Welcome to episode 83 of The Way Out Is In: The Zen Art of Living, a podcast series mirroring Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s deep teachings of Buddhist philosophy: a simple yet profound methodology for dealing with our suffering, and for creating more happiness and joy in our lives.

This installment sees Zen Buddhist monk Brother Phap Huu and leadership coach/journalist Jo Confino joined by Zen Buddhist nun Sister True Dedication to discuss the Eight Realizations of Great Beings. This ancient Buddhist sutra provides guidance on overcoming suffering, putting an end to misunderstandings and difficulties, and making progress towards or even attaining enlightenment: “leaving behind the world of birth and death, [and] dwelling forever in peace”.

In this, the second of two parts, the three contributors explore the last four realizations, which provide a manual for seeing the world with the wisdom needed to deal with suffering and act with clarity.

The realizations covered include the awareness that ignorance is the cause of the endless cycle of birth and death, and how bodhisattvas develop their understanding and skillful means; the awareness that poverty (but not only poverty!) can create hatred and anger, and how to practice generosity equally towards friends and enemies; living simply to ‘practice the way’, and the great vow to help all beings and guide them to joy; and more.

The discussion emphasizes the importance of grounding Buddhist teachings in real-world realities, cultivating compassion and understanding even for those causing harm, simplifying one’s life, and committing to the bodhisattva path of alleviating the suffering of all beings.

Co-produced by the Plum Village App:
https://plumvillage.app/

And Global Optimism:
https://globaloptimism.com/

With support from the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation:
https://thichnhathanhfoundation.org/

List of resources

Interbeing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbeing

Sister Hien Nghiem (Sister True Dedication)
https://plumvillage.org/people/dharma-teachers/sister-hien-nghiem

Sutras
https://plumvillage.org/genre/sutras

The Eight Realizations of Great Beings
https://www.parallax.org/product/the-eight-realizations-of-great-beings

Dharma Talks: ‘Manas Consciousness, Teachings on Buddhist Psychology Retreat, 1997’
https://plumvillage.org/library/dharma-talks/manas-consciousness-thich-nhat-hanh-teachings-on-buddhist-psychology-retreat-1997

Mahayana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahayana

Bodhisattva
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva

Sister Chan Khong
https://plumvillage.org/about/sister-chan-khong

Martin Luther King Jr.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

Pema Chödrön
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pema_Ch%C3%B6dr%C3%B6n

‘Recommendation’
https://plumvillage.org/articles/recommendation

Viktor Frankl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl

The Eight Realizations of Great Beings: Essential Buddhist Wisdom for Realizing Your Full Potential
https://plumvillage.shop/products/highlighted/new-books/the-eight-realizations-of-great-beings/

Being with Busyness: Zen Ways to Transform Overwhelm and Burnout
https://www.parallax.org/product/being-with-busyness

Quotes

“If love is limitless and love and understanding go together, then understanding must also be limitless.”

“Lower your ego, be open, change your attitude in order to receive.”

“Where there is life, there is death. Where there is death, there is life.”

“A very deep teaching from Thay and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about the idea of the beloved community, which, in their few brief meetings, they discussed at length: in the ideal beloved community of Dr. King, your enemies are included. Your enemies are included. The ones currently persecuting you are included. This was an important spiritual faith and practice at the time of the Civil Rights Movement. This is the 1960s, our spiritual love should have that capacity to embrace everyone. And that is a spiritual challenge. It starts closer to home, but it really opens up. And that’s a great vision. I find it really spiritually inspiring and challenging. [it] calls me forward.”

“My practice is to see everyone as human beings.”

“One of the vows of a bodhisattva, of a great being, is to always shine the light of openness, the light that everyone has inside of them: a seed of love and a seed of compassion.”

“There are going to be times when we recognize that, ‘Right now, my heart is not the size of the great ocean. It’s literally a puddle.’ If I allow many people to walk around that puddle, it will be stirred up and become very muddy and I can’t be of service. So we have to be able to know our capacity, our limits, and to not feel that this is something to be attained in one day, in one month, in one year, but that it requires a lifetime of cultivation.”

“When we are angry, we’re not clear, we’re not compassionate, and we don’t carry out our profession well.”

“The past was wrong, we know that. But what can we do now? Starting today, how can we reset this?”

“When there’s not enough love around, there’s not enough understanding, everybody feels unsafe; everybody is always on guard. And when we’re on guard, we stop looking at each other as an opportunity for connecting as humanity. It’s just fear.”

“One can only overcome anger with kindness. One can only conquer evil with good. One can only win over the miser with generosity. One can only convince the liar with truth.”

“True, full, deep Buddhism is grounded in a real awareness of economic realities and economic systems. So, when someone has hatred and anger, there may be many causes and conditions, including poverty. But we don’t blame or punish or condemn people for struggling with that; we bring great compassion and understanding.”

“Although you are in the world, try not to be caught up in worldly matters. A monastic, for example, has in their possession only three robes and one bowl. They live simply in order to practice the way. Their precepts keep them free from attachment to worldly things, and they treat everyone equally and with compassion.”

“Each day is a chance to contribute good thinking, speech, and action into the world, whether we’re monastic or not.”

“The more we consume and the more we think that we can find our happiness in consuming, the more we are destroying the Earth. The more we are climbing over each other for status and fame and power and influence and all these other things, the more, ultimately, we’re creating suffering and exploitation around us. And it’s endless. The consequences of human cravings are that the more we lose ourselves in these sense-pleasures, the less we’re really awake to and aware of the actual, very real, tangible suffering that we are perpetuating upon each other and upon the planet.”

“Maybe the most important thing we can do in our life is cultivate the energy of mindfulness, compassion, understanding, and harmony in our lives and relationships.”

“We’re all living in this crazy world. And how can we live in the world and not be too shaped and imprinted by it, but instead find our freedom within it and really live in line with our values? I want to put out a rallying call: don’t settle for anything less. Life is so short. Life is so precious. How can we make these choices really intentionally? How do we want to live in a way that’s in line with these values, and what radical choices can we make to put what’s most meaningful and important first?”

“Simplicity is a keyword for living simply, leanly, and lightly – not living simply, leanly, and lightly, and then taking loads of photos and posting them on social media and being like, ‘Look at my highly curated simple life.’ That’s not what we’re talking about. It’s how to simplify what we’re doing, what we need, and what we’re in pursuit of in order to show up fully in the moments of our life; to be able to slow down and live this precious life deeply. And that is already an act of resistance.”

“The simple moments of life are enough. And I feel that this word ‘simplicity’ is the real takeaway from this realization of how we can bring this quote-unquote monastic awakening into our daily life. And it takes courage because everyone is trying to make it complicated for us, including our loved ones. So it takes real courage to keep it simple.”

The strange death of squalor