This is a short teaching excerpted from a full Dharma talk given by Thay in the Summer Retreat 2002, on July 26, in Upper Hamlet, Plum Village France.

🔔 Video transcript

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"There's also a [...] bad vice that's not only common among Buddhists and not only common among the Vietnamese—the Japanese also have it, the Chinese also have it, and the Koreans also have it—that is, taking women lightly.

"In other words, they go by the saying, 'Husband the king. Wife the maid,' i.e. the husband is the king, the wife is like the husband's 'minion.' Someone for the husband to order around. That's something in some conservative societies that we need to transform.[...]

"The men think, 'It's her duties. Of course, she has to do them.' They fail to see that this is a joint work.

"When a man and a woman come together to make a couple, it means they accept the other person as part of them, and themself as part of the other person. Two become one. The other person contributes their very best to the joint happiness and we ourselves also contribute our very best to the joint happiness.

"Don't think that the other person is to be at our service. Thinking or speaking like that is incorrect. We need to be able to see the deep wishes and the difficulties in the other person, and we need to find ways to help relieve them from the heavy load they're carrying, so they can have time to enjoy life.

"If all we care about is our own happiness, our own leisureliness, and meeting our own needs, it means we fail at doing what we commit to in the first place."

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✩ Full talk's original title: "Đánh Mất Con Là Mất Tất Cả | TS Thích Nhất Hạnh(26-07-2002, Xóm Thương, Làng Mai)"

✩ Full talk originally posted by Làng Mai (Plum Village's Vietnamese YouTube Channel) on Dec 23, 2023

✩ Full talk given: on July 26, 2002, Upper Hamlet, Plum Village France

✩ Excerpt's length: 16 minutes 05 seconds

✩ Video's note: "Some parts of this Dharma talk will be difficult to follow audio-wise, we hope for your kind understanding. The Plum Village Editorial Team."

✩ You can watch the full talk with English subtitles and transcript here.

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REFERENCES (Resources used to translate this Dharma talk)

Please kindly refer to the Video Transcript link for the full list.

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