Hi Sylvia, I watched the video. I enjoy Thich Nhat Hanh’s way of speaking. He is so gentle, and yet, so direct ☺️

In Buddhism, there is a doctrine of “two truths” that requires each of us to understand that there is absolute truth, which most of us rarely have any access to, even when it is figuratively dumped into our laps because we probably don’t have the capacity to understand it — at that moment — and as well, a relative truth that is relative to the capacity of each individual to understand.

So when a Buddhist teacher speaks (really when any good teacher teaches), it is always at the level of relative truth, and thus it’s easy to find discordances between what is said on different occasions to different people. That is why you can hear the remark in Buddhism that the Buddha gave 88,000 teachings, all of which conflicted to some extent. This was so because they were given to different people in different settings. But that is face-to-face teachings, which is unlike writing, which is less focused on a particular audience, and thus, more prone to missing the mark.

In the video you gave me the link for, Thich Nhat Hanh spoke about how all things (the Sun, the Earth, the various “elements” that are incorporated into our physical presence, etc.) work together to generate each thought we have. He was making the point to the interviewer that we are not separate and independent of all of those aspects of our reality, and our history. But he didn’t explain how they participate in generating a thought, because that is a discussion that would have been over the heads of the audience there (as well as being something so profound that it would take months for the audience to come to terms with). And this is how these subjects must be treated, as with all other complex subjects like mathematics — we start simple and flesh that out as our understanding develops. That is how it is here as well.

Thank you for participating in this dialog!