When I became a nun for two, three years, an elder sister left and that was very painful for the community. Even Thay was in deep pain, she was Thay’s attendant. Very loved, very beloved. And everybody was shocked. And after, Thay said to me – because she left with another person – and Thay said to me:
“Learn about desire, my child. And know what it is.”
The above quote is from the dharma talk: The Four Pillars of Spiritual Life
Text capture – unedited – below
Dear beloved Thay, dear brothers dear friends!
I’m very happy to be here with you today. It’s very special, because I know that three of our brothers, three baby buddhas, were delivered last sunday. So you are exactly one week old, and amazingly enough you sit up so beautifully, so stably, and your faces are so bright. You are born during a very special time this year. Deer park is twenty. Twenty years old.
he was founded in the well in late 1999 but the monastic community did not move in until 2000. and that was also when i was born so my ordination age is also the age of deepak and that’s very special to me and so today i would like to share with you uh about the four pillars in a spiritual life they are very basic and they have been the compass for me during the past 20 years as a as a monastic practitioner and i hope that your hearts will be open to receive them and our brothers there some who have been practicing have been practicing also for a long time that you also identify yourself in in this sharing so they always taught us that the four pillars of our practice include first and foremost most the practice to practice the other one the second pillar is to study to learn the third one is to work to offer service and the fourth pillar that is to play you did not think that you go into a monastic life to play right but amazingly enough in the buddhist teaching there is this teaching about the the virtue of a child the mind of a child and you discover in the monastic life year after year you do find yourself becoming more of a child in the way of thinking we become simpler not simplistic but simpler less complicated less jaded hopefully you know um yeah the the way of thinking is much more clear and straightforward and also we we can rejoice with the simple things of life i actually came to their park well i visited the epoch in the year 2003 when i went on the teaching tour with tai from friends we came to deer park and in 2003 we did not have the big meditation all yet so they gave the dharma top in the oak grove and that’s why it by the sisters hamlet and we call it the oak grove meditation hall and there’s this very big um stone uh block that tastes up on that and a number of us also stood up to chat on that stone block and many a few hundred people sat in that okra of meditation hall so but it was very um it was not inhabitable yet there was some monastics here already but the environment was still very wild and then we come back in january 2004 and that was the legendary trip for our plum village monastics they had a vision to bring all plum village monastics from france but also from the east coast uh we had the rongfong and pension the forest what is it in english the green mountain dharma center and the brothers hamlet what do we call the four maple forest monastery so all the monastics came together and so within less than one year the meditation hall was built and our brothers and sisters who were here already they had to prepare to welcome 200 monastics total and also many lay friends who came and so we had the three-month retreat here i think it was from january to uh to april of 2004 and so it was quite memorable because the place was nothing like this quite wild still and um in the sisters hamlet the room that we now you call as the healing room for you know our exercise and healing purposes that room is not very big but there were 12 or 13 sisters staying in that room so literally we were packed like sardine and i’m sure brothers up here were packed like sardines also and we use the gatehouse you know the gatehouse now we have that very nice mobile home there well it was not like that it was a very old trailer and also there were many sisters staying in that trailer and um so this place has transformed a lot a lot um even just since 2004 when i came to stay here and even up to 2007 2009 daily they would be young people and also gang members they would come up here because they for many years it was deserted this place and the most recent activity here was the squad team used to come up here to practice shooting so the brothers dining hall you will see all the windows the window panes were all broken and also the amongst residents there were so many bullet shells that brothers and sisters but also lay friends they came every day to help clean the the this ground the first whole year and they would use big trash bins you know those ones that toot up to your chest to uh to gather bullet shells and so because it was abandoned for so long there were many people who came up here to trade drugs to use drugs to do their gang activities that daily when i was doing you know i walked down um the the gate we didn’t have the cake yet i think we had the gate after 2008 and so they just went up and you know we would say hello i remember one really funny incident apparently some of them drove a four-wheel uh truck uh what do you call that native they drove all the way down this ravine like by the sisters uh um parking lot and they