Interrelationship
You are me, and I am you. Isn't it obvious that we "inter-are"? You cultivate the flower in yourself, so that I will be beautiful. I transform the garbage in myself, so that you will not have to suffer.
I support you; you support me. I am in this world to offer you peace; you are in this world to bring me joy
[NOTE] 1989. Written during a retreat for psychotherapists held in Colorado in response to Fritz Perls' statement, "You are you, and I am me, and if by chance we meet, that's wonderful. If not, it couldn't be helped."
Non-Duality
The bell tolls at four in the morning. I stand by the window, barefoot on the cool floor. The garden is still dark. I wait for the mountains and rivers to reclaim their shapes. There is no light in the deepest hours of the night. Yet, I know you are there in the depth of the night, the immeasurable world of the mind. You, the known, have been there ever since the knower has been.
The dawn will come soon, and you will see that you and the rosy horizon are within my two eyes. It is for me that the horizon is rosy and the sky blue. Looking at your image in the clear stream, you answer the question by your very presence. Life is humming the song of the non-dual marvel. I suddenly find myself smiling in the presence of this immaculate night. I know because I am here that you are there, and your being has returned to show itself in the wonder of tonight's smile. In the quiet stream, I swim gently. The murmur of the water lulls my heart. A wave serves as a pillow I look up and see a white cloud against the blue sky, the sound of Autumn leaves, the fragrance of hay- each one a sign of eternity. A bright star helps me find my way back to myself.
I know because you are there that I am here. The stretching arm of cognition in a lightning flash, joining together a million eons of distance, joining together birth and death, joining together the known and the knower.
In the depth of the night, as in the immeasurable realm of consciousness, the garden of life and I remain each other's objects. The flower of being is singing the song of emptiness.
The night is still immaculate, but sounds and images from you have returned and fill the pure night. I feel their presence. By the window, with my bare feet on the cool floor, I know I am here for you to be.
[NOTE] This poem is about an insight related to vijnanavada. It is a difficult poem, fit to be explained in a course on vijnanavada. You are there for me, and I am here for you. That is the teaching of interbeing. The term interbeing was not yet used at that time. Although we think of the Avatamsaka when we hear the term interbeing,the teaching of interbeing also has its roots in vijttanavada, because in vijnanavada, cognition always includes subject and object together. Consciousness is always consciousness of something.
Disappearance
Disappearance
The leaf tips bend under the weight of dew. Fruits are ripening in Earth's early morning. Daffodils light up in the sun. The curtain of cloud at the gateway of the garden path begins to shift: have pity for childhood, the way of illusion.
Late at night, the candle gutters. In some distant desert, a flower opens. And somewhere else, a cold aster that never knew a cassava patch or gardens of areca palms, never knew the joy of life, at that instant disappears- man's eternal yearning.
The Beauty of Spring Blocks My Way
Spring comes slowly and quietly to allow Winter to withdraw slowly and quietly. The color of the mountain afternoon is tinged with nostalgia. The terrible war flower has left her footprints- countless petals of separation and death in white and violet. Very tenderly, the wound opens itself in the depths of my heart. Its color is the color of blood, its nature the nature of separation.
The beauty of Spring blocks my way. How could I find another path up the mountain?
I suffer so. My soul is frozen. My heart vibrates like the fragile string of a lute left out in a stormy night. Yes, it is really there. Spring has really come. But the mourning is heard clearly, unmistakably, in the wonderful sounds of the birds. The morning mist is already born. The breeze of Spring in its song expresses both my love and my despair. The cosmos is so indifferent. Why? To the harbor, I came alone, and now I leave alone.
There are so many paths leading to the homeland. They all talk to me in silence. I invoke the Absolute. Spring has come to every corner of the ten directions. Its, alas, is only the song of departure.
