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[Last updated: 5 October 1993]
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                           "Beginning Anew".

This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious 
issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful 
way.

All copyrights to this document belong to Sister Annabel Laity, Plum 
Village, Meyrac, Loubes-Bernac, France.
Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young 
St., Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993
----------------------------------------------------------------------

                             BEGINNING ANEW
                          SISTER ANNABEL LAITY

In our tradition we say that the sound of the bell is the voice of the 
buddha. The buddha just doesn't mean anything particularly historical - 
it doesn't mean Shakyamuni Buddha.  The buddha just means "the awakened 
one". Shakyamuni Buddha told us that there had been many buddhas before 
and there would be many buddhas after him and there were also buddhas in 
the present moment with him.  So please don't think you have to be a 
Buddhist to talk about buddha.  It just means "awakened mind".  Everyone 
has that aspect of mind which is capable of waking up and we say that 
the sound of the bell, is that aspect of the awakened mind which can 
wake up.  So for that reason we call it a Php Kh, which is the 
Vietnamese pronunciation of the Chinese.  Kh means tool and Php means 
dharma. It is a dharma tool - one of those things you take with you when 
you go on a retreat in order to make the retreat possible.

In Vietnamese history there are all sorts of miraculous stories about 
bells, about people diving into rivers and finding bells in the bottom 
of the river, or people digging foundations to make a monastery and 
finding bells.  And people dreaming about finding a bell in a certain 
place and then going there and finding a bell.  So the bell is very  
significant for the Vietnamese people. Every temple has its own very big 
bell, hanging up.  And when the bell rings out you can hear it for a 
long way round the whole village and it used to be the tradition that 
everybody would stop when they heard the bell and they would say 
something like "Namo Amitabhaya Buddha". In our tradition when we hear 
the bell, we stop.   We use the bell to help us clear our minds.  We 
stop talking and we just enjoy our breathing.  It's a wonderful way to 
renew yourself. We say that when we hear the bell, a new dawn arrives so 
it's like waking up from a good sleep.  You feel refreshed and you feel 
renewed when you hear the bell.  And when you stop, you have the 
opportunity of allowing the feeling of compassion to arise in you, 
because the feeling of compassion can be blocked by too much thinking.  
So if we stop our thinking, it's easier for compassion to arise.

Everybody has compassion.  We shouldn't say to anybody, "You don't have 
any compassion."  We should never say about anybody, "She doesn't have 
any compassion." It isn't true.   Everybody has a big store of 
compassion.   The problem is they don't know how express it; they don't 
know how to bring it out. Everybody has plenty of blood but you have to 
cut yourself for the blood to come out. Compassion is the same.

If we can stop thinking we can look with compassion on all that lives.  
We only have to look on the things near us.  If I look with compassion 
on the rose, the rose contains the whole universe.  The rose contains 
the little insect that pollinates the flower, the sunshine, the rain.  
So we only have to look with compassion on the rose and we're already in 
touch with many things.  And I only have to look with compassion on my 
friends in the practice centre when I hear the bell to appreciate their 
preciousness.  How precious it is to have friends in the practice and to 
keep them close to us.  Obviously if they really don't want to stay we 
don't force them to stay but we do our best.

     There was a monk in the Buddha's sangha who was not keeping the 
precepts.  Another monk said, "Lord Buddha, you should call him to you 
and instruct him that he should keep the precepts. You should correct 
his behaviour."

     The Buddha said, "If you have a child who has lost one eye and only 
has one eye left, wouldn't you do everything to look after that one 
eye?"

     And the disciples of the Buddha said, "Yes, Lord, we would."

     He said, "It's the same with this disciple who breaks the precepts.  
He has very little self-confidence; he has very little faith; he has 
very little capacity to keep the precepts.  But if I call him to me and 
tell him off, he will lose what he has.  I want to protect him, so that 
is why I'm not saying anything at the moment."  So it's not the 
intention of the Buddha that we have to keep the precepts to stay in the 
sangha.

     The Buddha also said, "The Dharma is like the ocean, and the ocean 
never receives a dead body.  It always washes the dead body up onto the 
shore.  It's the same.  Somebody who really doesn't get on with the 
practice will quite naturally be washed up on the shore.  They won't be 
able to stay in the ocean of the practice.  You monks don't have to do 
anything about it.  It happens quite naturally."