drove down here and then i guess they got stuck because of the mud the rain and they couldn’t uh retract their car and the next day they came back two of them they were two or three they were such big guys and they they walked so they walked into the sisters dining hall and it was the first day so we had a room full of brothers and sisters eating in silence and these guys walked in and they looked so timid they were scared because we look so strange and they just like look at us they didn’t know what to say what to do and so one of us went out to talk to them and they told us that their truck was stuck down there and so some brothers went with them the brothers were very kind and we actually had to call like uh that at all company to come and tow their truck but we were very nice and they were relieved so incidents like that that that happened for a number of years that i was here up to 2009 and so i went away for seven years since 2010 until 2017 and i noticed that because i noticed that very rarely now there are young people who come up to hang out to smoke to drink beer and then throw beer cans all over the place we used to have actually tennis shoes hanging on the on the telephone wires and supposedly supposedly that’s the sign of gang members when they come they’ll throw you know the their shoes tied together and then over the um the telephone wires so i was speaking to somebody i think it was my brother my blood brother sonny and i said you know i used to see gang members all the time and now they don’t come up anymore and so we figure out probably the gate helped but my brother said it said this he said either they grew out of it or they went to jail because many years have passed you know so soon we will have the the 20-year anniversary magazine coming out this coming week and there will be many photographs and i hope when you look at the photographs you will appreciate more the transformation of deer park unfortunately because of the pandemic we couldn’t have the retreats that we were planning to have in august to celebrate with our brothers and sisters and lay friends and so this magazine hopefully will be at least one token of gratitude to the many monastic brothers and sisters and the lay friends who have come over the years to help build deer park and dear park’s journey air is also our own journey over the years many of our brothers and sisters came here made this our home invested in this place took good care of it helped it to transform and meanwhile we also learned we also learned to practice to take care of ourselves and to transform along with the epoch so in that way what is going on externally is also going on internally as well and so the first aspect of of the four pillar of the four pillars that is practiced i cannot stress enough how important it is that we day by day we train ourselves to come back to our mindful breathing to my mind for walking tai has taught the dharma so many years and every dharma talk every time i thought i would talk about mindful breathing and it may sound boring at times and oh i know it already but but if any one of us who practices sincerely will know it’s not simple at least three four years after i became a nun and somebody asked ask me how how much what is the percentage of your of your breathing that you are aware of and i thought about it for a minute and i said 50 of my breath i answered but then later on i reflected upon it that means every other breath but that was not the case it wasn’t it wasn’t the case that the first two three years of my monastic life i could go out go through the whole day without remembering one breath or one step and they would say make a contract when you walk from the nanori or the monk’s residence to the dining hall walk mindfully remember of your steps or when you go to the meditation hall but i would walk the whole way without remembering one step or one breath or halfway i would remember i would come back to that step that next step or that next breath and a few more i would already forget i would already forget even in sitting meditation i remember one breath but the next breath it was my mind was gone was gone for the whole sitting meditation and so but i learned to be very patient with myself fortunately because i had a lot of suffering i came to the monastic life with a lot of sadness a lot of trauma so i was sincere and i was desperate and i found out very soon that when i could hang on to my breath my mind would have an anger and it would not be so free so liberal to pursue the past to get lost in thoughts and in strong emotions but it could anchor and be more stable i found that out very soon i remember one day i was out there at you know at the beginning of a forest by the lower hamlet and i was all alone and i was crying and screaming so loud and at one moment i just saw it i saw it just one more second i could i could cross that threshold between sanity and insanity i could just cross it and then all this socialization appropriate behaviors would not matter anymore i could just cry laugh scream talk whenever wherever i wanted to it happened so fast i saw it and in that moment really thanks to my ancestors thanks to thai to the buddha i just took in the deepest breath of my life i just like that you know and i just dropped down on my knees and i joined my palms and i prayed i said please help me to never suffer like this again never never again and i just pray just pray and it brought me back