Back to the monastery :-)


Dear reader, if it hasn’t come through the way we write the articles in this blog, let us say it frankly now: all the monks and nuns have fallen in love with Latin America!...its lands and its peoples, animals, plants and minerals! We feel grateful for the welcome we were given everywhere, and deeply inspired by the way people who came to our events (and also the ones we randomly met in the streets and shops) received the nectar of mindfulness practice. Thanks to the mutual inspiration, our group of 3 lay angels (Wouter, Aurora, Joaquin) and 7 brothers and sisters (Brothers Phap Lieu, Phap Luu, Phap Khai, Phap The and Sisters Boi Nghiem, Hai Nghiem and Su Nghiem) grew in solidarity, brotherhood and sisterhood.

We also want to thank you, dear reader, for following us on the blog and for all the ways you supported this adventure throughout Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua and Mexico.

May you be healthy, happy and free.

Un loto para ti,
The Vivir Despiertos team

Thursday, the 30th of October to Sunday, the 2nd of November

Children playing at the retreat
This afternoon, we drive to Cuernavaca, the city of eternal spring as Mexicans rightfully call it, and settle in the Benedictine monastery of Nuestra Senora de los Angeles where the final retreat of this whole tour iss to take place. Many times and for many reasons we say that the retreat is the cherry on the cake of the trip in Latin America! To start with, the monastery is particularly beautiful with its numerous orange, lemon, avocado and loquat trees, and bright-coloured flowers, birds and butterflies everywhere. The weather is sunny, pleasantly warm the whole time and we enjoy so much walking up and down the path between the hermitage reserved for us monastics and the dining hall and meditation hall. During day time, we will hear very loud calls from cicadas and at night, the sky is lit with many stars. All these wonders of nature contribute to making the four-day retreat really special; and so does of course the presence of 150 friends from many regions of Mexico as well as from other countries. 


Dharma sharing outside

Every day we breathe in peace and pray whenever the monastery bells sound. The image of Saint Benedict and his monks is inviting us throughout the day: “Listen, my child” The children, Diego, David, Emmanuel, Rodrigo and Mariana are indeed listening, and playing soccer wholeheartedly with Brother Phap Khai and Brother Phap The. Sister Su Nghiem teaches: “Listen to the present moment; it has something to tell you. Listen to the sounds around, or to your own breath or to your sadness depression, and say ‘I see you.’ This is compassion, you are not trying to change. ‘I don’t need to be someone else. I can be myself with all my weaknesses.’ Compassion has the capacity to embrace and bring peace, even if the problem is not resolved. You can be in peace with the conflicts inside.” Brother Phap Lieu helps us to listen to our ancestors and to request their support and assistance in difficult situations. Nowadays, young people are rarely given the opportunity to connect with themselves, with their emotions, not to mention with their ancestors… that is why making an offering of incense on the family altar and following each in-breath and out-breath is a way to bind body and mind and unite past, present and future generations with love and strength.

The ancestors' altar during the Dia de los Muertos ceremony
The night of the 31st, we celebrate “Dia de los Muertos,” the reknowned Mexican festival of the Dead. On the traditional altar are standing photographs and memories of tens of relatives brought by the retreatants. We begin by a silent recollection, and then everyone follows the invocation of the blood ancestors, spiritual teachers and ancestors of the land who gave all their love and efforts so we can be healthy and happy now. We prostrate most sincerely to all these people and offer our own merits to our loved ones and also to those we consider our enemies. Later we walk in a procession with candles, chanting a song of gratitude, and we stand a long time around the sacred fire. Each person burns a piece of paper where they have written their deepest vow to transform negative habits and offer more peace for the world. This gesture is symbolic of the trust in the Sangha and the universe to help us realize our most meaningful wish. The following morning there is a joyful session of questions and answers. A young boy asks: “Who is the Buddha?” to which Brother Phap The replies: “I have two answers. The first one is that the Buddha was a prince who lived in India a long, long time ago. Even though he was very rich, he decided to become a monk in order to live a more meaningful life and practice mindfulness. Thanks to his practice, he managed to develop many beautiful qualities to a extremly high level. He had many friends and started teaching them about his practice so that, they too, could benefit. The second answer is: The Buddha is you! Because you too have many beautiful seeds. But it might be that for now you are still a little Buddha. We are all little Buddhas, but with our practice we can slowly grow into bigger Buddhas.