So we do our best to keep our sangha intact.  Everybody has something 
valuable to add to the sangha.  Sometimes people are going through a 
very hard time. Sometimes people have suffered so much in their life and 
they've been very busy and so their busy-ness has meant that their 
suffering is repressed.  They don't realise it's there because they keep 
their conscious mind so occupied all the time.  And then they begin to 
meditate and the conscious mind no longer has so many things to occupy 
it and so all the suffering from the past begins to manifest.  They 
begin to touch it.  And when they touch it they not only feel suffering 
within themselves but they feel suffering all around them too.  So they 
can be rather difficult to live with.  So we need to be able to help 
them be in touch with their suffering.  We need above all to be able to 
listen to them.

This is something we say every morning in our sangha.  It's an  
invocation of the name of the Bodhisattva, Avalokitesvara because 
Avalokitesvara is not only one who looks but one who listens.  The 
Chinese word is Kwan Am, I think.  "Kwan" means to look; "Am" means the 
sound.  So it means to look at the sounds, to be aware of the sounds of 
the world, the sounds of pain.

We invoke your name, Avalokitesvara. We aspire to learn your practice of 
listening In order to help relieve the suffering in the world. We shall 
sit and listen without judging and reacting. We shall sit and listen 
with all our sincerity and open-heartedness. We shall sit and listen so 
deeply That we can hear what the other person is saying And also what 
has been left unsaid. We know that just by listening deeply We already 
relieve a great deal of the suffering of the other person.

So the practice of listening is a very deep one and it is very useful 
when you are building a sangha.  To build a sangha means to make a 
community of practitioners and to build a sangha really is building 
work.  If you want to make a house you have to do it properly.  But you 
don't have to get caught in the idea of "This is my house.  I want it 
this way."  Quite simply, I'm doing the work of building a house so that 
other people can come and practise in that house.  Because when we have 
a beautiful sangha that's living in harmony, it's a wonderful place for 
people who are overstressed, or overworked or over-anxious to be able to 
come and feel refreshed.  It's like a beautiful house they can come to.  
So that is really why we build our sangha.

The most helpful way to build a practice community is the work of 
listening and knowing how to express yourself.  To know how to listen, 
we have to know how to stop thinking.  The best way for me is to follow 
my breath, not to make my breathing unnatural, not to force my breathing 
but just to be aware of how it naturally comes and goes, like a circle - 
breathing in turns into breathing out - I feel the breath in my body and 
in that way I find that my thinking is stopped. 

So when I listen to somebody talk, I meditate while they're talking.  I 
follow my breath.  I really enjoy the feeling of my body but I'm 
listening with all my attention at the same time.  Because when I enjoy 
the feeling of my body, I'm really there.  I'm in the present moment 
because my body is really here in the here and now.  And the other 
person talks.

The wonderful thing about a session of Beginning Anew is that you never 
reply. It helps us not to think, because if you think, "Oh, dear, I have 
to reply to that person in a minute," you may be thinking, "What am I 
going to say?"  But when you know you don't have to reply, you don't 
have to think about what you are going to say.  Even if the other person 
is saying, "Oh you're a liar, you're this, you're that," you don't have 
to think, "Well, I have to tell this person I'm not a liar."  It's OK.  
You just listen to them.

We need an atmosphere of lightness and calm.  We shouldn't allow the 
atmosphere to get heavy, if we can help it.  For the Beginning Anew you 
have a special chairperson who invites the bell. This should be arranged 
maybe by consensus - somebody you feel is really stable and light, that 
is, not a very heavy person - because that person will influence the 
whole community.  And they have the bell and the way that they invite 
the bell, the way in which they sit there and follow their breath, is 
quite important.  And you can have a different chairperson every time. 

And so if somebody asks you, "Will you please be our chairperson at 
today's Beginning Anew session?" and you feel agitated, or you have a 
toothache, or something like that, say, "Sorry, I don't feel very well 
today.  I don't think I can do it."  Be very honest, because you know 
that your own agitation, your own lack of good health will influence the 
rest of the community.  So just say that and they can find somebody else 
to do it.

