Vesak Dharma Talk in Hong Kong
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This is a very beautiful Dharma Hall.
(Chinese)
We don't need to build.
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There is plenty of air for us to breathe.
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Let us enjoy breathing with the sound of the bell
offered by sister Hanh Nghiem.
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(Bell)
(Bell)
(Bell)
(Bell)
Dear Sangha, today is the 19th of May
of the year 2013
and we are in the Lotus Pond Temple in Hong Kong
on our Day of Mindfulness.
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We know that queen Mahamaya
did not have a hard time giving birth to Siddhartha.
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In fact, the birth of Siddhartha was quite easy.
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The queen was on her way
to her maternal home
with the aim of giving birth to Sidhartha there.
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Half the way home,
she and the ladies in waiting stopped
and enjoyed themselves in the Lumbini Park.
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I think she was doing walking meditation.
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She enjoyed every step.
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There were many Ashoka trees in the park,
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and they were in bloom.
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When she made the 7th step, she felt that Siddhartha was coming.
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That is why she grasped one of the branches of the Ashoka tree
and right away she gave birth to Siddhartha in the standing position.
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The ladies in waiting were ready.
They had every thing they needed in order to welcome Siddhartha.
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That was a very happy moment for her and for all the ladies in waiting.
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She did not have to go to her mother's home anymore,
she decided to go back to Kapilavastu.
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A few gods had been asked to go quickly
to both capitals in order to announce the birth of Siddhartha.
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When we think of Jesus Christ's birth,
we see it differently.
Mary was a refugee when she gave birth to Jesus Christ.
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But when the time for Rahula,
the son of Siddhartha,
to be born - It was so difficult a time.
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Yasodhara had a very difficult time giving birth to Rahula.
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It took a long time in order to deliver the buddha,
the baby Rahula.
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There was a time where people were so afraid
that both mother and son would not be able to survive.
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Siddhartha was also very anxious,
(he had) a lot of tension and worry in himself.
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The whole royal family was in that situation.
Everyone was extremely worried
about the safety of Yasodhara and Rahula.
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We can see that during the time of the conception of Rahula,
Siddhartha was not happy.
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Siddhartha had all kind of conditions and facilities to enjoy the life of a prince,
but he was not happy at all.
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He recognized the suffering in himself,
he recognized the suffering in his father, mother and the royal family.
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He recognized the suffering in his own country.
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He saw very well
that as a politician he could not help remove
the suffering from himself, from his family and from his country.
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He was not convinced
that to be a king, to be a politician
could help himself, could help his family and country.
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He had a lot of anxiety, a lot of anguish, a lot of suffering in himself
while living with Yasodhara.
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Yasodhara was an intelligent woman.
She was aware of the suffering in her husband,
but she could not see how she could help him at all.
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The anxiety, the tension, the suffering of Siddhartha
began to enter into the body of Yasodhara and also into the fetus.
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The unrest in Siddhartha was very clear.
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He had a lot of confusion, unrest,
he did not have enough peace and joy within himself.
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He was trying to find a way out of this.
The idea of living home in order to be a monk was very strong in him.
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That is one of the reasons why the birth of Rahula was so difficult.
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But finally,
Yasodhara was able to give birth to Rahula
and the relief was total.
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Siddhartha left
not long after the birth of Rahula.
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He spent many years searching for the way -
learning from many teachers
and finally attained Enlightenment by himself.
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Siddhartha was doing that for all of us.
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Siddhartha was doing that for his father, his mother, his family, his country.
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When you become a monk, a nun, you are doing that not only for yourself,
but also for your family, your country and your society.
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Mankind was so lucky because Siddhartha had succeeded.
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He had found a way to deal with the suffering inside of him,
in his family and in his society.
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He had found a way to release the tension within his body.
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He had found a way in order to calm down his painful feelings and emotions.
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He had found a way to understand the deep roots of suffering
in himself and in other people.
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He had found a way in order to restore communication
and bring about reconciliation with his beloved ones.
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Most of all, he has found a way to touch the nature of no birth and no death
in himself and in reality.
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He has done that not only for himself but for all of us in the human race.
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Because the human race suffers,
that is why other races or species also suffer.
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When Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who made the first step on the moon,
he declared that it was a giant step for humankind.
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Armstrong was making that step not for himself,
but for all of us, the human race.
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That is a big step on the path of modern science, technology.
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As for spirituality is concerned,
that step was made by Siddhartha Gautama.
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Today we celebrate his birth.
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We look around and recognize
that we have been transforming the Buddha into a God.
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We pray to him
in order for him to help us to get what we want,
like money, fame, profit and health.
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Siddhartha found out that true happiness
does not come from money, fame, power and sex.
