A Quiet Beauty in Everything (Episode #111)

The Way Out Is In - Plum Village

In this episode of The Way Out Is In, Joe Confino and Brother Faphu explore the beauty and reverence found in the ordinary, drawing from Joe's new

Key takeaways

• Joe's book 'Between Earth and Sky' captures the beauty found in the ordinary through 100 days of deep looking in a seemingly empty desert.
• Brother Faphu emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and the art of stopping to experience the present moment.

Main topics

• Finding beauty in the ordinary
• Mindfulness and the art of stopping

Notable quotes

It's easy for places like the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas to generate awe, but I discovered the same sense of wonder in the most ordinary things.

The art of stopping is really a masterclass, and it is a lifetime journey.

Conclusion

This episode invites listeners to embrace the beauty of the present mo

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome, dear listeners, to this latest episode of the podcast series The Way Out is In. I am Joe Confino, working at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change. And I am Brother Faphu, a Zen Buddhist monk student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in the Plum Village tradition. And today, dear listeners, we are going to be talking about finding beauty and reverence in the most ordinary of things. Hello, dear listeners, I am Joe Confino. And I am Brother Faphu. And brother, this is the first time we've done a recording since we came back from India about six weeks ago. And since then, you've been in Australia doing a tour. So tell us, how are you? I'm really tired. And it feels so good to come back home into spring. because it's really beautiful at the moment and very hot. We are going to hit 36 today. And reminder, we are in May. So this is absolutely not normal. And we are gearing up for a very large gathering in Plum Village. It is the 60-year anniversary of the Order of Interbeing. And we will be hosting three weeks and plus one more extra week for a number of friends staying behind. And I think personally, with everything that is going on for me in this year, I'm also slowing down more. So I've decided not to facilitate in this retreat. I'm going to be making tofu for three weeks back to the roots, back to the novice days. Still be giving one or two teachings. But why not take refuge in the community as a practice? Like, you know, there is a large community that is here, and a lot of OI members are coming as well as Domit teachers. So learn to relax, let go, and take refuge. That's my practice this coming month. Great. And so the topic today, brother, is finding the beauty in ordinary things, or which seem to be ordinary, because of course nothing is ordinary. And part of the reason for doing this is I have a new book coming out, or that's come out by the time this is been published, which is called Between Earth and Sky, 100 Days of Deep Looking in the Place of the Dead. And this was, it's a photography book and a visual meditation of my time in lockdown in a place called Mitla in Mexico. And it's a desert like scrubland. There's virtually, it looks to the surface to be completely empty of life. And I spent 100 days walking, hiking in this land, taking photographs. And it was a time of great transformation. a time when I just left New York as a journalist and was on my way to live here next to Plum Village. And it was a time of, literally, of slowing down, of stopping, of deep looking, and realizing that even though the land looked completely empty, it was actually full of life and full of beauty. But it was only when I stopped and changed my way of seeing that I was able to see that. And this is something that's been sort of in, sense core to my life, which is about not feeling very beautiful when I was young, and then finding the beauty in myself and realizing actually that could be found everywhere. So I'm going to just start off before we go into things, brother, with just a little passage, which just talks about my photography. And it says, it's easy for places like the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas to generate awe, but I discovered the same sense of wonder in the most ordinary things. During the five years I lived in New York, while most photographers were drawn to Manhattan's dramatic skyline, I focused on objects like the splattered doorway of a Brooklyn metal merchant, a dirty rag hanging from a pipe in a bus depot and Red Hook, and a twig poking through the snow in Central Park that reminded me of the struggles of life. I would cycle to industrial parks and photograph discarded objects, such as a crushed plastic cup floating in a puddle, giving them a sculptural dignity to help others see their quiet beauty. That same impulse to hold space for what often goes unseen or unacknowledged continues to animate my work. This way of seeing the world is very much attuned to Ty's invitation to view our consciousness as an artist, painting our world into being. I spent my childhood believing I had nothing to offer that I was small, insignificant, irrelevant and ugly. I did not feel I had a place in the world. I did not feel at home. As I gradually healed my wounds, I learnt first to like myself and then to love myself. My photography has evolved alongside my growing understanding of my place in the world. I want people to see the monumental in the mundane, to understand what we often dismiss as ugly or worthless can embody profound beauty and deserves reverence. Sometimes all it takes is reframing the way we see ourselves and the world around us. So, brother, with that in mind, one of the things I love about Ticknatan, is that he said we can see beauty everywhere. And he talked about the fact that actually, if we really focus on drinking our tea, then actually what more do we need? That actually when we feel alive and present on this earth, what more do we need? So can you tell us a bit about this sense of seeing the beauty in the ordinary, not looking for the fact that we have to climb to the top of the Himalayas, not seeing that we have to see the Grand Canyon, but actually we can actually sit and look at a tree or look even at a rock and find all of life in that. Well, first of all, congratulations, Joe, the book. Thank you. This is such a moment to celebrate. And I think just that taking the time to celebrate is also really important because so many times we finish a project and our manass, our mind is like, okay, what is next? Right. So I just want to honor this moment of receiving the book just a few minutes ago. And I know how much effort and energy has been put into it. So thank you. Wonder, the word wonder is what I discovered in Plum Village. And wonder is always around us. But most of the time, we miss the wonder. It's because we live kind of like in a fast-paced world. where we are always striving, and it comes from many different circumstances that we have to strive. And all of us, we have our different stories and our different journey. And meditation itself is the first act of meditation is learning to stop. It is learning to take a pause and feel the present moment. And feeling the present moment is more important. and then thinking about the present moment. Because when we are, when we attune ourselves into our own body, into our senses, like what we see, what we smell, what we hear, what we touch, it gives us this opportunity to be in touch with life in the very here and now. And it sounds very, very simple in a way. It's like to stop and see what's happening. but our mind