Then a man who is an architect asks: “How to find our purpose and direction in life?” Brother Phap Khai says, “The purpose of life can pop up in any moment. When I was young my purpose was very different from now. After some years I saw how people were managing their life and didn’t actually have time to live! We work, earn money and look for entertainment in our free time, then we ask: Is that all for my life? So now when I wake up in the morning I want to live meaningfully and not feel bored, I don’t want to continue with the habits of material comforts or relational comforts. Fame, wealth, power aren’t meaningful. Once you’ve found a meaningful purpose you want to share with others…Touching happiness in the present moment, living deeply will make it possible for the purpose of your life to appear clearly; moreover you’ll find that happiness and healing can come through simplicity.”


And so during walking meditation, singing meditation and sharing in families, we listen deeper and deeper and feel more and more alive and connected with each other. There are moments of bursting into laughter as we drop the veils which make life too complicated, and warm, relieving tears every time someone allows an old block of pain to be held by the friends’ energy of compassion. Saturday evening Sister Boi Nghiem introduces the practice of Beginning Anew and reconciliation; then she invites the young children and their parents to come together and water flowers for each other, as well as express possible regrets. This circle of families is very precious. Meanwhile our two adorable Aurora’s, the daughter and mother, accept to perform ‘Dharma drama’ for the adults. The audience is unanimously moved and inspired by the truth and the healing love that is manifested between the 2 practitioners. There is no doubt that this kind of reality show is now helping many family members, friends and colleagues to relieve the pain caused by misunderstandings, absence of communication and separation.



Sunday is a great day. We begin all together with the transmission of the Five Mindfulness Tranings for about 40 friends. We can clearly touch their sincere determination to bring the ethic dimension of mindfulness into their lives, so as to generate peace and joy for themselves and their country. 

The 5 Mindfulness Trainings transmission ceremony
Rodrigo, Emmanuel and Miguel also make the formal promise to develop their understanding and love, as real children of the Buddha and of Jesus… Brother Phap Luu gives the final teaching with all his being, not just with words! He makes us really look at the nature of no-birth and no-death of the candle’s flame, of the cloud, of our loved one. He involves each person into a collective awakening, to stop being deceived by the appearances. He also offers a tool to transform the energy of anger by telling a personal anecdote: one day as he was traveling with an elder monk and this Brother had spoken harshly to him, he went to practice walking meditation to try and calm his irritation. He saw how the thoughts saying ‘I am right!’ were coming up and feeding the anger, however he maintained his presence during the whole experience and little by little he created more space and more calm. He let the Buddha come in to recognize the spaces of concentration and peace which were possible in the midst of the anger, and that gave him the confidence that he no longer had to fear his emotions and be overwhelmed by them.

Norma shares about the existing groups of friends practicing in the tradition of Plum Village in different places in Mexico, and representatives of at least 3 more cities (among them Puebla and Vera Cruz) announce their wish to found a local Sangha. On this joyful note we go to walk in peace together for the last time, and close the retreat with very warm testimonies from Maria, Patricia, Rolando and Ximena, Manuel… to summarize: Wow, wow, WOW! …Of course we sang some more and took many, many pictures.  





Tuesday, the 28th of October


Today is our last event in the capital: two hours of sharing mindfulness practices followed by a flashmob sitting meditation, that takes place at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Santa Fe, a very recently built, wealthy district. There are about 200 participants: professors, students etc. Our 14 friends from different ethnic groups in Chiapas also join. Some of the important themes we contemplate that morning are: recognizing the presence of many generations of ancestors in us, finding out which deep aspirations and intentions motivate our lives, and choosing to live and/or practice as a community of mindfulness. Our community or Sangha is a marvelous gift of wisdom, joy and sharing and also a place of refuge for so many people who are searching a meaningful path for themselves and for society.


During the thirty-minute long silent sitting, it is so nourishing to be able to experience directly this gift of breathing as a community. We see how our stopping together, in the midst of busy and even stressful pace, strikes the attention of many students around; and some take a moment to sit calmly near us.