In our community we try to come together once a week.  We make a set 
time.  If you live in a family it's good to do that as well, otherwise 
the time flies; it passes and you can't find it again.  So it's 
important to make a time.  Once a week we recite the precepts and the 
day before we recite the precepts we do Beginning Anew.  Usually we come 
together in the evening after supper. Somebody has chosen a flower and 
they put it in the centre of the circle and we sit around the flower, 
and one person sits with the bell.  Now that person doesn't have to say 
anything really if they don't want to.  The way they are is what's 
important, not what they say.  It may be just by sitting there, just by 
their deep listening, they already do a lot to help.  So the person who 
invites the bell shouldn't feel, "Oh I have to direct everybody, make 
everybody go in a particular direction."  You shouldn't feel you have to 
do anything like that. And they take the bell, if they want in their 
hand, and they invite it three times.  And the sound is an invitation.  
There's a space for people to breathe at least three times.

After the bell, it's open for the community to speak.  The person who 
wishes to speak joins their palms and waits to be acknowledged by the 
rest of the community who will join their palms in return.  Then that 
person will stand up and bring the flower before them.  It's like 
saying, "I want to be as fresh as a flower when I talk because if I talk 
in the wrong way it will cause somebody to suffer in my community."

Sometimes you can't help but cause somebody to suffer.  You shouldn't 
think always "I have to speak in a way that won't, because when you say, 
"You made me very angry, when you did something or you said something," 
maybe you will suffer but I have to accept it because if I cannot 
express my anger and I keep it inside me, it will bring ill health.  
Every time I see you, I will have the feeling that you are going to make 
me angry again and so I get a wrong perception about you.  So I need to 
clear it up with you.  So I have to say sometimes, "On Thursday, when 
you told me that the floor wasn't properly swept, I felt very angry 
because I spent over three hours sweeping the floor."  I need to say 
that to you.  Then you will think a little bit about that, "Oh my 
goodness, it wasn't very mindful of me to say that."  So you will be 
more careful in the future. "It's beneficial for us both and the person 
who hears it will get more benefit than the person who says it, very 
often.

When we started having Beginning Anew in Plum Village about three years 
ago, we had some problems.  The first session of Beginning Anew started 
about half past seven and went on until midnight.  And how many people 
talked?  Two people! Problems had been building up over a long time.  
And they made some mistakes. We knew they were suffering; we knew they 
were unhappy and that one of them at least was seriously considering 
leaving the community.  So we wanted to give them a chance to express 
their suffering, why they were suffering, what had made them unhappy.  
But they didn't do it very skilfully.

And we learnt lessons from that which I would like to pass on to you.  
People would say something like, "What I dislike about this community is 
that people always talk about the Dharma but underneath they don't 
really practise at all." They talked in generalisations like "people do 
this; people do that".  And everybody listening was thinking, "Oh, I 
must be the person they're talking about."  And when they talked they 
were quite angry so a lot of us had a feeling, "This person's very 
angry."  But in fact, they never said outright, "Oh, when Sister Annabel 
does this it makes me very unhappy,"  because if they'd said that, it 
would be much easier.  I would know that when I did that, I make them 
unhappy.  So I would think about it and try and do something about it.  
But if I have a vague sort of statement about "people doing this", I 
only suspect it might be me and I don't have enough motivation to want 
to do something about it.

So I suggest you never make general statements about people because 
you're too afraid to mention somebody's name, when you practice 
Beginning Anew.  Don't think, "If I mention that person's name they'll 
get mad at me so I'd rather just make it general."    But about six or 
seven people in the community will think you're talking about them and 
they will get a bad feeling about you from that. And if you do talk to 
somebody you shouldn't say something like, "Your pride, your attitude, 
your general attitude towards life makes me very upset." When somebody 
hears something like that they don't know where to begin.  How can I 
possibly change my attitude towards life?  It's too difficult, it's too 
much. The person's simply left feeling hopeless.  We need to help people 
correct what they're doing by being absolutely specific.  We have to 
say, "On Thursday morning, when you did, or when you said such and such 
a thing, I was very upset."  And then you can go on explaining a bit, 
"Maybe because I hadn't slept the night before.  Maybe because I've seen 
you do something like that to me once before"  You can go on explaining 
after that.  But take the general out of it and make it specific.

