The Forty Tenets of Plum Village

1. Space is not an un­con­di­tioned dhar­ma. It man­ifests to­geth­er with time, mat­ter and con­sciousness.  

2. In the his­tor­i­cal di­men­sion, every dhar­ma is a condi­tioned dhar­ma. In the ul­ti­mate di­men­sion, every dhar­ma is an un­con­di­tioned dhar­ma.  

3. Nirvāṇa is the ab­sence of ig­no­rance (avidyā) and the af­flic­tions (kleśāh), but not the ab­sence of the ag­gre­gates (skand­hāh), sense spheres (āy­atanāni) and do­mains of ex­is­tence (dhā­tuh).  

4. Nir­vāṇa is nir­vāṇa. There does not need to be a nirvana with residue (sopādiśeṣa) or with­out residue (anupādiśeṣa).  

5. It is pos­si­ble to touch nirvāṇa in the present moment.  

6. Nirvāṇa is not a phe­nomenon, but the true na­ture of all phe­nom­e­na.  

7. Not born means nirvāṇa and it is awak­en­ing to the truth of the death­less, the no-com­ing and no-going, the not the same and not dif­fer­ent, the not being and not non-be­ing.  

8. The con­cen­tra­tions on em­pti­ness, sign­less­ness and aim­less­ness help us to touch Nirvāṇa and the Uncon­di­tioned.  

9. The Three Dhar­ma Seals are: im­per­ma­nence, non-self and Nirvāṇa. We can up­hold Four Dhar­ma Seals or Five Dhar­ma Seals with one con­di­tion: that they in­clude Nirvāṇa.  

10. The ba­sic con­cen­tra­tions (samād­hi) are the concen­tra­tions on im­per­ma­nence, no-self, and Nirvāṇa. 

11. Mind­ful­ness, con­cen­tra­tion and in­sight are the essen­tial prac­tices that give rise to lib­er­a­tion. 

12. Pre­cepts are mind­ful­ness. (Śīla is smṛti). Pre­cepts and mind­ful man­ners are con­crete ex­pres­sions of mind­ful­ness.  

13. Right dili­gence is mind­ful­ness train­ings (moral­i­ty, śīla) and there­fore is also mind­ful­ness.  

14. Mind­ful­ness, con­cen­tra­tion and in­sight in­clude each oth­er. All three have the ca­pac­i­ty to bring joy, hap­pi­ness and lib­er­a­tion.  

15. The aware­ness of suf­fer­ing helps us rec­og­nize the ex­ist­ing con­di­tions of hap­pi­ness and also helps pre­vent the cre­ation of wrong ac­tions and the plant­i­ng of neg­a­tive seeds that will bring about suffer­ing.  

16. The Four No­ble Truths are all con­di­tioned. The Four No­ble Truths are all un­con­di­tioned. 

17. The Third No­ble Truth can be called the truth of hap­pi­ness.  

18. Free will is pos­si­ble thanks to the Three Train­ings. 

19. You should learn to see the Sec­ond No­ble Truth as the path of the eight wrong prac­tices. The deep cause of ill-be­ing is not just de­sire.  

20. A real Ara­hat is also a Bod­hisatt­va and a real Bodhisatt­va is also an Ara­hat.  

21. As a hu­man be­ing you have the ca­pac­i­ty to be come a Bud­dha. As a Bud­dha you con­tin­ue to be a hu­man be­ing. That is why nu­mer­ous Bud­dhas are pos­si­ble.  

22. The Bud­dha has many bod­ies: the body of a liv­ing be­ing, the Dhar­ma body, the body out­side of the body, the Sang­ha body, the con­tin­u­a­tion body, the Dhar­ma-realm body, and the true na­ture of the Dhar­ma-realm body. Since hu­man be­ings can become Bud­dha they also have all these bod­ies. 

23. We can talk of a per­son as a con­tin­u­ous and ever chang­ing stream of five ag­gre­gates. This stream is al­ways flow­ing. It is in con­nec­tion with, re­ceives from and con­tributes to oth­er streams of phe­nome­na. We can­not speak of a per­son as an un­chang­ing and per­ma­nent sep­a­rate self.  

24. We can only un­der­stand the real teach­ing of rebirth (sam­sāra) in the light of im­per­ma­nence, no-self and in­ter­be­ing.  

25. Hap­pi­ness and suf­fer­ing in­ter-are. Af­flic­tion and en­light­en­ment are both of an or­gan­ic na­ture. 

26. The Sang­ha body, the Bud­dha body and the Dharma body in­ter-are. In a true Sang­ha you can find the true Bud­dha and the true Dhar­ma.  

