generating a feeling of happiness through mindful breathing.

A good practitioner can always generate a feeling of happiness whenever he wants.

When your mind is with your body, you are established in the here and now. This allows you to recognize the many wonders of life and conditions of happiness that you already have.

Transforming Pain into Positivity

In this section, Thich Nhat Hanh explains how to transform pain into something more positive through mindfulness.

Insight from Calming Down Painful Feelings

After calming down painful feelings with mindfulness, we gain insight into why there is pain within us.

We can find the roots of our pain within ourselves.

Exercises for Transforming Pain

Exercises 9, 10, 11, and 12 involve transforming pain into positivity.

The exercises build on each other and help practitioners develop insight into their suffering.

The Conditions of Happiness

In this section, the speaker talks about how to generate feelings of joy and happiness by recognizing the conditions of happiness that are already available to us.

Recognizing Conditions of Happiness

Take a piece of paper and write down the conditions of happiness that you have.

Your eyes, still in good condition, is already a condition of happiness.

There are plenty of conditions of happiness in your body and around you.

Generating Joy and Happiness

To generate a feeling of joy is always possible when you touch the conditions of happiness that are already available to you.

Practice mindful breathing and walking to generate mindfulness and concentration, which can help you feel joyful at any time.

The art of happiness is creating moments of joy for yourself and others.

Handling Suffering

In this section, the speaker discusses how to handle suffering by becoming aware of painful feelings and calming them down.

Importance Of Handling Suffering

If you know how to suffer, you suffer much less because you're not overwhelmed by it.

You can make good use of suffering in order to create happiness - like using mud to grow lotus flowers.

Becoming Aware Of Painful Feelings

The 6th exercise is generating a feeling of happiness whenever you want.

The 4th exercise is about releasing tension in your body through mindful breathing.

Mindful Breathing

In this section, the speaker talks about the importance of being aware of your body and using mindful breathing to release tension.

Being Aware Of Your Body

The 3rd exercise is to recognize and be aware of your body.

When you are with your body, you might notice that there is tension and pain in it.

Releasing Tension Through Mindful Breathing

Use mindful breathing to calm your body and release tension.

The praxis of relaxation is releasing the tension in the body.

Mindful Breathing

This section covers the first two exercises of mindful breathing, which involve recognizing and following your inbreath and outbreath.

Recognizing Your Inbreath and Outbreath

The first exercise is to be aware of your inbreath and outbreath.

Focusing on your breath can help release other distractions and make you feel more free.

This exercise is easy but deep, making it a great starting point for beginners.

Following Your Inbreath and Outbreath

The second exercise involves following your inbreath and outbreath closely with mindfulness.

By doing this, you can deepen your concentration and experience greater pleasure from breathing.

Enjoying the sensation of breathing can bring happiness, as it reminds us that we are alive.

Benefits of Mindful Breathing

This section discusses how practicing mindful breathing can bring joy, happiness, and help manage painful emotions.

Finding Happiness Through Mindful Breathing

Practicing mindful breathing regularly can generate mindfulness, concentration, and happiness.

Even just sitting still and focusing on your breath can make you happy.

With practice, you can learn to handle painful feelings better.

Listening Deeply to Suffering

This section emphasizes the importance of listening deeply to our own suffering in order to understand its roots.

Understanding the Nature of Suffering

Our suffering may carry the pain of our ancestors, and understanding it can help us understand their suffering as well.

Listening deeply to our own suffering requires mindfulness and concentration, but doing so can help us look deeply into its nature.

Meditation involves taking the time to look and listen deeply.

Understanding Suffering Brings Compassion

In this section, Thich Nhat Hanh explains how understanding suffering can lead to compassion and healing. He emphasizes the importance of looking deeply into one's own suffering in order to understand and help others.

Understanding Suffering

By listening to our pain and suffering, we can come to understand it.

This understanding leads to compassion for ourselves and others.

When we look deeply at another person, we can see their suffering and recognize that they are a victim of their own pain.

Without understanding or help, people continue to suffer and make those around them suffer as well.

Compassion Heals

Understanding our own suffering helps us suffer less.

When we understand someone else's suffering, anger disappears and is replaced with the intention to help.

Compassion allows us to stop suffering altogether.

Looking deeply into our own suffering helps us understand the pain of others, which brings about compassion in our hearts.

The practice of generating compassion has been scientifically proven to have healing effects.

Deep Listening & Loving Speech

Understanding ourselves through deep listening with compassion allows us to reconcile with ourselves and others more easily.

Practicing deep listening with loving speech restores communication and brings about reconciliation.

Using loving speech involves recognizing the other person's suffering and speaking tenderly in order to heal them.

The Importance of Compassionate Listening

In this section, the speaker emphasizes the importance of compassionate listening in order to heal relationships and reduce suffering.

The Power of Loving Speech

The speaker acknowledges that they have caused suffering in their partner by reacting poorly to their suffering.

They express a desire to understand their partner's suffering and ask for help in doing so.