it’s like step back from that from that cliff that i could have fallen in a split in a split of a second and so i touched the power of mindful breathing and i have been so diligent if you ask me of the 20 years of my monastic life what have i been most diligent what have i invested the most in i would confidently sincerely let you know that i have been very sincerely and diligently and religiously coming back to my breath and it has as a result become my friend my best friend my companion day and night i come back to the breath while i’m sitting on the computer writing an email reading an email watching you know a dharma talk when i am lying in bed before i fall asleep when i cannot sleep at night wherever i am i just come back to the breath day and night it’s always there and along with mindful breathing it comes with mindful steps because when the mind can be with the breath the mind is with the body and the mind is aware of what’s going on so i have also trained and become more aware of my step day in day out even if i wake up at two in the morning at three in the morning to use the restroom the first thing i am aware of is my breath i take the steps and i am aware of the steps all the time and that has enabled me to become much simpler in my thinking my thoughts are not as copious as abundant and relentless day and night because the mind is with the breath is with the steps it’s with the body and so in that way the mind is more present and quiet and that is the greatest the greatest nectar of compassion that i taste daily when you enter a monastic life just like when people get married to one person we get married to the sangha to 20 brothers to 25 sisters it’s not easy at first that this first love and the person looks so perfect right it will be a great life you envision but very soon within the first month if within the first year you will realize there’s nothing perfect that is a human being and we have envisioned we have imagined we have created this perfect vision about somebody and so we are disillusioned when we find out that that person burps that person overeats that person gets emotional and angry right that person is so incredibly human that it is disappointing well in a monastic life a monastic community it’s also like that as you live you practice you interact day by day you’re like how can he be like that how can she be like that and say things like that and do things like that we become disillusioned with our own parents with our own partners spouses and we become disillusioned and disappointed with our own monastic siblings and i have experienced that i have joked and it’s true i’ve never doubted the buddha i’ve never doubted the dharma not even once if there’s any shortcoming it’s my shortcoming in the practice i know the dharma is wonderful and deep and it delivers me every single second that i practice but if i suffer it’s because i’m not practicing or not practicing deeply enough in that moment so i’ve never doubted the buddha i’ve never doubted the dharma but i’ve doubted the sangha many times i must admit and that at some point probably after seven years or so i actually thought this i will stay with the sangha as long as the sangha is a true true practice center with true practitioners but i will leave when it is no longer true with this practice so i decided and that gave me some comfort because i was also struggling with many judgments criticism expectations that the sangha should be like this like that brothers sisters should be like this and like that but then the next insight that came to me is that instead of always expecting what the sangha can do for me i can ask what can i do for the sangha how can i practice to help the sangha remain true in her practice how i can how can i help the sangha to deepen our practice to maintain what is good wholesome and beautiful the buddha have transmitted to us all these wonderful deep dictions there are times when we were long shortcuts we won’t want to do this and that but how can i as an individual how can you as each as a practitioner help the sangha to maintain that integrity that sincerity in the practice and when i really felt that question felt that responsibility it changed my way of thinking it changed my way of practice and i did not project the expectation hour hourly so much anymore i still have it but i always i always remind myself to come back and always do my best to maintain the integrity in my own practice knowing that is the greatest service i can offer the sangha see i remember let us enjoy once after let us touch that breath be with that breath and also know that in this moment our teacher is still alive in his physical body and he is breathing mindfully and each one of us here have given them have been given that mindful breath and let us breathe it and be connected with our teacher with our siblings all over the world with each other right here right now through that mindful breathing so do [Music] when i breathe mindfully i often give rise to i thought i’m here i’m here oh i love you so i love you so if there are painful difficult feelings arising i would say it’s okay i’m here for you it’s okay we learn to be there for ourselves the practice in in our monastic life thai has taught us that we learn the art of happiness and we learn the art of suffering we allow ourselves to be happy to be at peace you know people always say they want to be happy but actually people feel guilty when they’re happy they