Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thich Nhat Hahn opens this retreat by teaching realization as the direct, lived practice of being present with what is actually in front of us—smiling, breathing, looking at a flower, hugging a loved one—rather than seeing these acts as distant spiritual goals. He illustrates this through a story of returning to his hermitage in the wind, explaining how we must first calm and settle ourselves inwardly—closing the windows, lighting a lamp, making a fire—before we can truly see and connect with the world around us. He then introduces the breathing gatha: breathing in, I calm my body; breathing out, I smile, emphasizing how conscious breathing and genuine smiling dissolve tension and renew both ourselves and those nearby. He shares two stories about the power of a mother’s inner state during pregnancy and argues that renewing ourselves is simultaneously renewing the world. The talk closes by introducing the full four-line gatha, with emphasis on dwelling in the present moment as the foundation of all practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 LD.mp3
UUID: a647ee17-2b9c-45de-8475-cff2f6ca93ac
Teacher: Thich Nhat Hahn
Collection: Looking Deeper – Meditationson Mindfulness thich (Thich Nhat Hahn)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~3,007
Ladies and gentlemen, during this retreat we will learn to do together some of the things like smiling, breathing, sitting, walking, looking, eating, and so on. It’s not difficult but but I think we can learn from each other a lot. We talk about realization. Realization is a difficult word but but it’s not really so difficult. For instance, when we smile, that’s a realization.
We realize a smile. Just smiling and you realize something very important. So realizing is what we’re going to realize. Breathing, sitting, smiling, eating, looking, all these things are realizations. And we do not need a lot of time in order to do so.
This is not the kind of realization that we talk about every day, like realizing a project. Because realizing a project, we need time. But this kind of realization, we are going to realize there is no need for time. Like, we don’t need much time to smile. We just smile and then we have to realize some very important things.
When we see a flower, when we look at the flower and if we really see the flower, that means we have realized something very important. Because many times we look at a flower but we do not see the flower. So we miss it. We don’t realize the seeing. So we are going to learn to practice realization in order to see things.
To see things in ourselves and to see things around us. When I look at a flower or when I look at the moon, I should be able to see the flower or the moon. Right? Otherwise, what is the use of looking at the flower and of the moon? Realizing means to really be with something or someone.
When I look at a young person like this lovely boy, I have to see him. And I have to see him really. And if I am able to see him I am in true contact with him. He is real And I myself, I am real. That is very important.
When you look at a flower and if the flower is real to you, then you yourself become real also. This is the secret of realization. Many times we look at one person but we don’t really see that person. So the person is not real and we, the one who look, is not real either. And what is worse is that sometimes we live with one person for thirty years and forty years and yet we have never really seen the person.
And that is very serious. And that is not a thing that is rare. It is very common in our society, in our life. And please believe that if we are real we are capable of seeing things, life will be quite different. And therefore, learning to look at things in order to really see them is a very important practice.
There are days when we look at flowers and do not see flowers. And when we look at people and we don’t really see the people. But that’s not the worst. We don’t know even that we are there. You don’t see other people, yes, but you don’t see yourself.
Not to see yourself is a very sad thing. And therefore we have to look somehow in order to see that we are there. And if we are really there, other people are also really there. And the flower and the moon. I would like to tell you a story that happened to me about twenty years ago.
I lived in a hermitage in France, about two hours of drive from Paris at that time. And one day I left the hermitage in the morning. I went down to a wood below and I brought with me a sandwich. And I spent the whole day in the forest, in a wood. When I went back to my hermitage, the wind was blowing.
And before I left I opened all windows and all doors. And when I returned to my hermitage I found it very empty, very cold because the wind is inside, was inside. The wind was making noises with the windows and with the door. Inside it was dark. And then the sheets of paper I put on my desk were blown a little bit everywhere.
It was very unpleasant. The first thing I did after I saw that was to close the windows and the door. The second thing I did is to strike a match and to light the lamp. The third thing I did is to make a fire in the chimney. And the last thing I did is to go and pick up all the sheets of paper that were scattered all over.
After that, the room became the hermitage became bright, warm, very pleasant place to be in. I think my hermitage is like me. Sometimes the wind from outside blows into me. And it makes myself into a kind of mess. It’s cold, it’s unpleasant.
