Easy to hear and understand, hard to do, important practice to take time for.
Don’t make a front, make a circle.
– Brother Phap Dung
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When you are at the front of the line, it is very easy to confront, and to think that we’re against something.
But it is actually just ourselves.
So there is no side.
We have to begin to see that it is more circular.
Usually when you are at the front of the line, there is a lot of anger, a lot of discrimination, because we see that there is the other side, the enemy.
But in fact, they are also the victim of our own system that we support.
So we have to really maintain that insight, that there is no enemy. It is also us:
We’ve also been been angry, we’ve also lived and made choices in ignorance.
So with that clarity, we want to produce an energy of compassion and love.
It is very challenging for people who are at the front of the line, to maintain that non-discrimination, that source of compassion and love. So we need to take time, if we are in places like that. We want to up our personal practice a notch. Sit more regularly and take more time to take care of yourself.
Because we are creatures of habits and we will say and do things that are destructive. So don’t think that they are doing things that are destructive. We will do the same, if we don’t know how to take care of ourselves.
Nourishing that insight of wholeness. There is no black and white. Don’t make a front, make a circle. That way, there is no one to fight. It is us. That is the insight of interbeing.
And this is the liberating insight that Thay has used during the Vietnam War. There is no North and no South. We are all planetary earthlings, and we are suffering, because we don’t know. So we begin to see ‘we’ not as a nation, not as a group of people, but ‘we’ as Earth.
And that insight will not produce hate, and anger, etc.
When there is a strong emotion, come back, take care of it, because it is very destructive.
You cannot take away toxin with more toxin.
My summary:
Intense emotions habitually present themselves to us as enemy images.
Practice more intensely to own those emotions and see that the other is no different from me.
“I know that I am able to steal, to lie, to torture and kill – in my mind – for sure – and I can do it in reality too, if I do not stop and practice with my intense emotions.”
Hold those intense emotions with care: hate, jealousy, deep pain of being torn to pieces, stabbed in my heart for being shamed, anger, disgust, having my most valuable things being stolen, losing all hope, … Breath, go towards the pain, not away from it. Alternate with turning to joy, to not overwhelm.
Nourish myself from joy, return to the intense pain – practice to calm those strong emotions, let the pain flow through.