Don’t make a front, make a circle

When you are at the front of the line, it is very easy to confront, and to think that we’re against something.

But it is actually just ourselves.

So there is no side.

We have to begin to see that it is more circular.

Usually when you are at the front of the line, there is a lot of anger, a lot of discrimination, because we see that there is the other side, the enemy. But in fact, they are also the victim of our own system that we support.

So we have to really maintain that insight, that there is no enemy. It is also us:

We’ve also been been angry, we’ve also lived and made choices in ignorance.

So with that, we produce an energy of compassion and love.

So when people who are at the front of the line, to maintain that non-discrimination, the source of compassion and love, it is very difficult. So we need to find time, if we are in places like that. And Eddie is in the place right now, it is very hot. So personal practice, you have to up it a notch. To sit more regularly, have more time to take care of yourself.

Because we are creatures of habits and we will say and do things that are destructive.

So don’t think that they are doing things that are destructive. We will do the same,

if we don’t know how to take care of ourselves.

So, nourishing that insight of wholeness. There is no black and white. Don’t make a front, make a circle. That way, there is no one to fight. It is us.

That is the insight of interbeing.b

And this is the liberating insight that Thay has used during the Vietnam War. There is no North and no South. We are all planetary earthlings, and we are suffering, because we don’t know. So we begin to see ‘we’ not as a nation, not as a group of people, but ‘we’ as Earth.

And that insight will, at least, not produce hate, and anger, etc.

When there is a strong emotion, come back, take care of it, because it is very destructive.

You cannot take away toxin with more toxin.

by Brother Phap Dung