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The Way Out Is In

Summer Stories of Love, Joy, and Grief (Episode #38)

The Way Out Is In

Plum Village

Health & Fitness, Education, Buddhism, Mental Health, Religion & Spirituality, Self-improvement

0.00 Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2022

⏱️ 84 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Welcome to episode 38 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.The presenters, Zen Buddhist monk Brother Phap Huu and journalist Jo Confino, are back after a short hiatus with an episode covering their own stories from a summer which has been equally joyful and unsettling. Get ready for an eclectic mix of topics, from the first post-pandemic (and sold out!) summer retreats at Plum Village, weddings, and family reunions, to collective awakening, interbeing, and civilizational collapse; what they’ve learned, and how the practice of mindfulness helped them through the ups and downs.   Brother Phap Huu talks about taking the pulse of the world via visiting lay practitioners; dharma families; deep sharing; the importance of practice during a special event for his blood family; learning to rest and knowing the limits as an essential practice; dealing with inferiority complexes; and the seed of parenting within all of us. And, yes: walking meditation can have a part in a wedding. Jo reflects on civilizational collapse after attending a convention of experts about the polycrisis which combines multiple intersecting emergencies; the accumulation of presence; fast-paced society and its ‘instant results’; recognizing jealousy; stability in dark moments; the historical dimension and the ultimate dimensions; and interbeing, the limits of coming back to our true self, and the potential of coming back to life.The episode ends with a short meditation guided by Brother Phap Huu. 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 Plum Village Retreatshttps://plumvillage.org/retreats/visiting-us/  Wake Up Humanity 2022https://plumvillage.org/retreats/info/international-wake-up-retreat-2022/  Rains Retreat 2022https://plumvillage.org/retreats/info/rains-retreat-2022/  Bodhicittahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhicitta  The European Institute of Applied Buddhism (EIAB)https://plumvillage.org/practice-centre/eiab/  Parallax Presshttps://www.parallax.org/  Letters: ‘New Designs for Monastic Robes’https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/letters/monastic-fashion/  Classes: ‘In the Ultimate Dimension, Every Dharma Is an Unconditioned Dharma’https://plumvillage.org/library/classes/class-2-in-the-ultimate-dimension-every-dharma-is-an-unconditioned-dharma/  Quotes “It is such a practice to slow down and to give yourself permission to not look at the emails and to smile at them and say, ‘I don’t have to answer this right away. Who said I have to answer this right away?’ We have created a culture where everything needs to be immediate. Everything needs to be done right here, right now. This is the opposite of living happily in the present moment.”  “Walking meditation can be applied anywhere. And I really encourage all of us to invest in this practice, because it is formless and nobody needs to know that we are practicing it. But it is there all the time.” “Now more than ever, we need this inner stability for us to face suffering, or else we are going to lose ourselves, we’re going to panic, we’re going to get overwhelmed. […] Those emotions are not being recognized and cared for. And that is why, for me, this has to go into education; this has to go into the mainstream of well-being. It’s not Buddhism; Buddhism is one of the beautiful manifestations of our diversity, but well-being and a sense of community in taking care of each other’s suffering needs to be highlighted more.” “Why is it that I can’t drop

Transcript

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0:00.0

Dear listeners, welcome back to this latest episode of the podcast The Way Out is In. I'm Joe Konfino working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems evolution.

0:28.0

And I am Brother Fabu, a Zen Buddhist monk in the tradition of Plum Village a student of Zen master Techn

0:35.3

And brother today we're going to have an eclectic mix of topics because actually you and I

0:40.0

have not seen each other for about six weeks and so we're going to be talking about

0:44.6

what happened over our summer so we're going to be going to talk from everything from

0:48.1

summer retreats at Plum Village, weddings, family and just to top it all a little bit of

0:53.9

civilizational collapse. The way out is in.

1:05.0

Out is in. Brother Fat Pooh, how lovely to see you.

1:17.0

Likewise, very lovely to see your face, Joe.

1:23.8

So it's six weeks.

1:25.8

I don't know how I survived without you for so long.

1:29.0

And dear listeners, it's very good to be back sitting in the sitting still hut of Tignat Han in upper Hamlet,

1:36.7

Plum Village. We're sitting as usual round his kitchen table with our producer Kata, hi Kata.

1:44.0

Yeah, so brother, when I was at school and we'd go on summer holidays,

1:48.5

when I came back from the summer holidays and I attended my first class, We always had to do an essay on what happened to us in the summer.

1:57.0

And I was sort of I sort of hated it actually because normally I didn't do very much at all and I was sort of a bit of a lonely chance.

2:05.3

So anyway, let's not go, let's not go straight into all the psychological flaws I have.

2:10.3

But there was something also about it, about a time for reflection about actually what did happen.

2:15.0

So we thought that we would do that today, which is actually we haven't seen each other.

2:21.0

We can learn a little bit about what we each did but also, you know, being away from Plum Village, what did we learn?

2:29.0

But brother, maybe we could start off with you telling us a bit about Plum Village in the summer

2:34.0

because this was the first time in more than two years that actually Plum Village

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