And in order to make myself alright again I begin to shut the windows and the door. I light. A lamp, I make a fire, I make a fire, I put things in order and then I feel much better after. So in order for you to be able to see a flower or a person, it’s very important that you feel alright, happy, warm, pleasant within yourself. If you are not happy, if you are not do not feel pleasant within yourself, it’s very hard to look at a flower and really see a flower.
And closing the windows, closing the doors, making a fire is not something very difficult to do. It’s even very pleasant to do. And then, when I close the window, after I have closed the window and the doors and making a fire, I feel comfortable. I do not feel that I am cut off from the world outside because I know that my hermitage is there but the world outside is still there. It has become it become dark.
The star begins to appear in the sky. Although the wind is still there, I know the trees were still there. Everything is there. And inside the hermitage I feel very happy. So, in our daily life, from time to time we feel that we are not alright.
We feel that we are in touch with the world, with people, with the cloud, with the flower, with the moon. But it’s not correct that we are in touch. We are not really in touch. Because looking at a flower we don’t see the flower. Talking with a person we don’t really get in touch with him or her.
Getting in touch with yourself is a very wonderful way to be in touch with other people and with the world. So, I want to sum up what I have said. If the thing that you see is real, you become real. And if you are real, the thing you look at becomes real also. Very important.
For a young man like yourself, a young lady like yourself, you might try to find it out to see whether what I have told you is correct or not. Suppose you hug your mommy And if you are not alright, the hug is not very sweet. If you are worried, you think of many things and then your hug is not a real hug. But if you are happy, you are alright hugging, you are smiling, you know that your mommy is there and you are really there, the hug is really a hug. Otherwise, it looks like a hug But it’s not really a hug.
It’s like when you meet someone you say, Good morning. That good morning sometimes is very real. You really want the person to have a good morning. But sometimes we just say that. It does not mean much.
So the good morning is not real. So we should make the good morning a real good morning. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to be in touch with ourselves in order to be in touch with the world. And if we can be really in touch with the world we will be in touch with ourselves more deeply. I would like to talk to you about arranging a flower.
Sometimes the flower you put in a pot does not absorb the water within it. And therefore the flower becomes to wither. There is no communication between the water in the pot and then the flower. Usually, in order to save such a flower I take the flower out and then I dip it into the water and I cut it again. In the water.
I know that when I do that the cells of the stems at the place where I cut will be penetrated by the water. And now when I put it again in the flower pot I re establish the communication between the water and then the flower. A few hours later, the flower became fresh again, smiling at me again. All of us are flowers like that. And if we are not really in touch, we will die, we will wither.
So it’s very important that we get in touch. And having a retreat with each other is to learn the art of getting in touch. In touch with ourselves, in touch with the world around us. Because both ourselves and the world around us belong to the same reality. We do not have much water here at the Zen Center.
But we have a lot of air. And the first thing you have to do is to be in real contact with the air. If you are not in good contact with the air, you will wither like the flower. And most of us, I don’t mean in the Zen though, don’t breathe properly because we don’t use our lungs as we should. We use only one third of their capacity.
And because we don’t know how to breathe deeply, to breathe well, we have so many problems, like the flower. Therefore it’s very important that we learn to breathe in order to be in touch with the air. And to be in touch with the air is a good way to a good beginning in order for us to be in touch with other things, even with ourselves. Breathing is also a realization because when we breathe, we can enjoy the breathing. Let us try.
I breathe in and I know that I breathe in. I breathe out knowing that I breathe out. Last week I was in Los Angeles. The air in Los Angeles is not as good as the air here. And therefore when I came to Green Gulch Zen Center I feel very happy because the air is so pure, clean.
And I really enjoy my breathing. If you have nose, nostrils that are not stuck I think you can enjoy your breathing. And if you don’t enjoy it that’s too bad. Because the air here is so good and you have the capacity of breathing and renewing yourself. I think if you practice walking meditation around the area for twenty minutes you become a new person.
And if you practice breathing with awareness, enjoying your breathing, you become a new person. I think so. When you become a new person everything around you, everyone around you becomes new again. They don’t look like before. And therefore, renewing yourself is at the same time renewing the world.