27. Since the af­flic­tions (kleśāh) and the awak­en­ing (bod­hi) are of an or­gan­ic na­ture, the prac­tice needs to be con­stant in or­der for trans­for­ma­tion to contin­ue and for re­gres­sion not to take place. Sam­sāra is a con­tin­u­a­tion and the beau­ti­ful and whole­some things need to be con­tin­ued for as long as pos­si­ble, while the not beau­ti­ful and un­whole­some need to be trans­formed so that they do not con­tin­ue. The com­post has to be used to nour­ish the flow­ers.  

28. Lib­er­a­tion from sam­sāra does not mean putting an end to the per­son­al self (pudgala), be­cause that per­son is not a real en­ti­ty any­way, nor does it mean putting an end to the pre­cepts’ body and the spir­itu­al life. 

29. Birth and death are only man­i­fes­ta­tion or non-man­i­fes­ta­tion. Both man­i­festor and man­i­fest­ed occur at the same time, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of one thing is the non-man­i­fes­ta­tion of some­thing else.  

30. A dhar­ma is not a thing, an en­ti­ty, but a process, an event and above all an ob­ject of mind.  

31. Ret­ribution con­sists of both body-mind and en­viron­ment, and is both in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive. This land is the Saha land for liv­ing be­ings but Pure Land for Bud­dhas and Bod­hisattvas.  

32. There is no self but still there is the cy­cle of birth and death, there is in­ter-con­tin­u­a­tion and the nature of all in­ter-con­tin­u­a­tion is in­ter­be­ing.  

33. Each gen­er­a­tion of Bud­dhist prac­ti­tion­ers has to re­sist the hu­man ten­den­cy and need on the one hand to make the Bud­dha di­vine and on the oth­er hand to try to find a prin­ci­ple to take the place of a self.  

34. Store con­scious­ness has the ca­pac­i­ty of learn­ing, stor­ing, pro­tect­ing, re­spond­ing, nour­ish­ing, heal­ing and con­tin­u­ing. Its func­tion is to es­tab­lish a data base and un­con­scious habits of re­spond­ing to sit­ua­tions, which makes it pos­si­ble for a hu­man be­ing to act on ‘auto-pi­lot’.  

35. Man­as has the ten­den­cy to seek for se­cu­ri­ty and long last­ing plea­sure. It is ig­no­rant of the law of mod­er­a­tion, the dan­ger of plea­sure seek­ing and the good­ness of suf­fer­ing. It does not see the ne­ces­si­ty for in­sight into im­per­ma­nence, non-self, in­ter-being, com­pas­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.  

36. With the prac­tice of mind­ful­ness, con­cen­tra­tion and in­sight, mind con­scious­ness can learn and down­load its in­sights to Store con­scious­ness and leave Store con­scious­ness to do the work of mat­ura­tion and then man­i­fest the seeds of wis­dom that are al­ready in­nate in Store con­scious­ness. 

37. The ba­sic prac­tice of Source Bud­dhism is the Four Do­mains of Mind­ful­ness which has the func­tion to rec­og­nize and trans­form the habit en­er­gies and fully re­al­ize the Sev­en Fac­tors of En­light­en­ment and the No­ble Eight­fold Path. The Mahāyā­na prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion in­clud­ing the Zen of the pa­tri­archs needs from time to time to go back to take a bath in Source Bud­dhism in or­der not to lose the es­sential Teach­ings of Bud­dhad­har­ma.  

38. The re­al­i­ty of the Pure Land or Nirvā­na transcends both space and time. The re­al­i­ty of everything else is ex­act­ly the same.  

39. Con­di­tions, feel­ings, skand­has, āy­atanas, dhā­tus, vi­jñā­na, etc. are dif­fer­ent ways of pre­sent­ing the teach­ings. These dif­fer­ent ways of pre­sent­ing the teach­ings are not in op­po­si­tion to each oth­er.  

40. The teach­ings on im­per­ma­nence, non-self, in­ter de­pen­dence, empti­ness, sign­less­ness, aim­less­ness, mind­ful­ness, con­cen­tra­tion, in­sight, etc. con­sti­tute the heart of the Bud­dhist wis­dom. They can go togeth­er with the spir­it of sci­ence, they can be used in di­a­logue with sci­ence and of­fer sug­gestions and be a sup­port for sci­en­tif­ic re­search. Mod­ern science should try to over­come the ten­den­cy of double grasp­ing and sci­en­tists should train them­selves to de­vel­op their ca­pac­i­ty for in­tu­ition.