Go as a River, Not a Drop of Water

Taking refuge in sangha is a very deep practice. You trust the sangha. You become the
sangha. If you are a drop of water, you might
wonder whether you have the capacity to go
to the ocean. But when you become a river,
you are sure you don’t have to worry. You
will certainly come to the ocean. In Plum
Village, we try to practice like that. We don’t
want to be a drop of water. We want to be a
river. And by practicing becoming a river, we
suffer much less. Individual suffering can be
transformed very easily when we share the
concern of the sangha, the happiness of the
sangha, the dedication of the sangha.
And that is why when we come and sit
together, when we come and walk together,
when we come and eat together, and work
together, there’s a powerful energy in us. That
energy is the energy of mindfulness. That
energy is embracing the pain, looking deeply
into the pain in order for us to understand
the pain and to have the kind of insight that
will lead to the transformation of the pain. On
the individual level, your deepest concern
becomes the object of your practice, of your
mindfulness. In the Zen circle, there is a practice of kung-an 公案 [Chinese], in Japanese,
kōan.
This is the deepest concern.
The kōan should be something that
you are deeply interested in, your deepest
concern.
THE PRACTICE OF KUNG-AN
You want to understand. You want to transform. It is like when you are struck by an
arrow, and you carry with you the arrow in
your flesh. Standing or sitting, being awake or
sleeping, you still carry the arrow. The kōan,
the kung-an, should be something like that.
Your daily life is fully focused on that. And if
you are, the kung-an should be something
that can draw all your energy, your interest,
your mindfulness, your concentration on it.
And you are holding it day and night, embracing it, looking deeply into it. And one day,
insight will come. You understand, and you
will be liberated. So kung-an is something
that should have the capacity of bringing
all your concentration, all your energy into
it. Because without that, there cannot be a
breakthrough. The suffering in the Middle
East, for instance, is a kung-an for the whole
of humankind. Not only for the Israelis or the
Palestinians. But as a human family, we are
so busy. We are not a sangha. We don’t have
enough mindfulness, concentration. We cannot make it into a kung-an.
We pay some attention, and then we
remove attention. We focus our attention
on other matters. And that is why it is not a
kung-an for the human family yet. When the
teacher understands the difficulties and the
suffering of the disciple, he or she will offer a
kung-an. Like, “Tell me, dear one, what is the
It is by being there, producing the energy of
mindfulness, concentration, and insight that
we realize, we invent, we create the energy of
harmony, of togetherness.

sound made by just one hand?” Usually we
need two hands in order to make a sound.
“Tell me. How can you produce sound with
one hand?” So that is a kind of skillful device
in order to help the disciple to find out, to
understand his or her situation. And the disciple cannot just use his or her intellect in order
to work on the kung-an, because the intellect
is only part of us; underneath there is the
whole subconsciousness, unconsciousness.
Underneath there is your body, all the mental
formations, your store consciousness. That is
why the kung-an that has been offered by the
teacher should not be entertained only by the
intellect. It should be buried deeply in the soil,
in the flesh of your being. And during your
daily life, you have to carry the kung-an with
you day and night. Eating, sleeping, doing
things, you are embracing it. That is the fulltime embrace.
THE SANGHA’S ROLE IN
TRANSFORMATION
Whether your suffering or your situation is
at an impasse, you are stuck, that is your
kung-an. You should be able to mobilize
all your strength, all your energy, all your
mindfulness and concentration in order to
embrace deeply that difficulty, that situation,
that deep suffering. And day and night, at
every moment, you only do that. Embracing
deeply, tenderly. And with the support of
the sangha, one day you will have a breakthrough. The insight can come from you.
The insight can come from the sangha, your
insight has been supported by the sangha,
your insight may be an expression of the
collective insight of the sangha, because you
are practically living in the sangha and the
sangha is practically working with you and
supporting you in that attempt to understand
your situation. And when the practice comes
to the sangha level, it’s very powerful. If the
whole sangha embraces your pain, day and
night, and looks deeply into your pain with
the energy of mindfulness and concentration, then there will be quick relief. And there
will be insight that can help you overcome
that suffering, can help you see the path, and
can help you get the liberation, the transformation. That is the way it works with you and
with your sangha.
I would like to offer an example. There is
a community called Order of Interbeing,
composed of many members. The Order of
Interbeing was founded in Vietnam during the
war around 1966. It’s composed of monastics
and laypeople. It’s composed of two kinds of
communities: those who have formally received The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings
are called the core community; and there are
those who have not formally received The
Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, but who
participate in every activity of the sangha,
who we call the extended community. And
as a community, we need some kind of organization. We should organize. But we have
learned that if you are too well organized, it’s
not too good. We have seen the difference
between an organization and an organism.
Being an organism that functions well,
naturally there is some organization in that,
but it’s not intended. If there is harmony, if
there is understanding, then you don’t need
to organize, and yet it is very well organized.
When you look at the community of bees,
you don’t see a leader giving orders: you
do this, you do that, coordinating things,
because the beehive is an organism. And the
element of togetherness is there. The raison
d’être of the community is to be together,
to be wonderfully together. And when you
come together as an organism, suddenly
the insight comes and everyone knows what
to do. And it becomes very well organized
without your attempt to organize. Many of
us are sangha builders. We have to focus our
attention on this.

