Sunday February 1st 2012 Venerable Chuc Thanh and members of the Buddhist Education Center of America were invited to a panel discussion on sacred outside spaces. Here is the talk that Venerable Chuc Thanh gave:

"In Buddhism there is unlimited space. So I think the space is vast. When you look at the galaxy, it is huge, but if we just look at something outside of ourselves we cannot achieve happiness.

Instead of looking outside we look back inside. We already have everything we need to be happy. We don't need to look for something out there. When the Buddha was alive a lot of people went to visit him to hear him speak and the Buddha said if you are with me but you don't practice the teaching, it is as if you are far from me. However, even if you are far away, but you practice the teaching, you are right here with me. And that also gives us some idea of why people go to the sacred places of Buddhism. Where the Buddha was born, where he was enlightened, his first sermon and nirvana. If we have lots of money and time we can go to these sacred places. Every religion has sacred places where followers want to go pilgrimage, but if we don't have time, if we don't have money how can we go there? That is why when we practice and apply the teaching to our daily life, we are already there. The destination is every step on the way. Every minute we travel, we are already at the destination. We don't have to wait to be a millionaire to be happy. Why cant we be happy now? We have a brain that works well, a heart that works well. That means we have everything we need to be happy. We have more than enough opportunity to be happy. The teaching of the Buddha is a teaching to purify ourselves. To sum up Buddhism, we should not do bad things, we should try to do good things and purify our mind."

Venerable Chuc Thanh

And here is a letter from the Chairperson of the lecture series committee thanking Venerable Chuc Thanh.