Study with

Plum Village

This is the official channel of the monastic community founded by Thich Nhat Hanh. It publishes dharma talks given by the monks and nuns of the tradition, along with ceremonies, meditations and retreat sessions, mostly in English and mostly long: typically between fifty minutes and an hour and a half. Much of the material comes from the retreats the community holds through the year: the rains retreat, the summer gatherings, a retreat given over to dialogue with science. The talks are given by different brothers and sisters, which lends the whole a plurality of voices within a single body of teaching. The subjects range across the tradition's core and its applications: interbeing and transcendent insight, community as a place of healing rather than perfection, tending one's inner garden, healing trauma inherited from ancestors, letting go of one's enemy, embracing suffering with tenderness, leadership as a spiritual practice, communities of resistance. Alongside the talks there are ceremonies, music meditations and intergenerational panels. What a newcomer finds is the rhythm of a monastery rather than of an internet channel. The talks begin without hurry, they include silences, bells and breathing, and they are not edited to hold attention. That slowness is part of the content: much of what is being transmitted consists in learning to remain present for longer than we are used to. For anyone wanting to practise at home, it is direct and cost-free access to the teaching exactly as it is given inside the community, without adaptation for an outside audience and without anything asked in return.