[NOTE] 1951. This was written less than twelve hours after I fell in love with a nun. It happened at the Vien Giac Temple on New Year's Eve in the beautiful village of Cau Dat in the highlands. She was twenty. Both of us realized that we wanted to continue being a monk and a nun. So we decided to depart from each other. This was not easy. I was lucky to having a loving and understanding sangha with me at that time that made it possible. Forty-one years late, I told this story in a twenty-one day retreat at Plum Village in English, on the theme of Vipassana meditation in the Mahayana tradition.
Please Call Me by My True Names
I have a poem for you. This poem is about three of us. The first is a twelve-year-old girl, one of the boat people crossing the Gulf of Siam. She was raped by a sea pirate, and after that she threw herself into the sea. The second person is the sea pirate, who was born in a remote village in Thailand. And the third person is me. I was very angry, of course. But I could not take sides against the sea pirate. If I could have, it would have been easier, but I couldn't. I realized that if I had been born in his village and had lived a similar life - economic, educational, and so on - it is likely that I would now be that sea pirate. So it is not easy to take sides. Out of suffering, I wrote this poem. It is called "Please Call Me by My True Names," because I have many names, and when you call me by any of them, I have to say, "Yes."
Don't say that I will depart tomorrow -- even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.
My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.
All From 'Call Me by My True Names' The collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh
The River and the Clouds
Once upon a time there was a beautiful river finding her way among the hills, forests, and meadows. She began by being a joyful stream of water, a spring always dancing and singing as she ran down from the top of the mountain. She was very young at the time, and as she came to the lowland she slowed down. She was thinking about going to the ocean. As she grew up, she learned to look beautiful, winding gracefully among the hills and meadows.
One day she noticed the clouds within herself. Clouds of all sorts of colors and forms. She did nothing during these days but chase after clouds. She wanted to possess a cloud, to have one for herself. But clouds float and travel in the sky, and they are always changing their form. Sometimes they look like an overcoat, sometimes like a horse. Because of the nature of impermanence within the clouds, the river suffered very much. Her pleasure, her joy had become just chasing after clouds, one after another, but despair, anger,and hatred became her life.
Then one day a strong wind came and blew away all the clouds in the sky. The sky became completely empty. Our river thought that life was not worth living, for there were no longer any clouds to chase after. She wanted to die. "If there are no clouds, why should I be alive?" But how can a river take her own life?
That night the river had the opportunity to go back to herself for the first time. She had been running for so long after something outside of herself that she had never seen herself. That night was the first opportunity for her to hear her own crying, the sounds of water crashing against the banks of the river. Because she was able to listen to her own voice, she discovered something quite important.
She realized that what she had been looking for was already in herself. She found out that clouds are nothing but water. Clouds are born from water and will return to water. And she found out she herself was also water.
The next morning when the sun was in the sky, she discovered something beautiful. She saw the blue sky for the first time. She had never noticed it before. She had only been interested in clouds, and she had missed seeing the sky, which is the home of all the clouds. Clouds are impermanent, but the sky is stable. She realized that the immense sky had been within her heart since the very beginning. This great insight brought her peace and happiness. As she saw the vast wonderful blue sky, she knew that her peace and stability would never be lost again.
That afternoon the clouds returned, but this time she did not want to possess any of them. She could see the beauty of each cloud, and she was able to welcome all of them. When a cloud came by, she would greet him or her with loving-kindness. When the cloud wanted to go away, she would wave to him or her happily and with loving kindness. She realized that all clouds are her. She didn't have to choose between the clouds and herself. Peace and harmony existed between her and the clouds.
That evening something wonderful happened. When she opened her heart completely to the evening sky she received the image of the full moon - beautiful, round, like a jewel within herself. She had never imagined that she could receive such a beautiful image. There is a very beautiful poem in Chinese: "The fresh and beautiful moon is travelling in the utmost empty sky. When the mind-rivers of living beings are free, that image of the beautiful moon will reflect in each of us."
This was the mind of the river at that moment. She received the image of that beautiful moon within her heart, and water, clouds, and moon took each other's hands and practiced walking meditation slowly, slowly to the ocean.
There is nothing to chase after. We can go back to ourselves, enjoy our breathing, our smiling, ourselves, and our beautiful environment.