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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)

@brspirit.bsky.social
637 followers 639 following 230 posts

Monk at plum village monastery, student of Thich Nhat Hanh Infrequent post-meditation musings 🫧

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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
The Great Simplification @tgspodcast.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
The desolation of foundational, life-supporting ecosystems has resulted in our planet now operating at roughly half its biological productive capacity.
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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
Karen Sue Waters @karensuew.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
The climate has ALREADY changed. This is no longer about climate change. It's about climate crisis.
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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 30/05/2026
I’m a climate scientist. Let me fix this headline. “Nearly a century ago, scientists showed that burning fossil fuels warms the planet. Today, we know human emissions account for over 100% of the warming. Yet dark money and disinformation still work to keep Americans addicted to fossil fuels.”
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I’m a sell-out to Big Dharma
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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
Plum Village App @plumvillageapp.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
NEW The Way Out Is In #podcast 🔔 The fifth in a series of six episodes recorded during the In the Footsteps of the #Buddha pilgrimage, this instalment was made in Kushinagar, India, in February 2026. On the app 👉🏽 link.plumvillage.app/3fZM More: plumvillage.org/podcast/in-t... #mindfulness
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
I assume he means the privilege and graft bell curve, in which case… well, yes
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
This is exactly how Thay taught us to speak and act, and even think. There is room in us for multitudes. Our ancestors are not just genetic — they are also all our teachers, everyone who has nurtured the seeds of kindness and compassion in us, human and more-than-human
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Wow — that means Miles Davis and Thich Nhat Hanh were born in the same year. Quite a thought. (And I’d say TNH was a contender for the fearless bit, and he was pretty hip too, in his way)
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
In case that’s too obscure:
Definition of the Bechdel test: a method for evaluating the portrayal of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Here you go: youtu.be/1OgTRlWE_po?... (Many other guided relaxations like this one available on the free Plum village app)
youtu.be
Guided Relaxation with Cello | Brother Phap Linh
YouTube video by Plum Village App
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
How about a Bechdel test for climate emergency? A film or TV show passes if: 1. Climate change exists in the world of the story 2. At least two characters discuss it 3. In a way connected to material reality or collective action (or at the very least, *feelings are had*)
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Amazing! This is seriously good news
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
This is how they do moths in this country (Rain moth, very gentle and friendly btw)
Giant Australian rain moth. Almost as long as my hand, fingertips to heel of palm
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
This talk is the continuation of the preceding one. Leaning a bit more into the philosophical/conceptual than usual (as a way to point out the risks of excessive abstraction and attachment to conceptual thinking — sorry!) youtu.be/G-8ibHRswVU?...
youtu.be
Materialism, Idealism, Panpsychism or something else? | Br. Phap Linh
YouTube video by Plum Village
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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
BarryJT @barryjt.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
Let's listen to a real writer on the subject...
"There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks," Ohls said.
"Maybe the head man thinks his hands are clean but somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut from under them and had to sell out for nickels, decent people lost their jobs, stocks got rigged on the market, proxies got bought up like a pennyweight of old gold, and the five per centers and the big law firms got paid hundred-grand fees for beating some law the people wanted but the rich guys didn't, on account of it cut into their profits. Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. Maybe it's the best we can get, but it still ain't any Ivory Soap deal."
Raymond Chandler, THE LONG GOODBYE
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
If you squint you might see a few roos lolloping away from me in the rain
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Melbourne last night Even an industrial factory cello has big dreams
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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
A little rainy day poem came to me.
Germination
Elizabeth Sawin

