Nondiscrimination
When you feel you have nothing to belong to and have no
identity, that is when you have a chance to break through to your true
home.
I have a home nobody can take away from me.
Photo by Flicker/DUC
Dear Sangha, yesterday I spoke about home, true
home. I told you that I have a home nobody can take away from me, no
matter where I go. One time when I was in Washington, D.C., the State
Department informed me that my passport was no longer valid.
They did
that so I could not speak publically on behalf of the victims of the
war. People in Washington, D.C., urged me to go into hiding, because I
risked deportation and jail. I did not go into hiding. I was forced to
seek political asylum in France, and I obtained a travel document called
an apatride; the English word for a person with this document
is “expatriate.” With this document, you can ask for a visa to go to
European countries who have signed the Geneva Convention. But for
countries like Canada and the United States of America, where you must
have a visa, it is very difficult to ask for a visa when you do not have
a country. You are without fatherland, motherland.
But because I do not have a country of my own, I had the opportunity
to find my true home. This is very important. It is because I did not
belong to any particular country that I made an effort to break through,
and I got my true home.
My dear friends, if you have the feeling you do not belong to any
country, to any geographical spot, to any cultural heritage, to any
particular ethnic group — for example when you go to Japan you don’t
feel that Japan accepts you, when you go back to America you don’t feel
that America is your home, when you go to Africa, you don’t think that
you are an African, when you go back to the United States of America you
don’t feel that you are accepted; when you feel you have nothing to
belong to, you have no identity, that is when you have a chance to break
through to your true home. That was my case.
My true home is not limited to any spot, any place — geographically
speaking, ethnically speaking, culturally speaking — although there may
be some cultural preference, some ethnic preference, some geographical
preference. Sometimes you like snow and very cold weather. Sometimes you
like to be in a place where there is a lot of sunshine. You may have a
preference, but you do not discriminate. All belongs to you.
There is absolutely no discrimination in your true
home. At times you may prefer something, but you do not discriminate
against anything in terms of geography, ethnicity, or culture, because
everything may be beautiful, every place may be beautiful. And you do
not just have one portion of it, you have the totality of it. You are
free to enjoy everything.
Suppose you love oranges and consider oranges to be your favorite
fruit. Still nothing prevents you from enjoying other kinds of fruits
like mango, kiwi, or even durian. [Laughter] It would be a pity if you
were committed to eating only one kind of fruit. You are free, and you
can enjoy every kind of fruit. And it would be a pity if you committed
only to one spiritual heritage, like only Christianity or Buddhism.
Because there are beautiful things to enjoy in each spiritual heritage.
Your orange may taste wonderful, but mango tastes wonderful also. It
would be a pity to discriminate against the mango and the kiwi and the
durian. So in your true home there is no discrimination; you are free.
And when you live with the wisdom of nondiscrimination, you don’t
suffer. You have a lot of wisdom and you embrace everyone — every
country, every culture, every ethnic group. That is my case. I don’t
discriminate against anything. I love oranges, but I also love mangos
and kiwis. Durian — [Laughter] — although I don’t eat it, I don’t
discriminate against it, and my disciples eat it for me.
This is my right hand; this is my left hand. My right hand has
written all of my poems except one. I always write my poems with a pen,
except one time when I did not have a pen and there was a poem in me
that wanted to come out. There was a typewriter so I rolled an old
envelope into it and I typed my poem. That was the only time my left
hand participated in poetry writing, yet my right hand never has a
superiority complex. My right hand does not think or say things like,
“Left Hand, do you know that I have written all the poems except one?
[Laughter] Do you know that I can do calligraphy? I can invite the bell
to sound. And you, Left Hand, do not seem to be good for anything.” My
right hand never has that kind of thinking, that kind of attitude. That
is why my right hand never suffers because of jealousy; it does not have
a superiority complex. When you feel that you are more powerful, more
talented, more important than others, then you suffer from a superiority
complex.
And my left hand doesn’t have an inferiority complex, though she has
not written many poems or done any calligraphy. It’s wonderful; she does
not suffer at all. There is no comparing, there is no low self-esteem.
That is why she is perfectly happy, my left hand.
One day I was trying to hang a picture on the wall. My left hand was
holding a nail, my right hand was a hammer. That day, I don’t know why,
instead of pounding on the nail I pounded on my finger. And when I hit
the finger of my left hand, the left hand suffered, and the right hand
put down the hammer right away and took care of the left hand in the
most tender way, like it was taking care of itself. There was no
duality. The right hand does things for my left hand as it does for
itself. There is no discrimination, no thinking: “I am I, and you are
you.” My two hands practice perfectly the teaching of the Buddha — no
self, no separate self.
My right hand considers the suffering of my left hand as his own
suffering. That is why he did everything to take care of the left hand.
My left hand did not have any anger toward my right hand. It did not
say, “You, Right Hand, you have done me an injustice. Give me that
hammer, I want justice!” [Laughter] There’s no such thinking. There is a
kind of wisdom inherent in my right hand and in my left hand, called by
the Buddha the wisdom of nondiscrimination. If you have it, you don’t
have to suffer at all.
In Sanskrit, Nirvikalpajnana. Vikalpa,
discrimination … nirvikalpa, nondiscrimination … jnana, wisdom: the
wisdom of nondiscrimination. The wisdom of nondiscrimination is innate
in us. But if we allow the wrong perceptions and habit energies to cover
it up, it cannot manifest. The practice of meditation helps us to
recognize the seed of nondiscrimination in us, and if we cultivate it,
water it every day, it will manifest fully and liberate us. The other
person also has the wisdom of nondiscrimination. But because he or she
has lived in a culture, in an environment where the thinking and action
are so categorized by individualism, selfishness, and ignorance, the
wisdom of nondiscrimination cannot manifest.