There is a Gatha on breathing. There are four lines to the Gatha. Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. I have to say something about smiling because it’s very important.
On our face, there are hundreds of muscles, very small muscles. And every time we are angry or worried, these muscles are very tense. And if you look at someone who is angry you can see the tension on his or her face. Right? And you are afraid.
Because that kind of tension creates a lot of suffering within that person. And also the fear and the unhappiness of the people who are around. But if the person knows how to breathe and smile, that tension will be gone very quickly. Just like this. Therefore, breathing and smiling is very important.
And if you practice breathing and smiling like that, when you encounter someone who is angry and who is trying to make yourself angry, you can prevent yourself from being angry. If you touch these two fingers together and keep like this and breathe breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. If If you practice like that and if you do it well, then you will not be angry at that person. Even if he is provoking you.
And if the person who are angry knows how to practice breathing and smiling, he will remove his anger. There are people who say that, Well, why should I smile when I have no joy? I don’t want to smile but why do I have to smile? But practicing smiling is so important. You don’t need to have the joy in yourself in order to smile.
Consider smiling, the practice of smiling, like a kind of yoga. Yoga, mouth yoga, you know. Mouth yoga. You know, when something happens in your mind, your body will be influenced. And when something happens to your body, your mind will be influenced.
We should not discriminate our body against our body for the sake of our mind. Because in Buddhist meditation, body and mind become one. Body, mind and the breath, they all become one. I remember that in the Zen Center of San Francisco, there was a young lady who refused to smile, telling me that her life is full of sorrow, of pain. And she cannot smile.
She cannot force herself to smile. If she did, she will betray herself. She said so. She she was young and she was expecting a baby. I told her that she’s free to choose between smiling and not smiling.
But I warned her that if she doesn’t smile, and then her baby is going to get it. Because what whatever a mommy expecting mommy eats or drinks or worry about, that will enter into the baby. Last night I told this story. I met with a Vietnamese boy in England. He was in a retreat like this with twenty other children, with many adults.
All the children behaved very well. They were very sweet. They participated in everything. Sitting meditation, walking meditation, tea meditation, they did everything marvelously except one little boy. He was so unstable.
He he was unstable. And therefore he made other people not very happy. But people were trying their best to be loving, to be accepting. Therefore the atmosphere is not so bad. So I went to his mommy and asked her, Why is that?
And her mommy said that, Well, when they were in Vietnam and when she was still pregnant of him, his father went to the sea as a boat person. But a few days later the news came home that he was drowned in the sea. So the lady suffered a lot but she could not share the suffering with other people. She was supposed not to know anything about her husband’s fleeing the country. Otherwise she would be charged with complicity.
That is why she had to keep the suffering for herself alone. And therefore the pain penetrated into the baby. And four years, five years after the boy was born he could not speak a word. And later they took out to the sea and they were very lucky. They were accepted by England to come and live there.
And in England there were social workers who took care of him. Therefore he began to speak short sentences and began to be sent to school. So I told the young American lady that she is free to choose from smiling and not smiling. But I warned her that if she doesn’t smile, then her baby will get it. So she thought about that very hard.
And I don’t know how she practiced but the next morning during a Dharma talk she smiled at me. I was so happy. I knew that she was trying to do that for the sake of her baby. But I know that since she is able to smile, she is saved. Because the smiling is very good for her.
And not only for her but for all of us. All of us in the Dharma talk. Because everyone saw in her smiling, everyone was relieved. And everyone was happy and we had more faith in the future. Therefore your smile is very important not only for your baby but for yourself.
Not only for yourself but for all of us. Smiling is a big contribution to peace and to the happiness of the world. So we are going to practice breathing and smiling a lot from now on. Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile.
We are going to practice breathing and smiling in our sitting meditation and in our walking meditation also. And if you continue to practice like that, I think in one or two days you will feel more peaceful and happier. We do not practice breathing and smiling for the future. We practice for the present moment. Well, I want first to continue with the Gatha.
The third line of the Gatha is dwelling in the present moment. The fourth line is I know this is a wonderful moment. The third line is what you recite silently when you breathe in. And the fourth line: when you breathe out. Dwelling in the present moment is a very important principle of meditation.
Because we know that present moment is the only moment in which we can be alive.