think they’re selfish they think they’re not doing enough for the world but when we make the commitment to be a monk or a nun if we make a contract with ourselves i allow myself to be happy i give myself the permission to be peaceful to be free remember that that’s the art of happiness allow yourself to be a child to walk barefooted you know for many years our brothers and sisters here we were all pretty much of the same age for you know because bikinis and then we were young teachers we would we would go hiking together very often this is the play aspect and we would hike all monday and try to find the we discover the water for one year from the bottom up the next year we try to discover that waterfall from top down and there was no trail and we would walk through all these bushes and ravines and we were crawling under you know are these thickets in single file it was we didn’t even know where we were and one brother they fought yeah i was designated to climb up a tree to look you know where we were and he actually could see the waterfall from that top of that tree and we actually made it there after many many hours so we were children just like that roaming the mountains jumping from rock to rock being very carefree and happy and we built we built brotherhood and sisterhood like that and we built the sangha on that foundation of our joy our happiness together as brothers and sisters as brothers and also as sisters you know and we also learned the art of suffering to practice like i was sharing with you to take refuge in mindful breathing in mind for walking in order to suffer less and slowly in order to transform that suffering i remember a movie i watched many many years ago and uh it was about this it was a true story of a cult leader he was very calculative and very lecturious all the women became his harem and even his own children became his uh he sexually abused them and so in the movie there was this detective who was right on him and uh and towards the end he and the the cult leader and this detective had the confrontation and he knew something about her past life so he was playing psychological game with her and she was shaken you could see but one moment she looked at him and she said this i feel sorry for you because you actually believe in your own eyes that was so incredibly powerful i feel sorry for you because you actually believe in your own eyes and that broke the spell is just like this believe it or not many of us are deceived by our own perceptions by the stories that we have woven over the years so intricately in this net of drama of trauma we are so caught in it so the art of suffering entails that we clear our mind enough we are honest with ourselves enough you don’t have to be honest with everybody yet you don’t have to spill your heart out to everybody say everything because even that doesn’t mean you’re honest but mindful breathing mindful walking helps calm our mind and then we see the working of our mind it’s so incredible i said something and before i would just wholeheartedly believe in it but now sometimes i say something i see there are so many reasons behind it it’s not what i say because of that very situation right there because before that and before that it has walked up like a wave that manifests here it doesn’t begin here it has begun way before underneath the surface of the water it has walked up its momentum there are many causes and conditions already for a wave to be seen few of us see the waves even when it’s at its peak even after it has crashed we may not even perceive it something happens it may take us another hour another year many years later for us to realize something i’ve experienced that so often in my monastic life something i did something i said so many years ago suddenly i sit and i understand why i have said and done that or what it all meant so in that way we learn to be very honest with ourselves as we go along if you can just be honest with yourself whatever that is arising not trying to make it better than it is oh i’m a monk i shouldn’t be thinking like that oh i’m beyond that that’s not my thought those kind of things just laid and complicate the layers of lies of deception that goes on in our mind just simple recognition simple recognition an in-breath is an in-breath and our breath is in our breath a left foot is a left foot a right foot is a right foot and if we can train that then a thought that arises of craving of greed of anger of inferiority of of insecurity it arises you simply recognize it as it is you don’t try to make it more or less than what it is and fool fool ourselves further you see that is so so important in buddhism there’s this saying great doubt brings great enlightenment so somebody asked me recently what does it mean sister i hear in buddhism thus the teaching on great doubt brings great enlightenment so i breathe for a few seconds and then i answered this young man who’s very sincere who’s been practicing for many years and i said in great doubt you have a question and your mind your heart are completely open to discover the truth of it the different aspects and angles of the situation that’s greyed out brings great understanding thus enlightenment now in our daily life we do have doubts many doubts but they are not great doubts they are little doubts and when we doubt something we use our own preconceived notions our own assumptions our own judgments and that is why we doubt right like i look at