A TANGERINE PARTY ~

The Prajñaparamita gives us solid ground for making peace with ourselves, for transcending the fear of birth and death, the duality of this and that. In the light of emptiness, everything is everything else, we inter-are, everyone is responsible for everything that happens in life. When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world. With the smile that you produce in yourself, with the conscious breathing you establish within yourself, you begin to work for peace in the world. To smile is not to smile only for yourself; the world will change because of your smile. When you practice sitting meditation, if you enjoy even one moment of your sitting, if you establish serenity and happiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. If you do not give yourself peace, how can you share it with others? If you do not begin your peace work with yourself, where will you go to begin it? To sit, to smile, to look at things and really see them, these are the basis of peace work

Sometimes at Deer Park we have a tangerine party Everyone is offered one tangerine. We put the tangerine in the palm of our hand and look at it, breathing in a way that the tangerine becomes real. Most of the time when we eat a tangerine, we do not look at it. We think about many other things. To look at a tangerine is to see the blossom forming into the fruit, to see the sunshine and the rain. The tangerine in our palm is the wonderful presence of life. We are able to really see that tangerine and smell its blossom and the warm, moist earth. As the tangerine becomes real, we become real. Life in that moment becomes real.

Mindfully, we peel our tangerine and smell its fragrance. We carefully take each section of the tangerine and put it on our tongue, and we can feel that it is a real tangerine. We eat each section of the tangerine in perfect mindfulness until we finish the entire fruit. Eating a tangerine in this way is very important, because both the tangerine and the eater of the tangerine become real. This, too, is the basic work for peace.

In Buddhist meditation we do not struggle for the kind of enlightenment that will happen five or ten years from now. We practice so that each moment of our life becomes real life. And, therefore, when we meditate, we sit just for sitting; we don’t sit for something else. If we sit for twenty minutes, these twenty minutes should bring us joy, life. If we practice walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive anywhere. We have to be alive with each step, and if we are, each step brings real life back to us.

The same kind of mindfulness can be practiced when we eat breakfast, or when we hold a child in our arms. Hugging is a Western custom, but we from the East would like to contribute the practice of conscious breathing to it. When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, breathe in and out three times and your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold. And when you look at someone, really look at them with mindfulness and practice conscious breathing.

At the beginning of each meal, I recommend that you look at your bowl and silently recite, “My bowl is empty now, but I know that it is going to be filled with delicious food in just a moment.” While waiting to be served or to serve yourself, I suggest you breathe three times and look at your bowl even more deeply, “At this very moment many, many people around the world are also holding a bowl, but their bowl is going to be empty for a long time.” Over forty thousand children die each day because of malnutrition. And that is only the children. We can be very happy to have such wonderful food, but we also suffer because we are capable of seeing. When we see in this way, it makes us sane, because the way in front of us—the way to live so that we can make peace with ourselves and with the world—is clear. When we see the good and the bad, the wondrous and the deep suffering, we have to live in a way that we can make peace between ourselves and the world. Understanding is the fruit of meditation. Understanding is the basis of everything.

Each breath we take, each step we make, each smile we realize, is a positive contribution to peace, a necessary step in the direction of peace for the world. In the light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.

Thank you for being so attentive. Thank you for listening to Avalokiteshvara. Because you are there, the Heart Sutra has become very easy.