Sr Hoi Nghiem talks about going home to take care of ourselves. When the Vietnamese people prepare for the Lunar New Year, they clean up their home to make it spacious and beautify it by planting flowers in the garden. The same is true for our inner home – what kind of mind prevents us from being free? We need courage to ‘throw’ these things away.
Sr Hoi Nghiem talks about the Three Powers which are compassion, wisdom and courage.
Compassion first starts with oneself. We learn to accept ourselves. Then we also develop the capacity to free ourselves by forgiving others. She asks, “Are we caught in our unhappiness because we are waiting for someone to say sorry?” We should not wait for others to change before we free ourselves.
Wisdom or insight is born from experience and comes from being able to see clearly. After we learn how to practice, we have to apply it to be able to have insight. Insight also gives rise to understanding which allows us to really love another.
Courage is the courage to cut through afflictions and to let go of our craving and anger and cut through our ignorance. What kind of desires do we have the create more suffering for us? Sr Hoi Nghiem also talks about her sitting meditation practice with anger and the happiness of knowing the mind of non-anger.
Finally she talks about letting go of the ‘small things’ in daily life, which we often get caught in and lose our freedom.
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