For instance, one time in Beginning Anew, somebody said to me, "On 
Sunday in tea meditation when you passed me the biscuits you didn't even 
look at me."  I was just sitting there following my breath and I 
suddenly had a very clear image of exactly what I looked like from the 
outside - very serious, rather superior, passing the biscuits like that.  
And I saw myself exactly as that other person saw me and I understood, 
because she had given that specific occasion so it was very helpful to 
me.  Of course I didn't feel I was hurting her at the time at all; I 
didn't have any intention at all to hurt her, but I did.  So I knew in 
the future how not to hurt her.  And after that our relationship 
changed.  Just by mentioning a little thing like that, somehow some 
energy between us began to flow again and our relationship became much 
better.

When we speak we try to do so with a very even voice.  If we feel our 
voice getting agitated or high or louder, that is a sign that we feel 
agitated about what we're talking about and we should maybe stop and 
come back to our breathing.  If we start to cry, we should stop.  
There's nothing wrong with crying but we need to come back to our breath 
and calm down before we go on. The sound of our own voice is a very good 
sign to us of how we are when we're speaking and we should listen to our 
own voice.

Before I take the flower and speak, I have to do it at the right time 
because if I speak at the wrong time, it will have the wrong effect.  
It's very subtle. The right time and the right place is very subtle.  
It's not my conscious mind that tells me when the right time is; it's 
something that comes up from my unconscious mind.  And so I sit there.

Last night we had Beginning Anew with the Vietnamese people and I knew 
there was something I had to say.  And I thought, "Oh maybe when we 
start to talk, I will."  But somehow, it wasn't the right time.  I just 
knew it wasn't the right time.  So I just sat there and followed my 
breath and I didn't have any plans for the future at all.  And then 
there was a big space of silence and somehow some sort of emptiness - 
you feel some sort of emptiness - it's not particularly you who's taking 
the flower - and at that time you just get up and you take the flower.  
And you talk.  And you talk to help everybody - to help you, but to help 
everybody else too.  And maybe you fail.  Well, it isn't so awful.  We 
all fail from time to time so it doesn't matter.  And next time you can 
be better. It's not the end of the world.

The main thing is after Beginning Anew you feel lighter, you feel you've 
learnt something.  You feel maybe a little bit hurt, but it isn't so 
serious.  To feel a little bit hurt is better than somebody having to 
repress some bad feelings about you for many years .  Because when you 
feel bad about somebody else, you feel bad about yourself.  You 
understand?  If somebody else feels bad about you, they're feeling bad 
about themselves.  Because as soon as we have a bad feeling about 
somebody else, we know that we're feel bad about ourselves.  So we're 
doing it for everybody; we're not just doing it for ourselves.

              We know so well that in our consciousness are buried
              all the wholesome seeds,
              seeds of love and understanding,
              all the seeds of peace and joy.
              But because we do not know how to water them
              and we always allow sorrow to overwhelm them,
              how can they spring up fresh and green?

When we begin Beginning Anew we want to water those seeds of love and 
understanding.  So from the deep part of my heart, with all my 
sincerity,  I say something with a meaning to somebody in my community I 
know who needs watering because their flower is a little bit droopy.  
And everybody can do that.  Some of the people who are best, the most 
skilful at watering flowers, are usually the youngest people in the 
community.  We know they're inclined to be sincere. When you hear a 
young person saying something nice about you, you know that they 
probably mean it.  An older person gets better at flattery  we don't 
want to do flattery though.

Sometimes you want to tell somebody how they've hurt you by some 
unskilful action they've done.  You may say,  "Remember how we were both 
ordained together and how our practice has always been linked?  
Therefore I want to clear something up with you which I feel is 
bothering me at the moment.  On Thursday when you did such and such I 
felt very hurt.  You're always such a sweet person. You have such a 
lovely smile.  I know that you didn't mean to hurt me but I want you to 
know, I really want you to know that you did hurt me, deeply, when you 
said such and such."

