This is a 21-minute excerpt from one of the Dharma talks on the "Discourse on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness" given by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh on February 12, 1998, New Hamlet, Plum Village France, during the Winter Retreat 1997-1998.

🔔 Video transcript

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"'The practitioner meditates on their very own body from the soles of the feet upwards and then from the hair on top of the head downwards, a body contained inside the skin and full of all the impurities which belong to the body.'

"In Plum Village, we usually practice this passage of this sutra when we are lying down, when we're doing deep or total relaxation. When we're doing total relaxation, we practice following our breath, paying attention to different parts of the body, and recognizing them one by one.

"Because in our daily life we've been a complete stranger to our body. We have to come back to refamiliarize with the body, embrace the body with a loving awareness, accept the body as it is, and become one with our body. This is a very important practice of making peace.

"There's one thing we need to recognize, that is the words 'full of all the impurities.' In this passage, the phrase 'full of all the impurities' is repeated twice. And I believe that these words have been added to the sutra later.

"Sometimes, we study Buddhism the way we study math. We already know that the 4 areas of mindfulness are the body, the feelings, the mind, and then the dharmas—or the objects of mind. When Thay was still a novice — a monk student, Thay was taught the Discourse on Four Establishments of Mindfulness in a very simple way. And people grafted the teachings of impermanence, non-self, and impurities onto the Discourse of the Four Establishments of Mindfulness.

"It becomes a formula. Meanwhile, mindfulness means to merely recognize something without judgments. You don't say it's this or that. You recognize it just as it is first."

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✩ Full talk's original title: "Bốn Lĩnh Vực Quán Niệm 01[CPNĐSNC 22] | TS Thích Nhất Hạnh(12-02-1998, Làng Mai)"

✩ Full talk originally posted by Làng Mai (Plum Village's Vietnamese YouTube Channel) on Jun 17, 2023

✩ Full talk given: on February 12, 1998, New Hamlet, Plum Village France, in the Winter Retreat 1997-1998

✩ Excerpt's length: 20 minutes 26 seconds

✩ Watch the full talk with English subtitles and transcript

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REFERENCES (Resources used to translate this Dharma talk): Please kindly visit the video transcript link to see the full list.

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