Today’s episode brings us into the heart and philosophy of Zen Buddhism, as practiced by the Plum Village monastic community that was founded in 1982 by the Vietnamese peace activist, monk, poet, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Today it has grown into Europe’s largest Buddhist monastery, with over 200 resident monks and nuns, and known as one of the most actively engaged Buddhist communities offering insight on the modern world, and on the climate and ecological crises. We’ve spoken on the show about fragmented consciousness, a mind that sees parts and not the whole. Meditation and other Buddhist practices are one of the core ways of how we can heal minds and views. And so we will hear from two Plum Village monks: Sister True Dedication and Brother Spirit. Before entering the monastery, Sister True Dedication studied History & Political Thought at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist for BBC News. In the early years of her monastic training, she assisted Thich Nhat Hanh in their engaged Buddhist actions for human rights, religious freedom, applied ethics, and ecology. Brother Spirit began his monastic training in Plum Village in 2008, and before ordaining he studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked professionally as a composer, and as such has since composed many of the community’s beloved chants. They both helped to found the international Wake Up Movement, a community of young meditators finding new ways to combine mindfulness and engaged Buddhism. We talk about: the fragmentation of consciousnesshow to hold the perspective of non duality and interbeing within unlikely contexts, and how doing so grants us agency and transformationdehumanization, de animation, and what Buddhism teaches about our relationship to other life and other intelligencesthe Mayahana Diamond Sutra (the world’s earliest printed text) and its invitation for us to reconsider four key notions of existancehow to find and make peace with one’s activismthe seeds of wisdom that lie dormant in 4000-year-old magnolia treeshow to hold the suffering of the world and call upon our ancestors for supportspiritual bypassing, instrumentalising, and get out of jail free cardsEpisode Website Link Show Links: Plum VillageAbout Thich Nhat HanhZen and the Art of Saving the PlanetThay's Poetry / Please Call Me by My True Names (song & poem)Lifeworlds Meditation on Food inspired by Plum VillageMahamudra: Dr Dan BrownHope in the Dark: Rebecca SolnitGlobal OptimismLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes. Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd  Photo credit: Plum Village website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.