Dear Thay, thank you for sharing the Dharma with us.
I suffer a lot, and I realize it's part of my practice.
And I see that my suffering seems to come from two main things.
One is that...
I have a chronic illness that causes me a lot of physical pain.
The other is that I am an activist, and I care very deeply for the world...
and I feel sometimes a lot of despair about what's happening in the world
around us,
in terms of violence, poverty, environmental destruction.
And I wonder what advice you might have
or what practices you might recommend for those of us who are living with physical pain
or living with...
despair in our caring for the world.
Dear Thay, Dear Sangha,
Our friend practices with physical pain from a chronic illness,
and she's also an activist and sometimes finds herself...
feeling despair when she sees all the...
all the suffering, the violence and destruction that happen in our world.
And she's asking Thay for practices to address...
living with physical pain and also with the pain of...
of seeing many negative things in our world.
We have learned in this retreat that we can reduce physical pain
with the practice of releasing the tension in the body.
The pain may be still there,
but it can be reduced if we can release the tension.
The pain increases in function of tension.
So the practice of relaxation in the lying position,
the practice of relaxation during the time you walk [can help]
because every step you make can help release the tension.
Walk like a free person.
Put things down.
Don't carry.
And you feel light.
There is a burden that we always carry with us.
And the technique is, the skillfulness is how to...
lay down the burden in order to be light.
And if you sit and walk and lie down like that,
it is very easy to release the tension and reduce the pain.
And the Buddha said that we should not try to amplify our pain
or exaggerate the situation.
He used the image of someone who is hit by an arrow.
A few minutes later, a second arrow comes and strikes exactly the same spot.
After the second arrow comes,
not only the pain is doubled, but it can be triple or 10 times more painful, intense.
So when we have some pain, whether it is physical or mental,
we have to recognize it as it is, and we should not exaggerate it.
"Breathing in, I know this is only a minor physical pain.
I can very well make friends and peace with it.
I can still smile to it."
If you recognize it as it is and do not exaggerate it,
then you can make peace with it
and you don't suffer much.
But if you get angry revolting against that, if you worry too much,
if you imagine that you are going to die very soon,
then the pain will be multiplied by 100 times.
That is the second arrow. We should not allow it to come.
That's recommended by the Buddha.
It's very important. Don't exaggerate.
Don't amplify the pain.
And we know that if we are...
not peaceful,
if we do not have enough compassion in us,
we cannot do much
to help the world.
As an activist we want to do something...
to help the world to suffer less.
But we ourselves are the center.
We have to make peace,
to reduce the suffering in us first.
Because we represent the world.
Peace and love and happiness should always begin here.
The Buddha proposed so many ways to practice
in order to help reduce the pain in the body,
reduce the pain in the feeling and the emotion,
and to reconcile with ourselves
because there are sufferings inside: fear, anger...
So when you take care of yourself,
you are practically taking care of the world.
Imagine a pine tree standing on the front yard.
We ask the pine tree what it can do...
what is the maximum the pine tree can do to help the world.
The answer is very clear:
You should be a beautiful, healthy pine tree.
You help the world by being your best.
So that is applied to humans, also.
The basic thing we can do to help the world is to be healthy,
to be solid, to be loving, to be gentle to ourselves.
And when people look at us, they have confidence.
And they say, "she can do that, I can do that too."
So anything you can do for you, you do it for the world.
Don't think that you and the world are two separate things.
When you breathe in mindfully and gently
and feel the wonder of life,
you are doing that for us for the world, remember.
And practicing with that kind of insight,
you will succeed in helping the world.
And you don't have to wait until tomorrow.
You can do it right today.