One year I went to Italy for a retreat, and I noticed they planted
olive trees in groups of three or four. I was surprised, and asked, “Why
do this?” They said, “No, we didn’t.” But if you look, you see groups
of three or four olive trees together. They explained it’s not three
olive trees, it’s just one. One year it was so cold that all the olive
trees died, but deep down the roots did not die. So after the hard
winter, spring came and young sprouts were born. And then instead of
having one trunk, they had three or four trunks.
Looking superficially
you think that there are three or four olive trees but in fact they are
one. If you are brothers of the same parents, you are like that. You
have the same roots, father and mother. These three or four olive trees,
they have the same block of roots. They look like different trees, but
they are just one. It would be strange if one of the trees discriminated
against another one, and they fought and killed each other. That is
sheer ignorance. If they look deeply and touch their roots, they know
they are brother and sister. They are one.
If the Israelis touch their wisdom of nondiscrimination, they will
find out the Palestinians are their brothers. They are like the right
hand and the left hand. It would be silly to consider each other as
enemies and kill each other for the sake of survival. It would be a pity
if Hindus and Muslims fight and kill each other. It would be a pity if
Catholics and Protestants fight and kill each other, because they are of
the same roots. They do it because they have not been able to touch
their ground of being, allowing the wisdom of nondiscrimination to
manifest, to show them the way and the truth. When you go to your true
home, when you are able to touch your true home, you see everything
includes everything else — you touch the nature of interbeing of
everything.
If you look deeply into this flower, you see a cloud, because you
know that if there is no cloud there will be no rain, and this flower
cannot manifest itself. So looking in the flower you see an element you
don’t call flower. But if you remove the cloud from the flower, the
flower cannot be there. And if you look deeply you see the sunshine.
Without the sunshine, nothing can grow. I can touch the sunshine by
touching the petal of the flower. If you remove the sunshine, the flower
will disappear.
When you look into the flower you see the earth, you see the
minerals. You cannot remove the elements of soil from the flower — it
will collapse, it will vanish. That is why you can say a flower is made
only of non-flower elements.
Cloud is a non-flower element essential to
the flower. Sunshine is a non-flower element. The soil, the compost are
non-flower elements. Without non-flower elements a flower cannot
manifest herself as a wonderful thing. A flower cannot be by herself
alone. A flower can only inter-be with the sunshine, with the cloud,
with the soil, with the farmer, and with everything. So, to be means to
inter-be.
You cannot be by yourself alone. And a flower is made
exclusively of non-flower elements. If you remove all the non-flower
elements, there is no flower to be seen and touched. So the flower has
no separate existence. You cannot imagine there is a flower without
sunshine, without cloud, without soil.
Such a thing does not exist: the Buddha called it the “self.” The
flower is full of everything in the cosmos, except one thing – the
flower does not have a separate self, a separate existence. This is the
insight of the Buddha. The flower is full of everything, but empty of a
self, of a separate existence. This is important. With meditation, with
mindfulness and concentration, you can look deeply into the flower and
discover the nature of emptiness.
Empty of what? Empty of a separate
existence. But at the same time, the flower is totally full of the
cosmos. So, the real meaning of “to be” is “to inter-be.” You cannot be
by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with everyone else, everything
else. That is the case of the flower, that is the case of the table,
that is the case of the house, the case of the river.
Suppose we speak of America as a flower. What is
America made up of? Only non-American elements. Culturally speaking,
ethnically speaking, and geographically speaking, it’s the same. America
has no self, no separate self.
And America cannot be by herself alone.
America has to inter-be with non-American elements. This is the teaching
of the Buddha, this is the insight you can touch with the practice of
looking deeply.
America is made only of non-American elements. And if you have that
wisdom, you will do everything to protect non-American elements. If you
destroy non-American elements, you destroy America, right? And, in fact,
now America is doing a lot of harm to non-American elements. America
thinks she has a self, a separate self. That is why you have to bring
the wisdom back to America, so America realizes she is made only of
non-American elements. If America is made only of non-American elements,
then the American citizen is made up of non-American elements.
There is
no such thing as an American identity. Looking deeply into an American,
you see only non-American elements. There’s no such thing called an
American self.
Scientifically speaking, the idea of self, the idea of entity, is an
illusion. If you touch the truth of non-self you are free. But if you
allow that illusion to occupy you, you will continue to suffer a lot.
You call me a Vietnamese, and you are very sure that I am Vietnamese.
You consider Vietnamese to be an identity. In my case, I don’t have a
Vietnamese passport, I don’t have an identity card. Legally speaking, I
am not a Vietnamese.
Culturally speaking, I have elements of French culture in me, of
Chinese culture in me, of Indian culture in me, even of American Indian
culture. There is no such thing as Vietnamese culture. And when you look
into my writing, my person, my Dharma talks, you can discover several
sources of cultural streams. Ethnically speaking, there is no such race
as the Vietnamese race. Looking into me you can see Melanesian elements,
Indonesian elements, Mongolian elements, Negritos elements. The
Vietnamese race is made only of non-Vietnamese elements. If you know
that, you are free.
This is an excerpt of a 2004 Dharma talk by Zen Master Thich Nhat
Hanh, who is a global spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist.
Excerpted from
The Mindfulness Bell(Summer
2018), a quarterly journal of the art of mindful living in the
tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, published by the Plum Village Community of
Engaged Buddhism, Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, CA.
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