Sometimes we're just a little bit irritated with somebody.  I think 
maybe we ought to say that too.  "I was irritated with you when you did 
that."  It's good to be able to say that too.  Not just deeply hurt, but 
just irritated.  Because small irritation can build up into something 
big and it's best to nip it in the bud, to acknowledge that I am 
irritated, and to be able to say to the other person, "You irritated 
me."

Sometimes we don't want to say it to the whole community. For instance, 
if you suspect your dharma sister has stolen a lot of money, you 
wouldn't want to say in front of the whole community, "I was very hurt 
when I discovered you had stolen a lot of money."  But you would want to 
say it just to them because you don't want other people to know.  And so 
you have to arrange a time to talk to them just with one other very good 
dharma friend who's neutral and can sit there and keep the atmosphere 
stable and serene.  So there'll just be three of you, in fact.

When we have problems which are specifically between two people, we 
usually invite those two people to come together with a third impartial 
person who looks after the bell, and we have several sessions.  At one 
session one of the people can talk and the other person just listens the 
whole session and we bow and go away.  And in the next session the other 
person talks.  And so on, until it is resolved.

And if we know somebody has what we call an internal formation, that is 
a bundle inside, a sort of knot inside, made up of feelings and 
thoughts, causing them to suffer, but they can't express it, we should 
be able to encourage that person to speak - somehow to get them to speak 
- and that's very difficult sometimes. Because they can't undo the knot 
and we want to help them to talk.  And sometimes when they begin to 
talk, it's very difficult to listen to them  because they suffer so much 
and it sort of pours out and it's like a sort of poison coming out of a 
wound, like pus coming out of a wound, and it's not very pleasant. 

So we have to know ourselves, "How much can I take?"  We don't want to 
overstretch ourselves.  And so that when we hear this coming out, we sit 
and listen and breathe as long as we can.  And when we feel that we've 
had enough, we can't take any more, we have to bow and say, "I'm sorry.  
I'm very tired. Can we carry on another time please?"  And you have to 
have another session to finish it off.  I had to do that in Vietnam.  I 
had to listen to somebody express their suffering from five o'clock in 
the morning until ten o'clock.  At ten o'clock I couldn't take any more.  
So I had to say, "I'm sorry, I have to stop.  I can't take any more.  
We'll carry on another day."

When some people express their suffering a lot of violence comes out 
too.  What is important then is the quality of our listening.  We 
support each other by listening.  But we have to know that this is 
helping this person to express their hurt.  The quality of our listening 
is what helps.  If we don't listen, what will happen is that as they 
express their suffering, it gets resown in their subconscious because it 
is not being accepted and they might say, "I feel like I'm talking to 
myself."  And talking to myself may not be helpful because it's getting 
resown.  But if we are receptive and we really sit and listen, then it's 
a chance that that suffering can be transformed for that person.  So we 
should encourage them.

Generally we have four things that we may talk about in Beginning Anew.  
The first is you may water flowers, as we talked about.  If you see a 
flower in your community is a little bit droopy, you can water it.

The second thing is you can talk about how you regret having done 
something during the past week.  But it really must be a regret - not 
just to impress people by repenting or something like that.  That can 
happen, by the way.  You should really feel deep regret and if when you 
say it you feel better, you know that that was right.  You feel relief.

And the third thing we need to express is how we've been hurt or how we 
are irritated and so on  Those are usually the three things: watering 
the flower, expressing our regret for something we have done and saying 
how we've been hurt. The third is the most difficult.  It takes the most 
humility.  It takes more humility than repenting something that you've 
done, I think.  Because you need to admit that you are still an 
unenlightened being who gets hurt,  even if it's about something very 
trifling like not getting a smile when you get the biscuits in the tea 
meditation.

Sometimes we allow a fourth thing as well, and that is an explanation to 
my community of my past experiences so they know what I'm going through 
psychologically in the present moment.  That gives my community a chance 
to understand me better.  So that if I look very grumpy, or I'm very 
short with people from time to time or I seem to be completely locked up 
in myself, and I can talk about my past, then my community says, "Oh 
yes!  That's why you're like that!"  And they won't feel that you've got 
a personal grudge against them. They'll understand the hurt and want to 
support you and help you.