somebody and i doubt that person’s practice i doubt that person’s authenticity i doubt that person’s capacity is because i already have so many expectations and judgments comparisons and contrasts right that is why i doubt so these little doubts have no curiosity these little doubts have no openness these doubts are already set in stones as judgment therefore it will lead to no understanding there is no enlightenment again that goes back to ourselves being honest and open we will be able to say i actually don’t have the full picture the full view of something of anything everything that i perceived through the eyes you know the photons the the images that i perceive has been processed through so many different layers and what i see is not what it is it’s like you can look at the pattern and your eye actually completes it you’ve learned this in psychology right it completes the lines that are not there to make it continuous so whatever that we perceive through the eyes they’re not exactly what they are what we hear what we taste what we touch what we think is already quite far from reality let alone through the lens of our perceptions of our past experiences of our own standards so in that way it prevents us from really coming closer and closer to the reality so in our daily life a practice you can do is am i having a great doubt or a little doubt what is the state of my mind when i have this doubt is it open for deep understanding or is it closed like a prison wall it’s very helpful let us enjoy the sound the belt together [Laughter] [Music] we just talked a little bit about the practice about play i want to address a little bit about uh study and and and work we can learn a lot through from ourselves and from others around us how many of us grow up and think oh you know i see these imperfections in my parents and i’ll never repeat this their mistakes or their ways of being and then we end up being the same way or even worse that happens to many of us right well in a monastic life i see myself going through that process as well and i find that the two mental formations that are quite helpful in buddhism one is called tam and one is called called means shame when i look at myself i can be i can feel a little embarrassed oh for example i left medicine i left the many people who loved me and cared for me so that i could become a nun because in those moments i felt that i just wanted peace in my life and nothing more that’s all i wanted and i saw clearly that the practice could help me cultivate true peace and true happiness but the moments when i see myself struggling with very struggling over small issues certain things in the sangha who’s right was wrong this is good this is bad things like that and there’s no peace in me and i’ve also learned that really there’s not one way if we can organize a retreat if we can do something in the spirit of harmony in the beginning in the middle in the end that’s most important and then the retreat however it turns out you’ll be good for sure and we can laugh we can look at each other you see we can live with each other but if i get my way or you get your way only and we grudgingly go through it and we do our parts but we can’t laugh we can’t look at each other what good is that for right so there are moments when i see myself struggling over non-important things and i have no peace i’m a little ashamed and that shame is good it helps us to be less self-righteous because we can be so righteous about our views about our standards about what’s going on that we lose our own peace our own aspiration why we became a manga or none and it causes us to doubt everything and want to walk away from our monastic life right so shame self-abashment is important to help us to be humble to be modest to just come back to that peaceful breath and calm everything down is when you look at another person and you also feel that embarrassment and shame it’s like i’m walking and rolling across the road and i see my brother who’s just ordering a week and he’s walking peacefully and he’s enjoying a flower on the sidewalk in that moment i put on my break i’m like okay i’m a big sister and i’m walking like that you know i’m really ashamed so that’s good right it’s good it happens you will see so we serve as the bear of mindfulness for each other and not only the one who is mindful the one that who is unmindful can be a better mindfulness a wonderful bear of mindfulness oh my gosh look at the way he’s rushing i really don’t want to be like that you know and you can still rush after being a monk for 20 years why not it takes only one second you have a thought you know rising in your mind oh i forget to turn off you know the oven or oh i forgot something i need to do this your step lunges forward your whole body tenses up right it takes only one one thought which travels the speed of light so yes all of us are prone to that but that’s why we are a community because we help remind each other your calmness helps my calmness your cool nervous system helps cool my nervous system all of us come to the monastic life with some sorts of trauma some sort of habit energy some sort of coping mechanism you know the three coping mechanisms right the stress response fight flight or freeze identify that early in your monastic life what mode of reaction do you usually take do you fight you always fight mentally with your thoughts verbally with your speech or physically with your body do you always fight when