is not trained in that way. Our habit energy is not trained in that way. So the art of stopping is really a masterclass, and it is a lifetime journey. And when we could really come back and just be present and just enjoy a moment, it can teach us so much. Like your reading just now, it allows us not then to chase after what beauty may be promised into the future, but already see the wonders and the beauty of the trees, of the leaf, or the sounds of the birds. I've never listened so deeply to the music of the birds until I learned to stop. And even though I've lived here for 25 years in Plum Village, I would say, like, only this year I really enjoyed the melodies of the birds. And it's not through me. It's through the people that come through Plum Village. And when they go back into the cities, they would write me messages and they would say, oh, brother, I miss the singing of the birds. And I was like, huh. And I have it every day. and I don't enjoy it as much as the bird is gifting its melody to me. So this art of stopping, this art of pausing, of seeing the wonder that is present, it's a journey of growth individually. It's a spiritual growth. I really connected to that. And just this morning, we have volunteers arriving for the June retreat. and I just sat with a volunteer and we just looked at the forest and I felt so enough in that moment. I felt like we don't need to even think about the retreat that is going to happen starting this Monday but this moment sitting with a friend having a cup of tea and the beauty of the forest is really present and as a novice, I didn't enjoy it like this, even as a young bikshu. But now I feel this is it. Like Tai has so many phrases that reminds us of the beauty of wonder. And there's this calligraphy and it says, this is it. And there are moments that you can sense that and you can say, ah, this is it. But this morning, I had that moment of this is it. as not in a moment of success or a moment of like of insight but this is it as in like there's nothing more important than this forest right now there's nothing more important than being fully present with a friend sitting on my left there's nothing more important than just sharing our our presence and not not having to to think oh what am I going to say so that this friend think that I'm a wise person. You know, like our discourse of the mind can really take over the present moment. So the understanding of wonder, it is a journey in itself for each and every one of us. And I think as practitioner, we all have to ask ourselves, do we see the wonders in the mundane? And I think our teacher, Tai, Zen Master Tikihan, And he was a master at this. And for him, it's because of his own journey of suffering. He doesn't want to take for granted any day that he gets to live because he's already seen death. He's already seen the violence. He's already seen the discrimination. And the present moment, when you can be grounded in it and feel this breath is the wonder, this tree is the wonder, this is it, what else do you want to search for? But these moments can escape really quickly, and that's why the practice of mindfulness, it is learning to sustain it also in everyday life. And it's really interesting, brother, because when you look at sort of social media, there's such a competition for the very best. So someone who's showing you the very most beautiful view. And there's such a striving to have an experience. And then everyone looking at that wishes they had the experience. And as you say, if we actually stop and be present, you know, there's a question, can we find as much beauty in looking at a rock as in going and having, you know, the most exotic experience? Can we actually sit with a rock and see that there's life in the rock? And what I loved about ties, he said there's consciousness in everything. And it's so easy to look at things and to think that there's no life in them. But actually a rock, the dust. Everything has consciousness in it. And actually everything is in us. So, you know, the minerals in a rock are in us. We actually can learn an amazing amount from a rock. So one of the things when I was on these hiking, these walkabouts in Mitla in Mexico, was, you know, I could only go in one direction. So every day I would pass the same rock or the same little bush or the same dried up riverbed. And actually what I realise is if I paid attention, I would become friends with these places. That actually I would say hello to the rock. I would form, I would be in relationship to those things. And that took time. That took awareness. So can you talk a little bit about what it means to find consciousness in everything? What it actually means to be present for life in all its manifestations? I think we have to start with oneself, like being aware that we have a consciousness and our consciousness is very conditioned. So what we hear, what we smell, what we taste, what we touch through our senses, they're the window into our own consciousness and our consciousness is always in relation to the outer world. And as a practitioner of practice, we learn to see our consciousness as a reality, not just something that happens and we forget about it. And our consciousness is very alive. It is where our mental formation, mental formation is a very Buddhist word, and it means our feelings are emotions. They're a manifestation of what we're in touch with. And it can evolve into, let's say, a feeling of peace is a mental formation, a feeling of ease, a feeling of tension, a feeling of agitation, a feeling of anger, a frustration. They don't just come from nowhere. They are already stored in all of us. and we see them as seeds that we all have. Even mindfulness is a seed. It is a mental formation, awareness. And we cannot be given. It is already in us, but it is conditioned by our surroundings. Even the transmission of birth, like when we are born, our parents already transmit to us a consciousness, transmit to us different mental formations that are stronger or weaker because we are linked to them. So a practitioner, we want to break it down to something very practical and fundamental. And the best way is start to tune into our habits. How does our habits show up in our daily life? As simple as when we open a door, how do we open a door? It's a very mundane thing. We open many doors a day. Are we opening the door with consciousness, with awareness? Or are we slamming the door? Or are we carelessly just, you know, coming through the door as if nothing is happening? Or as a practitioner, we can open the door with such awareness that opening a door, going through a door, is like going through a new universe. how we show up our way of being can shift and change our whole mental formations, our whole consciousness of reality. So consciousness is not limited to just human beings. We and science, and I think artists have already demonstrated that everything has consciousness, everything has energy, everything is a, in relation to. And that's why I think for us meditators and artists, we go hand in hand very seamlessly because as artists there is a imagination and a understanding that there is language that is beyond what human we kind of just think of a speech or bodily language. And science also now provides us. a lot of insight. In Australia, I was in a trail and we had a pause and I really held my tongue because I really don't want to be that person. But there was a conversation that was going on and I was eavesdropping because I was really mindful, but they were talking about if trees have consciousness. And the mother really believes that it doesn't. It doesn't