Via Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation // Support for our LGBTQIA+ Friends and Allies

Practitioner Resources

Support for our
LGBTQIA+ Friends and Allies

 

To support our LBTQIA+ community and our aspiration to deepen our understanding of interbeing, particularly around questions of sexual orientation and gender identity, here are several helpful resources:

• Dharma talk by Sister Boi Nghiem at a Wake Up Earth Retreat last year about the importance of supporting the LGBTQIA+ community. In a section of the talk on gender inclusivity (around minute 41), she says: “Our society has hurt you enough. You seek to come to the Plum Village tradition to find peace, love, and refuge.”

• Sister The Nghiem (Sister True Vow) Dharma talk: Given at Blue Cliff Monastery in 2018 during the LGBTQIA+Wake Up retreat, “For a future to be possible.”

• In this article from the Plum Village Newsletter, Brother Chan Troi Bao Tang (Brother Treasure) explains the value and benefit of the Rainbow Family: communities of LGBTQIA+ people within the Plum Village tradition.

• Plum Village App-Rainbow Family, a special section within the mobile app, includes a collection of Dharma talks and guided meditations from and in support of the LGBTQIA+ community, allies, and friends.

Via Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation // The Raft: Be a Beautiful Lotus Flower

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don't try to be a magnolia flower.” 

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power

Via Daily Dharma: The Constellation of Mind

 Right understanding (and right functioning) of the mind does not come from thinking, but from actively and attentively observing the complex constellation of energies and activities of mind.

Stuart Smithers, “Minding the Storehouse”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Dhamma Wheel | Right View: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

RIGHT VIEW
Understanding the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering

What is the cessation of suffering? It is the remainderless fading away and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of craving. (MN 9) When one knows and sees feeling tone as it actually is, then one is not attached to feeling tone. When one abides unattached, one is not infatuated, and one’s craving is abandoned. One’s bodily and mental troubles are abandoned, and one experiences bodily and mental well being. (MN 149)

Reflection

Feeling tones, the raw sensations of pleasure and pain, are not in themselves a problem. The problem comes from attachment to them—the craving for good feelings to persist and bad feelings to stop that naturally arises in response to those feelings. Craving is the cause of suffering, not feeling. The key challenge is how to separate the two: How can we experience both positive and negative feelings without giving rise to craving?

Daily Practice

The short answer to that question is mindfulness. Mindfulness allows us to know and see feeling tone as it actually is, in which case, the texts tell us, we will not be attached to it. Clear awareness is one thing, and attachment is something else. They cannot occur simultaneously. Practice knowing and seeing feeling as it actually is by regarding it with equanimity. This is what is happening now, and this is how it actually feels.

Tomorrow: Cultivating Appreciative Joy
One week from today: Understanding the Noble Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering

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