Sunday, the 26th of October


Public Talk in Mexico City
This morning, we go to the Explanada de la Plaza Jardin Hidalgo for a public event in the open air. About 400 people have come. During the 30mn silent sitting meditation, we co-create an island of peace and mindfulness in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Mexico City. Intrigued passersby stop to look. Some take pictures. Brother Phap Lieu then offers a 1-hour Dharma talk, beginning by reminding us of the traditional Christian custom of stopping when listening to the bell to offer a prayer of adoration to God. ‘We have to rediscover this ancient practice of stopping and come back to what is most essential. In our tradition, we use our mindful breathing to go back to ourselves, to touch the peace and happiness, which is God inside of us. In our modern world, we have created many types of connection: 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi…but we have forgotten the most important one, which is connection to oneself and to life.” After sharing more about mindful breathing and living in the present, Brother Phap Lieu presents the 4 Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path as the foundation of Buddhist practice and tells us about how to use mindfulness and the wisdom of non-discrimination to deal with social situations in a non-violent and peaceful way. Throughout the talk, many curious passersby stop to listen so that at the end, we count almost 700 people listening! Brother Joaquin then reads the 1st mindfulness training, shares about his own practice and about the importance of a Sangha as an indispensable presence on our path. We conclude by singing Alone again (‘man is not our enemy’) and other songs, including the typical Mexican ‘canta y no llores’ and announcing about the already existing lay Sanghas in Mexico D.F.

Saturday, the 25th of October

Today, we are having a whole day of mindfulness for about 330 people involved in the field of education at the Preparatoria Ocho, in Mexico City. People have come from the university itself as well as people from other schools and places around Mexico. Brother Phap Luu reminds us that the pratice is a miracle : actually, being here together today we are not losing our time, because not only we are learning about the practice, and we are learning to transmit it to the young generations, but we are also here to practice for ourself and to enjoy doing so! Our Brother continues his sharing by giving keys on the important topic of how to deal with strong emotions, and doing so he invites the whole audience to stand up and each one of us to become a tree, first of all in the wind, then in the storm, and finally facing the sun, in order to experiment our feeling of stability and flexibility in any state of our mind. After that, Sister Bôi Nghiêm explains the principles of walking meditation and shows us how to walk as people who are truly alive, with lightness and creativity. In that way, she leads us to a football field to benefit peacefully from the warm sun that is offered to us today.

Once again we are very grateful to meet such a group of educators who are thirsty of learning about the pratice of mindfulness and so enthousiastic to continue it by joining a Sangha or applying it in their classrooms after one day only of introduction and workshops like this.

Friday, the 24th of October

An amazingly crowded event! Unitec is a more popular university, with students coming from the middle to lower class. It's a pity we don't have a very long time with these 500 young people, only an hour and a half... but we are able to make the best of it: we see their faces, their eyes intently focused. Meditation and mindfulness may be exercises completely new to some of them, never mind, it's easy, Brother Phap Lieu proves very quickly that they know how to follow their breathing! And Sister Su Nghiem brings them in touch with the great freedom of finding a window with blue sky in the corner of their mind whenever they want it.

Thursday, the 23rd of October

Norma, Carlos and Laura are all members of the Order of Interbeing which means they have been practicing in the tradition of Plum Village for many years already. They sit with us to explain the context in which we have landed in Mexico: the whole country is touched by a rather strong emotion after 43 young people disappeared. It is like the last drop of water making the cup overflow because tens of thousands of people have disappeared and been killed in the past years, presumably they were taken by the drug traffickers. Because of this current situation, we introduce to the journalists the methods used to take care of strong emotions like anger, fear, despair, thanks to mindful breathing and compassionate listening. Brother Phap Luu emphasizes the importance of building loving communities to prevent and stop the spread of violence, and he takes the very inspiring example of Maria Gamboa's film ''Mateo'' which came out in Colombia this year and is nominated for the Oscars. In the second part of the press conference, the journalists asked questions concerning the content of our events in the four countries visited before. They also want to know how to maintain awareness of the breathing in each moment of the day; so we invite them to use the ringing of the cell phone as a reminder. Another important question is that of justice in the perspective of our Plum Village tradition. Our answer is to encourage people to stop, to calm the mind in order to listen to the suffering of the victims' families and bring about compassion. This compassion is the basis for true justice, as are the actions taken to protect the young people and to prevent violence, making sure that things like that don't happen again.

For lunch, we have the happy oppportunity to meet Buddhist friends of different traditions practicing here in Mexico City. It is a chance to feel at home and express gratitude to our original teacher, Shakyamuni Buddha. The Sangha of our tradition has prepared a beautiful gift for each person, namely a simple yet artistic pamphlet containing the newest translation of the Heart Sutra by our beloved master Thich Nhat Hanh, and a commentary on why he offered this new version.