              All wrong-doing arises in the mind.
              When the mind is pure,
              there is no wrong-doing there.
              The white flowers today,
              as always,
              float freely in the sky.

This traditional gatha recognises all the seeds we have in our own 
consciousness, in the collective consciousness.  And our own 
consciousness is only a part of the collective consciousness.  We may 
say, "I don't sow seeds of killing, stealing and sexual misconduct.  So 
I never break the five precepts." But in fact the seeds of breaking the 
five precepts are there in all of us because they are there in the 
society.  And we are part of the society.  So when we do Beginning Anew, 
we're not just doing it for ourselves.  We're doing it for our whole 
society.

We have all done things in the past that we regret and Buddhism is 
something which doesn't like guilt.  It is just another obstacle to our 
practice.  So it is not useful, really, to feel guilty about what we've 
done in the past.  It doesn't really help anybody.  It uses up a lot of 
energy, feeling guilty, and we could use that energy in a different way.

So that is why we have that wonderful gatha.  "All wrong-doing arises in 
the mind."  If I'm going to kill somebody or steal something, I have to 
think about it first.  So the idea arises and then I go out and do it.  
"When the mind is pure, there is no wrong-doing there."  Well, I can 
make my mind pure at any moment.  All I have to do is maybe hear the 
bell, sit and follow my breath, make my body and mind one.  And my mind 
is pure.  So the wrong-doing is not there. "The white flowers today, as 
always, float freely in the sky."  I am free.  I am free of concepts of 
me, my wrong-doing and things like that.  And I know there is only one 
way to put right what went wrong in the past.  And that way is how I am 
in the present moment.

In Plum Village we sometimes have Vietnamese war veterans coming, and 
obviously, when they come to a Vietnamese community, it is very 
difficult for them. They remember how, during the war with Vietnam, they 
killed a lot of Vietnamese people and they feel a lot of guilt.  So we 
tell them, "Please, what is done is done.  There is no way you can undo 
it.  There is only one thing you can do and that is to begin anew in the 
present moment."  So we say, "Look, we are sending off medicine to 
Vietnam today.  Why don't you help us wrap up the parcels, because this 
medicine may save a child's life.  So all you can do now to put right 
having taken a child's life in the past is to save a child's life now."  
So we see that the way we are now in the present is the most important 
thing, not what we have done in the past.  Because the way we are in the 
present is what will influence our future.  And Buddhism has always been 
very open about this, the thought that in our subconscious mind there is 
a store of unwholesome seeds and a store of wholesome seeds and the 
important thing is not how many unwholesome seeds there are but the 
ratio of wholesome to unwholesome.

The thing is how we are now, what we do now.  The ability to be able to 
sit and to take in a few breaths and see that your mind has the capacity 
to be pure now and then act out of that purity is all that matters.  And 
we don't need prisons and things like that if people know how to do 
that.  So when we say we are sorry for something, that means I'm saying 
I'm sorry because I really want that person not to be hurt.  Because 
when I say I'm sorry I'm meaning I'm going to do things in a different 
way now, do something different.  Nobody wants to go back to the Vietnam 
War and kill children any more.  It's much more happy to send off 
medicine, that is what I'm saying sorry is about - I won't do it again."

There's a tendency at first to always want to reply to people, to 
respond. One good way not to react when somebody says something to you, 
rather than say, "Ooh!  I didn't say that!" or, "Ooh!  I didn't do 
that!" is to say something like this in our heart: "Thank you.  I have 
heard what you said and I have made a note of it.  So I'm not going to 
react now. I'm not going to say that you're right, but I'm not going to 
say that you are wrong.  I will take it away and over the week I will 
think about it.  It's very good."  So you go away and you think, "Oh 
that person is partly true.  It's not a hundred percent true, but there 
is some truth in it."  And you see that.  But if you react, you're 
inclined to say it's completely right or completely wrong.  But, "Thank 
you.  I have heard what you said and I have made a note of it," is very 
open, not as a formality, but because you are open.

