Happiness Does Not Come From

If You Come To Plum Village In The Summertime, You See Many Lotus Flowers. Without The Mud The Lotus Flowers Cannot Grow. You Cannot Separate Lotus Flowers From The Mud. It Is The Same With Understanding And Love. These Are Two Kinds Of Flowers That Grow On The Ground Of Suffering

In Us, There Is A River Of Feelings, In Which Every Drop Of Water Is A Different Feeling, And Each Feeling Relies On All The Others For Its Existence. To Observe It, We Just Sit On The Bank Of The River And Identify Each Feeling As It Surfaces, Flows By, And Disappears.

Every Day We Touch What Is Wrong, And, As A Result, We Are Becoming Less And Less Healthy. That Is Why We Have To Learn To Practice Touching What Is Not Wrong—inside Us And Around Us. When We Get In Touch With Our Eyes, Our Heart, Our Liver, Our Breathing, And Our Non-toothache And Really Enjoy Them, We See That The Conditions For Peace And Happiness Are Already Present.

Sometimes You Have A Flash Of Insight, But It's Not Strong Enough To Survive. Therefore In The Practice Of Buddhism, Samadhi Is The Power To Maintain Insight Alive In Every Moment, So That Every Speech, Every Word, Every Act Will Bear The Nature Of That Insight. It Is A Question Of Cleaning. And You Clean Better If You Are Surrounded By Those Who Are Practicing Exactly The Same.

We Humans Think We Are Smart, But An Orchid, For Example, Knows How To Produce Noble, Symmetrical Flowers, And A Snail Knows How To Make A Beautiful, Well-proportioned Shell. Compared With Their Knowledge, Ours Is Not Worth Much At All. We Should Bow Deeply Before The Orchid And The Snail And Join Our Palms Reverently Before The Monarch Butterfly And The Magnolia Tree. The Feeling Of Respect For All Species Will Help Us Recognize The Noblest Nature In Ourselves.