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But we are praying,
we are asking him to give us all this things.
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The Buddha saw very well
that happiness is possible and happiness is made
of understanding and love.
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He showed us the way to cultivate understanding and love
so that we can have a happy live.
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In order to generate the energy of understanding and love
we have to practice mindfulness, concentration and insight.
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That is the Buddhism
of knowledge,
the Buddhism of wisdom
and not the Buddhism of devotion.
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The Buddhism of our time is made mostly of devotion.
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The Buddha is no longer a teacher but a God.
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We do not come to the Buddha with the intention to learn
how to generate understanding, love and happiness.
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We go to the Buddha to pray
that he would help us to have more money,
more fame, more profit, more success.
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We know that in the past, in the history of Buddhism,
Buddhism was able to help bring peace
and happiness to individuals, families and nations.
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Buddhism has been able to go through many periods of transformations
in order to continue to serve the humankind.
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But today,
Buddhism has been greatly corrupted.
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We do not profit from the wisdom
of the Buddha as much as our ancestors in the past.
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Not many of us are able to go
the path undertaken by our teacher, the Buddha.
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That is why as good Buddhists, as good disciples of the Buddha,
we have to help renew Buddhism.
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We have to help purify Buddhism from superstitions and things like that
that corrupt, that have made Buddhism corrupted.
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It takes only a number of days,
like five or six,
in order for all of us to learn how to release the tension in our body.
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It takes that amount of days
to learn how to calm our painful feelings and emotions.
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It needs only a number of days
in order to learn how to generate a feeling of joy and happiness.
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It needs only a number of days in order to learn
how to understand the suffering in oneself
and the suffering in the other person.
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The other person may be our husband, our wife,
our son, our daughter, our father, our mother.
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Seeing the suffering in him or in her
helps us not to be angry at him or her anymore.
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Seeing the suffering in the other person,
we are no longer angry at him or at her.
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In fact, we want to do something or to say something
in order to help him or her to suffer less.
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We can make use of the practice of compassionate listening and loving speech
in order to help the other person to suffer less.
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Practicing compassionate listening for one hour
can already help the other person to suffer much less.
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Listening like Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion,
can help the other suffer less
in one hour or so.
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Using that kind of loving speech
in order to help the other person to speak out and suffer less
is something that we can do after a few days of training.
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Restoring communication with the other person is possible.
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With the practice of compassionate listening and loving speech
we can very well restore communication in just a few hours.
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To bring about reconciliation and to restore happiness and love
is something possible with the practice given by the Buddha.
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We have a number of sutras that are very practical and easy to understand.
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The sutra on the practice of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.
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Mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of the feelings,
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mindfulness of the mental formations
and mindfulness of the objects of our mind.
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Practicing according to this sutra,
we can have a deep insight
about our body, our feelings and our perceptions.
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Practicing a few weeks the teaching
of the sutra on mindfulness,
can help us
liberate ourselves from many wrong perceptions and afflictions.
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There is a sutra called "The Sutra of Mindful Breathing"
where the Buddha proposes 16 ways of breathing in and out.
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These exercises help us to release the tension in our body,
and to calm our feelings and our emotions.
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These exercises also help us to generate
a feeling of joy and happiness whenever we want to.
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They help us to recognize the many conditions of happiness
that are already available in the here and the now
so that we can be happy right here and right now
and do not have to go looking for happiness in the future.
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With the final exercise in the Sutra of Mindful Breathing
we can touch the nature of no birth and no death in us
and transcend all kind of fear.
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There is a sutra that the Buddha delivered to the businessman Anathapindika.
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That day, the businessman Anathapindika
came with 5.000 hundred businessmen to visit the Buddha.
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The Buddha knew that business people think too much about the future
and they do not have the time to live deeply the present moment.
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That is why that morning the Buddha
delivered a sutra on the topic of Living Happily Right in the Here and the Now.
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"Drsta dharma sukha vihara"
That expression - living happily in the present moment-
was repeated five times in the discourse.
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That is why on this day, commemorating the birth of Lord Buddha,
we propose
that courses should be given to adults and children
on learning and studying this teaching and practices.
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We will get the habit of going to the temple
not only to burn incense and do prostrations,
but to learn how to breathe, how to walk,
how to cultivate understanding and love.
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One week of practice like that can transform our life
and restore communication and happiness
between us and the other people.
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On this day, I would like to invite all of us
to look for Shakyamuni as a teacher and not as a God.
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We always call him a teacher.
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And yet we still worship him as a God.
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We have to learn how to profit
from the Buddha as a teacher.
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And receive from him all the wisdom, all the teaching
that can help us transform our life
and the life of our family and society.
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Subtitles by the Amara.org community
