This short teaching excerpt is the first 23 minutes of the Dharma talk "The Discourse on Being In Harmony with Causes and Conditions" given on December 16, 2012, as part of "The Soulmate of the Buddha" Winter Retreat 2012-2013.

Please note: this talk mentions the occurence of a school shooting.

🔔 Video transcript

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"Our society is in a state of ill-being, and each of us, to a certain extent, is also in a state of ill-being. Each of us has to know how to take care of our own healing if we want to do our share to contribute to the healing of society.

"Perhaps you’ve heard of the Newtown mass shooting happening just yesterday in the US. A 20-year-old guy, who to all appearances looked kind and gentle, went mad, and turned the gun on his mom and killed her. Then he headed out for an elementary school in Newtown, and shot and killed probably 26 people. 20 of them were young children. Very young and little.

"That’s ill-being. But it’s not the ill-being of one person, it’s the ill-being of the whole society. What can we do to heal that?"

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✩ Excerpt's original title: "Hãy trở về và chữa lành chính mình - Trích Pháp thoại Sư Ông Làng Mai 16/12/2012"

✩ Excerpt originally posted by TCT Phượng Trần on April 3, 2022. You can listen to the original full talk in audio here. (the once-valid YouTube video link is no longer valid - to be updated when new link is made available)

✩ Talk given: December 16, 2012, Upper Hamlet, Plum Village France

✩ Length: 23 minutes 12 seconds

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REFERENCES (Resources used to translate this Dharma talk)

1. Wikipedia, n.d., "Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting"

2. Wikipedia, n.d., "Thích Thanh Từ"

3. Lindsay Kyte, 2019, "The Life Of Thich Nhat Hanh," retrieved from Lion's Roar Magazine website

4. Venerable Thich Thanh Tu, 2021, "Biết Vọng Không Theo"

5. Brother Minh Hy, 2022, "Dharma Banquet," retrieved from Plum Village website

6. Jo Adetunji, 2022, "Thich Nhat Hanh, who worked for decades to teach mindfulness, approached death in that same spirit ," retrieved from The Conversation UK

7. Wikipedia, n.d., "Mass Shooting"

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Republished on the Plum Village App with kind permission of Thich Nhat Hanh's Talks channel 🙏