something happens because it has become a habit whatever happens that irritates you or angers you or displeases you you will recognize that recognize our strengths but also recognize our weaknesses as early as soon as possible so you have plenty of mud to work with and to pay attention to that instead of paying attention to what is not right outside of us you see or do you have the react the habitual reaction of flighting running away people run away their whole lives you know this pandemic we have increased incidence of domestic violence of sexual abuse almost 80 000 people have died from drug overdose these past few months almost half of the people who died from covet 80 000 people who died from drug overdose what does it mean it means as a society we keep running or we keep running forward or running away or freezing from within we don’t know how to deal with our suffering and so when something traumatic like this a pandemic and we are confined in our small quarter in a house a room we’re trapped with ourselves and we’re trapped with our loved ones and we can’t deal with it because we’ve never really dealt with our dramas and dramas and so we would resort to as we have always been we would resort to you know movies music video games drugs sex all sorts of things right but it becomes more prominent more visible during this time everything becomes worse so we are very very fortunate to have encountered the path the dharma the sangha to have this space right now so many people are confined in so little tiny space right now so many people are displaced from their homes because of wild wild fires all over california oregon washington in so many places in the u.s all over the world people suffer from drought from floods you know from illnesses it’s so so heartbroken but you and i we have this space so peaceful so spacious we have the practice to hold us but many of us some of us may actually be suffering right now still we suffer we don’t we are not able to enjoy these conditions advantageous conditions because we’re still caught in our judgments and our expectations in our own internal dramas and we’re neglecting all these all these beautiful conditions right for so long since i became a nun many monastics can we have less retreats we have too many retreats we have no time for ourselves we need to deepen our practice we always you know direct our attention outward and try to help lay friends so thai always taught us these four pillars they have to be they inter are when you practice you are playing you’re washing the dishes it’s like you’re washing the baby buddha you are enjoying the cool water or the warm water in the winter right when you’re practicing you are learning my dear when you play you learn so much i saw that you see the century plant that just fell down a couple of days ago well i observed that sanctuary plant my gosh how gigantic and magnificent it is with laden with fruits and it fell and all the fruits don’t even have a chance to ripen to dry up to be continued and why is that i look at the root the root is so the roots are so shallow first of all and at the base it was not straight it actually tilted like 30 degrees at the 30 degree angle because this big old um cactus century another sanctuary plant was right next to it and probably just push it slowly slowly slowly over time and so and meanwhile it developed all this gigantic fruit so many of them it was so heavy it’s just hard to fall over i learned a lot from that from that plant first of all make sure you deepen your roots in the practice don’t get carried away with the fruits that you may be able to produce you know it’s nice to be able to be praised by somebody when you share the dharma when you do this and do that but don’t always just invest in the fruits that are visible always come back to the basic practice it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been a practitioner always stay anchored in the basic practices that’s what i has done his whole life in this moment when he has to eat liquid food right he still choose he choose literally it’s just water it’s just puree and they would chew chew and chew and chew at least 30 times each spoonful he would too and he would close his eyes and smile he would invite the children around him to take the food with him you know and that has helped him not to aspirate to get pneumonia these past six years most people get you know aspirated all the time and that’s how they die so anyway tai continues to be to practice because that practice has become every fiber of his being make sure that we always invest in that and not in the fruits up here and if there’s another century plan that is pushing us over that is growing we need to identify what it is it may be an external condition someone is pushing you right and you’re really letting yourself be really be bent by that and hurt by that or it could be a mental formation of disgruntlement or of disappointment of agitation whatever if we don’t take care of it it will grow and grow and grow and before we know it it uproots our mind of love. It takes over and we fall over.
When I became a nun for two, three years, an elder sister left and that was very painful for the community. Even Thay was in deep pain, she was Thay’s attendant. Very loved, very beloved. And everybody was shocked. And after, Thay said to me – because she left with another person – and Thay said to me:
“Learn about desire, my child. And know what it is.”