Some seeds only sprout in harsh conditions.
Cracked open by fire
by ice
by crushing force.
It must hurt, that splitting open,
a rootlet pushing through packed earth. 
How confusing to be a tender shoot
aiming for a sun you’ve seen only in ancestral memories.
So, I must ask, friend, 
could it be
that what you think is brokenness is 
in fact,
germination?
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
My suggestion for retiring one word from the English language: “just” Nothing is *just* anything
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
This is well said. It’s how I’ve come to think of my Teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh; his life was the accumulation of uncountably many hard choices. Every time he could have turned away, or blamed, or hated, or tried to ignore suffering or seek comfort, fame or profit, he invariably made the hard choice
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Really joyous to connect so deeply with @mandascott.bsky.social in this wide-ranging conversation on roots, and finding (or creating!) our spiritual home
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Are we more than biological machines? Is free will truly possible? (And can it be increased?) youtu.be/xTw373j6dhA?...
youtu.be
Are We More Than Biological Machines? Is Free Will Truly Possible? | Br. Phap Linh
YouTube video by Plum Village
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Great to notice that learning goes down when tech enters the classroom. But perhaps we should also be applying this thought to ourselves. Cognitive/emotional capacity isn’t something that we only cultivate as children. We continue to cultivate it throughout our lives, or… we don’t.
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Pope Leo!
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Any reason European villages and towns can’t do this? (I’m going to suggest it to my cousin who is a village mayor)
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Thank goodness for Pope Leo
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
This looks a bit more like it!
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Cdn’t read the whole article bc paywall, but it aligns closely with the way I’ve come to see things expression I came up with while writing my book is “epistemic coat hanger” Spacetime (also matter + energy) are epistemic coat hangers: ie abstractions upon which we hang our cumulated observations
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
Starting to film some new courses for the new online monastery.. coming soon-ish
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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
Heard Island Government @heardislandgov.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Scenes from “Star Wars: Revenge of the Chick” being filmed on our Island
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Hmmm. Good luck with that. Explain what is primary (experience), by starting with a secondary abstraction (matter) created to account for regularities observed in experience As the locals sometimes say when you ask for directions: “oh sure i can tell you the way, but i wouldn’t start from here“
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Oh my Buddha... my dear brother Phap Huu being completely awesome on TFI Wednesday with Chris Evans for a full 45 minutes. Maybe the world just wants more wholesomeness. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
podcasts.apple.com
The TFI Wednesday one with Brother Chân Pháp Hữu & Simon Squibb
Podcast Episode · The Chris Evans Show with The National Lottery · 18 March · 1h 14m
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
i can see why introspection would be unappealing for this billionaire (and probably for many of them) Unfortunately for him, a reckoning will come, whether on the deathbed or before. Indifference to moral consequences doesn’t mean those consequences aren’t coming
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
I have a joke about awakening but you won’t be able to tell if it’s funny until some distant day, in a few years time, when a single dewdrop falls onto the tip of your nose at exactly the same moment you hear the plop of a frog jumping into a pond and see a flash of lightning striking the horizon.
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
plumvillage.org/about/thich-... Thay convened Europe’s 1st conference on the environment in 1971. Joined by 2200 scientists, inc 4 nobel laureates Their 1st proposal? “A moratorium on technological innovations the effects of which we cannot foretell and which are not essential to human survival”
plumvillage.org
The Menton Statement, “A Message to our 3.5 billion neighbours on Planet Earth” | Plum Village
In 1970 together with Alfred Hassler (of the Fellowship of Reconciliation) and other leading intellectuals and scientists, Thich Nhat Hanh and Sister Chan Khong helped convene Europe’s first…
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
time for a cuppa
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Very much looking forward to this...
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Thank goodness not all humans have been colonised by monoculture thinking
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Metering intelligence is just another form of rent-seeking — limiting and monetising access to something you didn’t create in order to concentrate wealth and increase inequality further. Non merci Monsieur Altman
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
Maybe this? www.404media.co/ai-is-africa... AI is an extractive technology that relies on the brutal labor of underpaid workers … For years, the work of African data labelers has been more or less "ghost work,” …unseen, hidden labor It is not artificial intelligence. It's African intelligence,"
404media.co
'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back
Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
This random monk had been invited to a small gathering of ai leaders (CEO / chief scientist level allegedly) for a conversation about ethics — what do i say? If you have any deep thoughts, please help! (I also have some thoughts, but collective intelligence is likely better than individual imho)
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Nevertheless:
Pyramid at chichén itzá
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Had the chance to visit Chichén Itzá today. But spent most of the time hanging out with these cool dudes:
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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
I wasn't intending to turn this into a thread, but it seems to have happened anyway. It's about the great plague on our lives: the extreme wealth of a tiny number of people. And what to do about it.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
The richest Americans saw their net worth soar 120% from 2017 to 2025. The top 1% now control $55.8 trillion in assets — more than the G.D.P. of the United States and China combined. Meanwhile, millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Still wondering if inequality is out of control?
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
I have wanted to write about this very thought many times — how Hollywood constantly tells us that the world can be saved by one man punching another man in the face. The quote is from an excellent interview with @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social — pls forgive my inept attempt at posting it. Link in reply
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
“One of the great weaknesses of our era is that we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort. Thich Nhat Hanh said before he died that the next Buddha will be the Sangha…
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Reposted by Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh)
Jason Hickel @jasonhickel.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Every single person in the entire chain of command that massacred the schoolgirls in Minab, and that is currently carpet bombing Iranian civilians, needs to be tried and jailed in The Hague. Sick, depraved monsters drunk on imperial hubris.
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Brother Spirit 🌀(Phap Linh) @brspirit.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Preparing to embrace 175 leaders in the fields of climate, biodiversity and ocean protection today (from the whole continent of the Americas), to help them continue to metabolise their grief, rage and despair into resilience, courage and stubborn optimism. Giving up isn’t an option.
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