Deer Park Dharmacast

Hello everyone Dharma teachers Thay Phap Ho and Sister Dang Nghiem offer a recitation of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing.  Thich Nhat Hanh says in this book, Interbeing , "If we practice these trainings deeply enough, we will recognize that each training contains every other training. Studying and practicing them can help us understand the true nature of interbeing-we...

Dear Young Friends On September 19, 2008, the Wake Up movement for young Buddhists and non-Buddhists for a healthy and compassionate society was announced.   Wake Up is a community of young Dharma practitioners who want to help their society which is overloaded with intolerance, discrimination, craving, anger and despair.   They practice the Five Mindfulness Trainings, ethical guidelines offered b...

Dear Friends. Today we are happy to share a new kind of offering with you.   We are initiating a series of podcasts called the “Elements of Practice”.    We are so fortunate to have our first offering in this series from Thay Phap Hai, one of our wonderful and experienced dharma teachers here at Deer Park Monastery.  In Sitting Meditation, Part 1, he shares the basics of how to sit, why we sit, an...

Greetings Friends Here is an excerpt from one of Thay’s talks focusing on some lessons for beginning practitioners.   For example, the practice of leaving behind can bring great happiness.   He also discusses skillful ways to relate to your suffering and shares that whether we suffer a little or a lot, is entirely up to us.     We hope you enjoy this wonderful talk. Please enjoy your peaceful brea...

Dear Friends This month we offer a wonderful sharing from Dharma teacher Larry Ward at the UN Vesak conference in Vietnam.   “ The question is not what may I do to be saved, but rather, what must we do to be saved.   And by ‘we’ I mean the whole planet”.   It is a wonderful talk and we hope you enjoy it.   To Larry’s many gifts already offered to the world a new one is added— Love’s Garden by Pegg...

Dear Friends The practice of Beginning Anew is the deep teaching offered by Dharma teachers Sr. Dang Nghiem and Br. Phap An.   It is a wonderful practice that can help heal relationships and improve communication and understanding—the foundations for love. This excerpt from the Stonehill College Retreat in 2007, also offers teaching on the power of our minds and how asking the simple question, "Am...

Dear Friends We hope you are enjoying the beautiful spring.   Here is Part 2 of the 2007 Question and Answer from our College Retreat at Deer Park Monastery.   Dharma teachers offer their insights on many subjects including the impacts of society on our consciousness and how to stay calm and happy.  Br. Phap Ho moderates. Our next college retreat offers students the opportunity to have a different...

Dear Friends, This month we offer the first of a two part Question and Answer session held during our most recent College Retreat.   Several monastic Dharma Teachers share their insights in response to questions from our college students.   Sr. Viet Nghiem shares why she was so happy to say goodbye to her camera. Br. Phap Luu discusses life before and after death.   Brother Phap Ho leads the quest...

Dear friends, please download and read over this sheet, which we have been distributing at many of our retreats during this past tour. It lists actions we can take in our daily lives to reduce our impact on our ecosystems and the planet. If you like, fill it out and send it back to us at Deer Park Monastery so we may collate and enter your commitment to a growing list of the commitments of practit...

This week we offer you a talk that Thay gave in Denver, Colorado on August 29th, 2007 during this summer's tour. It was entitled "Our Environment: Touching Our Gift of Life," and in it Thay looks deeply at our present situation as human beings on the planet Earth. Please consider filling out the Earth Peace Treaty Commitment Sheet, to help ourselves, our communities and our planet.

The two-and-a-half month trip to Vietnam this year has finished with success. Thay and the Sangha have continued on for ten days of retreats and days of mindfulness in Hong Kong, and we now are in Chiang Mai, Thailand for a five-day retreat. This week we offer you Thay's first talk in Hong Kong, at the University of Hong Kong on 10 May, 2007. Thay fields a number of questions from the audience, in...

This talk was offered by Thay to foreigners living in Hanoi on April 25, 2007. Included are questions and answers from the audience, and a reading of the letter that Thay offered to the people of Vietnam as part of the three reconciliation ceremonies in Ho Chi Minh City, Hue and Soc Son, north of Hanoi. The delegation traveling with Thay has just left Hanoi for 10 days of talks and a retreat in Ho...