Sometimes the more we organize, the more
trouble the organization will become. It is
our way of being that can bring about the
well-being of the community. It is our practice of mindfulness, concentration, insight,
loving-kindness that is doing the work of
organizing. The Buddha, before his passing
away, was asked whether he would like to
appoint someone to continue to lead the
sangha. He said, “No, we don’t need a leader.”
And he was very aware that the sangha is an
organism. If the sangha practices well, everything will be fine. We don’t need a leader at
all. The Buddha did not consider himself a
leader. He did not consider himself a director. He did not consider himself the boss. He
was very pleased to be a monk. He [held] his
bowl, and he went begging for food like any
other monk. He [sat] at the foot of a tree like
any other monk.
But he is a great inspiration for the whole
sangha. And that’s what we should do. We
should be an inspiration for the sangha by
our way of acting in harmony, in compassion. When the sangha comes together as
an organism, the sangha will know how to
do it. Because the ground of to do is to be. If
you know how to be, then naturally, you don’t
have to worry about to do. To be is the foundation of to do. So many of us have thought
that we need to organize somehow because
that is an order, the Order of Interbeing.
THE SANGHA’S NATURAL HARMONY
The Vatican is very well organized as a
religion, but we don’t want the Order of
Interbeing to become something like that.
We want the Order of Interbeing to be a living organism. We don’t want any leader, any
boss, any director; that is what we want, and
some of us will say, “How can we survive
without some organizing?” In the beginning,
someone may have thought like that, but by
this time she has awakened to the fact that
we need only to be, and that will take care of
everything. When the sangha is together in
harmony, that is all. You don’t need to do anything more. You behave like the birds flying in
formation. They don’t fly as individuals. You
know very well that they fly as a formation.
It’s very beautiful, very powerful. The sangha
is like that. And the question is, how can we
allow the Order of Interbeing to be an inspiration for society, to become a kung-an?
And that cannot be solved by the intellect alone. When you discuss organizing,
you are using your intellect. But when you
come together and practice sitting and
breathing in and out, and become together,
you become an organism. And the question,
“How can the Order of Interbeing become
an inspiration and a refuge for the world?”
becomes the kung-an. You need only to be
there as an organism and hold very tenderly
that question, that kung-an in your mind, and
then the insight will come. It’s not by doing
a lot of thinking, it’s not by doing a lot of
organizing that we can answer the question.
It is by being there, producing the energy of
mindfulness, concentration, and insight that
we realize, we invent, we create the energy
of harmony, of togetherness. And from that
foundation will come the insight into how to
be the inspiration as an organism. It’s clear?
This way of being, this way of operating,
is quite different. The sangha way. It is the
energy of mindfulness and togetherness, and
not some five-year plan, that will realize everything. The question is whether the sangha
can come together and be together as an
organism. The whole question is that—how
to arrange so that the sangha can be together—a lot, a lot, a lot. That is the only concern,
because the coming together of a sangha
can bring a lot of happiness, can bring a lot
of relief, a lot of transformation, a lot of confidence. Because the sangha always generates
the energy of mindfulness and concentration
and insight. And the sangha becomes holy
because of its practice of mindfulness. It’s

very beautiful to see a sangha silent, moving
silently and in harmony. They organize, but
they don’t look as if they are organizing. They
are moving very, very softly, very silently, like
the bees. No one is giving orders to anyone.
We look at each other, we are aware of each
other, we are aware of the situation, and naturally the situation becomes as we wish.
Do we have lessons to be given to the bees, to
the termites, to the birds, to the fish? It seems
that we can learn something from them. The
scientists of our time begin to speak of animal culture. They do have their culture. They
do have their wisdom, their way of life. And
much of it we can learn from, because there
is a lot of suffering in our human community.
We suffer more than these societies of animals. Individualism prevails. We are deeply
divided. We hate each other. We are afraid of
each other. And that is not the case for the
bees. That is not the case for the fish. That
is not the case for the birds. So we can learn
many things from them. And this is in the line
of sangha building, of becoming a river.
This is an excerpt from a Dharma talk given by
Thích Nhất Hạnh during the 21 Day Retreat on
June 8, 2002 in the Loving Kindness Temple, New
Hamlet, Plum Village, France. It has been lightly
edited for clarity.
meditation in Plum Village, France, 2014, courtesy
of PVCEB
Calligraphy by Thích Nhất Hạnh
Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh is one of the most
revered and influential teachers in the world
today. Born in Vietnam in 1926, he became a Zen
Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen. Over seven
decades of teaching, he published more than
one hundred titles on meditation, mindfulness,
and Engaged Buddhism, as well as poems,
children’s stories, and commentaries on ancient
Buddhist texts. After his exile from Vietnam in
1966, he became a pioneer in bringing Buddhism
to the West. He founded the Plum Village
tradition of meditation practice, which today has
ten monasteries and dozens of practice centers
in the United States, Asia, Australia, and Europe,
as well as more than 1,500 local mindfulness
practice communities. He built a thriving
community of over seven hundred monks and
nuns worldwide who, together with his tens of
thousands of lay students, apply his teachings
on mindfulness, peacemaking, and communitybuilding
in
schools,
workplaces,
prisons,
politics, and businesses throughout the world.
Our beloved teacher passed away peacefully
on January 22, 2022, at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế,
Vietnam, at the age of ninety-five.

Just Love
A conversation with Anh Hương, the first member
of the Order of Interbeing in the West