And after that a year or so, another sister left. She had been a nun for three years. The other sister had been on for much longer and i was also shaken by both incidents and Thay said to me: “For somebody to be a nun or a monk for three years, that’s a great blessing for that person. Those three years that person had a chance to be happy that person had a chance to transform some suffering and not cause so much suffering be happy for that person.”
of course over the years i have watched many of my elder and younger brothers coming and gone it doesn’t affect me as much as those two sisters sometimes it’s still very painful especially if i’m very close to that brother or to that sister but it doesn’t shake my confidence in the dharma at all i just know we make choices and make sure you make choices every single day when people get married they make a choice to be with each other for a whole lifetime but they forget after that day after day they don’t remember that vow but in a monastic life make sure you make that vow every single day when you wake up sometime in the day remember that vow and make sure you choose to stay a monk every single day you have to choose you don’t come here because of shelter because of food because of some comfort all of us have left many friends loved ones our careers because we choose a path of peace of transformation and healing but of course we forget somewhere along the line in the day over the course of the years so what has helped me to be on this path for 20 years plus now because i make that choice every day nobody makes me stay here i can just this moment say dear sangha i would like to return my ropes and my arms ball that’s the most polite form you return or you just walk away and not say anything or mail them back i’ll never mail them back that’s fine but you know just like soldiers they can also leave the military right they just can’t they can’t just you know they call strike the bell three times or something and they walk away so as monks and nuns do remember it’s a choice to stay here and choose it every single day why you’re still staying here and if there’s still good reasons invest in them make sure that you are practicing so that is meaningful for you and per chance one day somebody leaves we also support we also understand right because we do make changes in our life but the choice we make each day to be here must be worthwhile for us we must maintain that integrity in our own practice so that we can look at ourselves every night i go to sleep i breathe i calm my body and i give rise to the thought if tonight i don’t wake up i’m at peace with that certainly there’s certain things i would like to do still but it’s okay if i don’t wake up i’ve done my best and it’s a wonderful wonderful feeling to be able to look at ourselves and smile and to know that we have done our best to care for our strengths and weaknesses to transform our habits our suffering as much as we can to reach out and help somebody else it makes our life meaningful and that’s the integrity of a practitioner and you won’t ever regret whether you’re on the path as a monk nun or a lay friend you will always find meaning and it is always worthwhile and of all the monks and nuns that i know when they leave the path when they look back they always say this these years are the most precious memorable years of their lives always they say that however much they struggle on the monastic path and it’s usually because we struggle with ourselves but it’s all worthwhile well wherever you go there you are that’s the last thing i would like to leave with you i saw this saying san francisco when i was doing my residency medical residency there and i saw this billboard at that time i think they were advertising apple computer wherever you go there you are and i didn’t understand it and then i am i went to kenya to do an internship there and i made friends with some kenyans nurses and doctors and one day we were spending some time in the sun joyfully and at one moment everybody left and i was sitting there out there by myself and suddenly this heaviness it felt like a comet they just like crushed on my chest it felt exactly like what i was feeling i had been feeling in san francisco that heaviness that sadness that despair and right in that moment i understood wherever you go there you are we cannot escape ourselves however hard we try to lie to ourselves is still there that inner child in us that buddha in us that suffering that trauma that enlightenment they’re all there and we just have to face them we just have to take care of that in us then wherever we are we can face ourselves and be at peace with ourselves so these are they are the compass for me helps me helps guide me through my daily practice and not lost get lost in trivial matters and i hope that my my brothers especially my young brothers you also see make the time to contemplate on what’s most important to you why you have chosen this path so that in your daily life you come back to those important matters okay and have great doubts be open to learn to observe to study and to practice that to offer ourselves you practice that is your deepest most long-lasting service you know and also allow yourself to be a child okay thank you thank you my dear brother [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Laughter] [Music] you