This week we offer a talk for intellectuals and others given at the Sandy Beach Hotel in Da Nang. The quality of the recording is not great due to background noise, but it is intelligible, and the talk is worth the trouble. A number of questions are answered by Thay towards the end. The talk is translated by Sister Dang Nghiem.  

This week we offer a talk from the first day of the Three Day Reconciliation Ceremony in Hue at Dieu De Temple. The ceremony was the second one on this trip, after the one in Vinh Nghiem Temple, TP Ho Chi Minh. Loved ones of people of all nationalities remembered those who died in wars and in boats during the past century in Vietnam by writing their names on hundreds of sheets. These sheets were c...

This week Sister Dang Nghiem follows Thay on a tour of the Tu Hieu Temple, where he trained as a novice. The tour begins across the road from the temple, at the Bodhi Stupa in a pine forest, and continues down to the old showering well before heading up to the Buddha Hall. The audio has only been partially edited, so please enjoy your breathing during the walking sections. Today is the last day of...

This week we offer an interview with the Venerable Thay Duc Nghi, the founder and abbot of Prajna Temple in Bao Loc, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. Thay Duc Nghi offered Prajna Temple as a place where young monks and nuns could practice according to the Plum Village tradition during Thay's last trip to Vietnam. Now Prajna has grown to over 300 monks and nuns in residence in just two years, thanks to...

Greetings from Bat Nha (Prajna) Temple near Bao Loc in Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. Thay and the Sangha arrived here over a week ago and, after a three day trip to Da Lat where Thay lived and taught as a young Dharma Teacher, offered a retreat for lay pracitioners which is finishing today. We will now have a retreat for monastics, followed by the Precepts and Lamp Transmission Ceremonies. This talk...

Now we are two weeks into Thay's second trip back to Vietnam. The delegation has left TP Ho Chi Minh for Prajna Temple in Bao Loc, about five hours northeast of the city. After a three day visit to Da Lat we are back at Prajna for the Lay Practitioners' Retreat. This Dharma talk is Thay's second talk in TP Ho Chi Minh on Feb. 23, at Vinh Nghiem temple, to an audience of a few thousand. Included ar...

This week we offer the first of Thay's talks in this year's trip to Vietnam. This talk was given at the Phap Van Temple in TP Ho Chi Minh on Feb. 22, 2007 to an audience of lay and monastic practitioners. The translation into English was done by Sister Dang Nghiem. We will do our best to keep talks and other material from this three-month trip available, but please understand if there are lapses....

This week Thay offers a teaching on how to maintain beginner's mind even when we are years into the practice. Also, how do the precepts support our practice? On Feb 18 we plan to leave for a three month trip in Vietnam, Hong Kong and Thailand. We will do our best to maintain the podcast during this time, but there may be gaps when we do not have regular internet access. Please understand, and stay...

Welcome to this month's question and answer session on the Deer Park Dharmacast. Sister Dang Nghiem (photo) and Sister Hanh Nghiem answer questions that have been sent in over the past few weeks. How do we practice with jealousy? What distinguishes Thay's tradition from Zen and Vipassana? Brother Phap Luu hosts.

This week we invite you to listen to an evening of sharing which took place during the second night of the Order of Interbeing Retreat this past week at Deer Park Monastery. Monastics and lay friends share about the current situation of energy consumption in relation to our practice and global warming. Also included is a new chant for the Gatha for Inviting the Bell offered by Sisters Mai Nghiem a...

This week's offering is the talk given by our teacher in Plum Village on New Year's Eve. Thay encourages us to make a deep aspiration for the New Year, and to put it into practice. Please write to us and tell us your aspiration to practice here in the comments on www.dpcast.org , or at our e-mail dpcast@gmail.com . Happy New Year!

This holiday week we offer you the audio from one of the Dharma Teacher Lamp Transmissions during the recent Beauty and Well-Being Great Ordination Ceremony in Plum Village, France. Four lay dharma teachers from Italy were chosen to receive the lamp this year, including Diana Petech (right), the teacher on this week's dharmacast. Enjoy.

This week we offer a chant recorded by Sister The Nghiem of Green Mountain Dharma Center: Discourse on Love. This chant is a common one in the Pali tradition of Theravadan Buddhists. The English translation was done by our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh with the help of Plum Village monks and nuns. The text and music can be found here in PDF format. This chant and other songs by Plum Village Monks and Nu...