Retreat at Thai Plum Village

[Thai Plum Village close to Bangkok - 6 days]

I stayed at Thai Plum Village for 6 days for a meditation retreat with the topic happiness is here and now. Here is what I take with me and learned from my stay including some information material to reflect on. The quoted texts are usually from Thay Thich Nhat Hanh, the founder of plum village and a great teacher who has been nominated for the noble peace price and has written many influential books inspiring people worldwide.
I created 3 categories here: Happiness, mindfulness and other thoughts.
1.HAPPINESS
a)To start off, I want to share with you an original Buddhist text called discourse on happiness where the Buddha talked about happiness: https://plumvillage.org/library/sutras/discours…
I will just leave the text like that so we can reflect on it and find parallels for our life's. If you are interested in exchange, I am down for that - just hit me up and we arrange a dharma exchange coffee/tea time.

b) "happiness is in the here and now, we have the conditions to be happy in this moment". It's somehow a choice to be happy and joyjul in this moment. With that said I want to share a meditation with you that I think is really impactful:
Breath in, breath out, breath in deep, breath out long, breath in calm, out ease, in smile, out release, in present moment, out wonderful moment. I like to stay for at least 3 breaths on each stage.

"this moment is full of wonders"
"I have arrived, I am home"

c) i think we are all somehow on the quest to find happiness, to live meaningful and peaceful lives. One thing that I want to share here, that has been a big topic in my life is love. I believe that (true) love can make you happy and heal you. I was also at the same time reading a book about true love by Thay Thich Nhat Hanh and want to share the definition of it here - true love is loving kindness, compassion, joy and freedom/equanimity. I could go on and give you definitions to that but I will leave it at that and share with you my take on true love. You could have true love for things/material/environment and people/sentient beings. For me it is accepting the things and beings as they are, understand why the things are as they are, why people are as they are without ego driven judgemental thoughts and give the things and people space to develop themselves, let them flow freely (in the moment). True love is very much intertwined with seing and accepting reality as it is without a dualistic thinking (see also Buddhist concept on emptiness if this strikes you). That's one aspect or characteristic of true love for me. Of course you also have an impact on the things and persons (afterall we are all connected, because we affect each other or in other buddhist words we are interdependent). I believe to create the conditions for happiness you should give love through understanding, goodwill and a deep desire for things and people to unfold in a wholesome way (nourishing happiness in the world, lessen the suffering etc). One thing that I want to touch upon here is that importance of motivation. Ask yourself: what drives your decision and where does that drive come from? Is it from an egoistic desire to benefit yourself or from a place of truthfully wishing the person to be happy, to create a happy, peaceful and inclusive environment for the benefit of all sentient beings. Anyways just some food for thought 😁. So your expression of true love can be to listen mindfully and deeply, to practice loving speech, to try to understand (compassion) and to give the person's and things space to unfold - not holding on to ego-driven expectations (freedom) and to make decisions that come from a loving space, from your heart ❤️.
-"true love heals"
-"compassion protects and heals"

2. MINDFULNESS

-"mindfulness is a source of happyness"

a) mindful breathing: can be practiced anywhere and helps to anchor yourself in the present moment and to not be caught up with a wandering monkey mind. Everytime I do a retreat, I feel so motivated to continue and deepen my mindfulness practice. This time also and I hope I can also encourage you to pick up any mindfulness practice that you feel connected to.

b) mindful walking: I found out there are many ways to practice it. We were introduced to the plum village practice of mindful walking which for beginners is to connect your breathing with every step you make. I especially loved the teaching on breathing in, saying love to each step; breathing out, saying peace to each step. In addition to that you can try to feel your feet and body moving. If you are interested in it, hit me up and I can introduce you to that.
-"healing in every step"

c) mindful eating: has many aspects. What I take with me is
Before a meal:to be grateful for the meal, to try to understand the conditions that lead to this moment that you can enjoy it, and recall yourself that eating this meal shall nourish you so you can live a happy life spreading much love.
During the meal: Eating mindfully also means not to be too greedy (take too much food and fall into a food coma), to mindfully observe your taste senses which lead to you enjoying the food even more, to eat silently, and to chew properly

f) 14 mindfulness Trainings: one special gem and practice that I take with me from the retreat is the recitation, reflection and application of the 14 mindfulness trainings that I will share here:
https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness/the-14-mind…
I would say that this is one of the most precious and impactful teachings from the retreat. They are so accessible and practical. Definitely check them out ☺️

3) Others/random thoughts
- other activities apart from sitting and walking meditation included the practice of total relaxation, singing meditation, dharma talks and sharings and excersises. There was also a bonfire, a picnic, watching sunrise and sunset and drinking tea together.
-Another thing that I am grateful for is the lovely and wonderful people that I have met which made the experience even more meaningful, rich and deep (especially the sharings). I realized that the people surrounding you make a really big impact on how you perceive and experience a moment. So I want to take good care of the people and provide a safe space for everyone.

With that said, breath and smile my lovely friends,
Kim

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Following here, Minh's notes and insights

• The Light of the Buddha shines everywhere in every thing
• You can find the teachings of the buddha in everything
• If you touch upon one teaching of the buddha you see all teachings and all teachings are one teaching
• The human is the composite of all its emotions, wholesone and unwholesome seeds, weaknesses, strenghts, suffering and happiness
• The human condition is only acknowledging one thing at a time
• Therefore if we focus on our negative emotions and our suffering all the time we can suffer more from it and nourish/ enforce the bad habits, beahviours, thought patterns
• The practice of buddhism is to expand your mindfulness
• Mindfulness is the practice of seeing things as they are, seeing yourself as you are, as the composite of conditions that made your life able
• Hence, in mindulness you see yourself as the composition of everything that makes you up
• Mindfulness is seeing the bigger picture, the conditional state that a life is, that there is nothing that constitutes the creation and cessation of a self
• The human condition is seeing a self that is seperate from everything else, the differentiation in subject and object
• Mindfulness is lifting the illusion that there is a seperate self and happiness is conditioned not only by our own happiness but the happiness of everything around us
• One can see a bowl of rice as a direct teaching of the buddha, a bowl of rice itself is a thing that consists of its ingredients which some of them you like or dislike
• You can not see the bowl as a dish that you like nor dislike but as the composition of all its parts
• A life of a human is like the bowl of rice
• When you focus on your suffering in life it is like eating only the vegetable that you dislike and finish the dish just leaving all the delicious ingredients in the bowl
• Life is about mixing the whole bowl of rice and enjoying it as a whole with its good and bad
• Suffering should be used as a vehicle that brings us joy
• Relative truth and absolute truth are the two truths in buddhism
• Relative truth means we should maximize our happiness and the happiness of all around us by buddhist practices
• Absolute truth means that suffering is/ brings happiness and happiness is/ brings suffering
• The beauty of a flower brings happiness to yourself and the ones that it is gifted to, a flower bears a clear mark of impermanence when the flower dies which is associated with suffering, because of the impermanence of the flower we embrace the appreciation when it is alive which brings more happiness
• Also the material of the dying flower can be tranformed into soil again which can bring about the life of another flower which can be admired
• The past is the conditions for the present, whereas the present is the condition of the past
• By practicing mindfulness we can be in the present moment to transform the past and set the optimal conditions for the future
• being truly present in the moment can prevent one from being imprisoned by the past and being swept away by the futureRead more