The speaker encourages their partner to share their difficulties and frustrations so that they can better understand and support them.

The speaker explains that using loving speech, such as acknowledging someone's suffering and expressing a desire to help, can open up communication and lead to healing.

Practicing Compassionate Listening

The speaker emphasizes the importance of practicing deep listening with compassion in order to help others suffer less.

They explain that just one hour of compassionate listening can already begin the healing process.

The speaker cautions that without training oneself in mindfulness of compassion, it is easy for anger or irritation to arise during listening, which can hinder the healing process.

They stress the importance of making a vow to listen with only one purpose: to make the other person suffer less.

Even if what the other person says triggers anger or contains wrong perceptions, it is important not to interrupt or correct them during the session. Instead, continue listening with compassion and offer information later on when appropriate.

Mindfulness of Compassion

In this section, Thay talks about the practice of mindfulness of compassion and how it can be used during a session to help with listening.

Practicing Mindfulness of Compassion

Thay introduces the concept of mindfulness of compassion.

He suggests practicing mindfulness of compassion while listening to someone during a session.

The practice of compassionate listening and loving speech is taught in retreats that last 5 or 6 days.

On the third day, participants learn how to listen to their own suffering and that of others.

On the fifth day, they learn how to apply the practice in order to reconcile with others.

Reconciliation through Loving Speech

In this section, Thay shares an example from a retreat where someone was able to reconcile with their father using loving speech.

Example from Retreat

A man at a retreat was able to reconcile with his father over the phone using loving speech.

Despite initially feeling angry towards his father, he was able to use compassionate language after recognizing his father's suffering.

The conversation resulted in both parties reconciling and planning for a visit after the retreat ended.

Listening Leads to Understanding

In this section, Thay emphasizes the importance of listening in order for understanding and reconciliation to occur.

Importance of Listening

If you can listen compassionately, others will be more likely to listen and understand your own suffering.

Thay shares that Plum Village has sponsored retreats for Israelis and Palestinians to practice together.

Healing the Divide

In this section, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about how he helped two groups of Israelis and Palestinians to heal their divide through mindfulness practice.

Mindful Practice

When the two groups first arrived at Plum Village, they did not look at each other because looking at each other caused suffering.

Thich Nhat Hanh initiated them into mindful practices such as walking meditation, sitting meditation, tea meditation, mindful eating and singing songs of the Dharma.

The purpose was to help them get in touch with refreshing and healing elements in nature and listen to their own suffering.

In the second week, both groups were brought together for a session of deep listening. One group spoke out about their suffering while the other practiced deep listening with compassion.

Compassionate Listening

Both groups practiced loving speech and compassionate listening.

Through deep listening, they recognized that both sides had suffered exactly the same thing - children and adults.

This insight helped anger go down in them and they began to look at each other with compassion.

Transformation began to take place in them as they no longer wanted to retaliate or punish each other.

Healing Wounds

A few sessions like that can heal the wounds of both sides.

They began to eat together, walk together even holding hands.

On the last day of retreat both groups came together as one group and reported on the fruit of their practice.

Mindfulness and Communication

Thich Nhat Hanh discusses how mindfulness can help restore communication and reconcile relationships. He shares a story of a woman who was able to transform her relationship with her husband through the practice of compassionate listening and loving speech.

Restoring Communication

Plum Village sends a delegation to the Middle East every year to organize retreats of mindfulness.

Mindfulness and concentration can help restore communication and reconcile relationships.

A Buddhist practitioner helped a Catholic friend transform her relationship with her husband through compassionate listening and loving speech.

Defusing Anger

The Buddhist practitioner encouraged the Catholic woman to listen to Thay's Dharma talk about defusing anger.

After listening to the talk, the woman decided to practice deep listening and compassionate speech with her husband.

Training for Compassionate Listening

The Buddhist practitioner advised waiting for training before practicing compassionate listening.

Thay was coming from France to give several retreats of mindfulness in California, which they attended together.

After the retreat, the woman returned home peacefully, determined to practice compassionate listening.

Restoring Communication and Reconciliation

In this section, Thich Nhat Hanh shares a story of a couple who were able to restore communication and reconcile after attending a mindfulness retreat. He emphasizes the importance of compassionate listening and loving speech in restoring difficult relationships.

Importance of Compassionate Listening and Loving Speech

Buddhists are not true practitioners if they cannot practice compassionate listening and loving speech.

Practicing these skills can help restore communication and reconcile difficult relationships.

The first step is to go home to yourself, listen to your own suffering, and generate compassion for yourself.

After you have suffered less and generated understanding and compassion, you can then help the other person.

Personal Story of Transformation

A couple was able to reconcile after attending a mindfulness retreat together.

The husband introduced his wife during the retreat as "a bodhisattva that has saved my life."

The couple later attended a day of mindfulness with their children where they shared their story of transformation with others.

Final Thoughts

The way out is in - start by going home to yourself.

Anyone can practice compassionate listening and loving speech regardless of religious affiliation.