What if the person who has hurt you isn't there at the meeting? - which 
often happens.  It happened last night.  Somebody asked the chairperson, 
"I have been hurt by somebody who is not here - a member of our sangha 
who is not here.  Can I say so?"  And the person inviting the bell said, 
"Yes.  But on certain conditions.  One: you take complete responsibility 
for what you say, so  that if any of us goes to that person and says, 
"Oh, by the way, Brother So-and-so said he was very angry when you did 
that, that, that," you take responsibility for that.  Two: you speak 
with all your awareness and mindfulness as if that person were here and 
you were speaking directly to them.  And three: you do your best to go 
to that person when you have the next opportunity and talk it out with 
them.  But we are very ready to listen to you now, to help you feel 
better.  But it's like a preparation.  You are preparing now to be able 
to go to that person with a flower and say to them, "You hurt me."  Or, 
"I felt very hurt when you said that."  It's better to say it that way.

Sometimes if somebody is breaking too many rules the chairperson invites 
the bell, and says "I think this is going against the principles,"  or 
if somebody keeps interrupting, or hasn't taken the flower, "No it's not 
allowed."

When people seem to be getting weary, the chairperson may want to say, 
"Noble community, some of you look a little tired, or uncomfortable, 
would you like to end this session in about fifteen minutes or go and 
stretch your legs? or have a breath of fresh air?"   And at the end of 
Beginning Anew, we all bow and take each other's hands so we feel some 
connection with each other. And some people go up and smile or hug each 
other.

From Beginning Anew you learn how to listen. It's a wonderful gift.  And 
you can listen to anybody anywhere in the world.  Sometimes it's the 
best thing you can do, to understand a person, why they're like that, 
what they've gone through in the past. It's quite enlightening when you 
see how a person who makes everybody around them suffer, how deeply they 
suffer themselves.  Once you can touch the deep suffering they're going 
through, it makes it much easier to love them.  If you can't touch that 
suffering, it's very difficult. Giving a person a bit of space to talk 
can create the conditions for their Buddha-nature to flower.

It is also practice in itself, a practice of how to listen deeply, how 
to be humble.  The quality of the listening is so important.  It is 
important that there is a core group of people in the sangha who really 
know how to listen and to speak, who commit to the practice of listening 
and speaking.  I don't know how much conflict or friction there is in 
your sangha, what irritations, annoyances, or anger crops up.   Is your 
community as healthy as it could be? Very often the best way to 
ascertain the health of the sangha is to ask, "How am I myself?  How am 
I when I come to my sangha?  How do I feel?  Do I feel we could make 
things better? And if we could, then how?"

If there is a group who can practice Beginning Anew every month, like 
the Board, they become a healthy core, because if the core is healthy, 
the rest is healthy. If the blood is circulating properly in the Board 
then it circulates everywhere.  If all those people have their own 
regular Beginning Anew session together, when they join the bigger group 
they may be able to really help.

Because sangha building is the very basis of our practice.  A sangha 
needs to be growing all the time.  It's like a tree.  If the tree 
doesn't put out new branches, we know it's not in good health.  A sangha 
needs to be developing, growing, changing the whole time, never the same 
one year to the next.  And the best way is to use the enlightened aspect 
of everyone's mind in the sangha.  And in order to do that you have to 
have a very good communication between yourselves so everybody feels 
they have something to contribute and they  can be listened to.  That 
way the sangha can grow.

I can say without any doubt that my practice has been able to develop 
because of Beginning Anew more than any other thing in my community 
life.  To be able to hear from other people how I have upset them, to be 
able to see myself as other people see me from the outside has really 
helped me to know myself better and to become a much happier person, a 
much easier person to live with.  It has helped me tremendously.  And so 
that is why when I go to teach people, I recommend the practice.  
Although it's been difficult sometimes to hear about my faults, it's not 
always been pleasant, in the end I've always felt lighter.  And though I 
sometimes go to bed after Beginning Anew feeling a little bit upset, 
when I wake up in the morning, I always feel wonderful.  I feel, "How 
wonderful!  I have a chance to begin to be a new person today."

It is like the miracle of humility.  Humility takes you right back to 
the beginning, right back to beginner's mind. You see that you haven't 
made any progress at all. You're right where you were in the beginning.  
And it's wonderful.  You can begin anew.

[Sister Annabel is the Director of Practice at Plum Village, France]
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