He was the people’s ambassador for peace who helped end the war that ravaged his homeland. He traveled the globe incessantly for more than ten years, writing and speaking out passionately, knocking on the doors of the powerful and the rich, and traveling from Saigon to Washington to Paris like a mystic envoy. When the peace accords were finally signed, he got ready to leave Paris. It was time, finally, to go home. But his country, enraged by his peace activism during the war, refused to allow his return. And so it was that Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who had worked far so long to bring peace to his homeland, found himself in exile, a footnote to a conflict that the war-weary world longed to forget.
Now sixty-seven years old, but with a seemingly ageless face and spirit, Thich Nhat Hanh remains an expatriate, writing and speaking for peace from Plum Village, a French community near Bordeaux. He gives talks and leads retreats around the world, and has written nineteen books on meditation, transformation, and healing. His writings, while still banned in Vietnam, are often hand-copied and circulated underground there.
The civil war that shattered his country was perhaps the defining event of Thich Nhat Hanh’s life. As the U.S. stepped up its bomb-and-chemical attack in the mid-1960s, he organized one of the most profound nonviolent resistance movements in history. Under the guiding star of Gandhian precepts, members of Vietnam’s “little Peace Corps” worked in rural outposts rebuilding health clinics, schools, and towns destroyed by the bombing. By the end of the war, ten thousand Vietnamese citizens — young people, social workers, nuns, and monks — had taken part in the movement.
As the slaughter intensified, Thich Nhat Hanh founded La Boi Press to print and distribute peace writings. He wrote most of the articles himself, calling for the leaders of North and South Vietnam to end the fighting through compromise and reconciliation. Not surprisingly, both governments responded by banning his work.
In 1966, Thich Nhat Hanh left Vietnam for a one-year speaking tour in the United States to promote peace on behalf of the unheard Vietnamese people. He spoke out relentlessly against the war, meeting with American military leaders and senators, Catholic monks and social activists. During the same trip, he was introduced to Martin Luther King, Jr., in an encounter of historical and spiritual significance.
The meeting held a nearly prismatic dimension: Easterner and Westerner, Asian and African-American, two Gandhians from the most disparate points on the map, meeting in the strange days of America, 1966. Both were resolute in their commitment to nonviolent change, whether in the streets of Selma ar Saigon. King, who had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, was inspired to nominate Thich Nhat Hanh for the same honor in 1967. “I know of no one more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle monk from Vietnam,” King said. Later, when King announced his opposition to the war at a Chicago press conference, Thich Nhat Hanh stood beside him.
In 1969, Thich Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist Peace Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks, remaining there until the peace accords were signed in 1973. It was then that he tried unsuccessfully to return home; barred by the Vietnamese government, he settled in a small community south of Paris. From there, he organized a rescue effort for the boat people in the Gulf of Siam in 1976, a mission rapidly opposed and shut down by the Thai and Singapore governments.
Thich Nhat Hanh has always demonstrated a steadfast ability to respond to the fiery political events of his time. But at the heart of each of his political activities — speaking out, prayer, public action, diplomatic effort — is a simple, intensely spiritual commitment to peace.
Today he travels regularly to North America, urging people to extinguish their acceptance of war and violence through the development of mindfulness, an awareness of the profound beauty and meaning of everyday acts. His prescription for peace — mindful living and social responsibility — is at once simple and difficult, and vitally connected to the world of the moment.
— Cassandra Sitterly
We have to find a way to tell the president that God cannot bless one country against another. . . . But we should not think that simply by electing another president, the situation will be transformed.
When President Bush gave the order to attack Iraq in 1991, many of us suffered. I was at Plum Village giving a lecture, and in the middle of a sentence I suddenly said, “I don’t think I will go to America this spring. I really don’t want to go there now.” That afternoon, a number of students from North America told me that because I felt that way, I should go. They reminded me that many Americans also suffered when the president gave the order to attack.
I understood that President Bush was trying in his way to serve his people. Early in the conflict he instituted an embargo, but he became impatient and suddenly war was inevitable. When he ordered the ground attack and said, “God bless the United States of America,” I knew he needed our help.
We have to find a way to tell the president that God cannot bless one country against another. He must learn to pray better than that. But we should not think that simply by electing another president, the situation will be transformed. If we want a better government, we have to begin by transforming the greed and violence in ourselves and working to transform society.
Look at the 500,000 men and women from America and the West and the one million Iraqi soldiers who spent months waiting for the land offensive to begin. They had to practice killing day and night in order to prepare. They wore helmets, jumped and yelled, and plunged their bayonets into sandbags representing enemy soldiers. They had to become inhuman to learn to kill. During the night they did the same in their dreams. This is the practice of war — one and a half million men and women practicing fear and violence for many months.
Then the war came. The actual killing was massive, and we called it a victory. When the 500,000 troops returned home, they were deeply wounded from practicing so much violence. For several generations, millions of their children and grandchildren will inherit those seeds of suffering. How can we call that a victory?
Eighty percent of the American people supported the Gulf War and called it clean and moral. They do not understand the true nature of war. The Gulf War was not clean or moral for the people of Iraq, nor for the people of the United States. After a war, many people, especially young people, see violence as the way to solve problems. The next time there is a conflict somewhere in the world, they will be tempted to support another military solution, another quick war.
The death of one Iraqi soldier means that one family is suffering — and more than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed. After any war, the suffering continues on both sides for several generations. Look at the suffering of the Vietnam veterans in America and the suffering of the Vietnamese people. We need to be there for those who need us, to let them know that we share their suffering. When someone feels understood, his suffering is diminished. Please don’t forget this.
We who have touched war have a duty to bring the truth about war to those who have not had a direct experience of it. We are the light at the tip of the candle. It is very hot, but it has the power to illuminate. We who were born from the war know what it is. The war is in us; but it is also in everyone.
We all saw the video of the Los Angeles policemen beating Rodney King. When I saw those images, I identified with Rodney King, and I suffered a lot. You must have felt the same. We were all beaten at the same time. But I am also the five policemen who did the beating. They were manifesting the hatred and violence that pervade our society. We have helped create them through our forgetfulness, through the way we live our daily lives.
Violence has become the substance of our lives. The Vietnam veterans, the Gulf War veterans, and the millions who absorb violence every day are being trained to be exactly like those who did the beating. We water the seeds of violence in ourselves by watching violent TV programs and movies that are poisoning us. If we do not transform all of this violence and misunderstanding, one day it will be our own child who is beaten or killed, or who does the beating. This is very much our affair.
Our true home is in the present moment. To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty available now. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith but of practice.
In The Stranger, Albert Camus described a man who was going to be executed in a few days. Sitting alone in his cell, he noticed a small patch of blue sky through the skylight, and suddenly he felt deeply in touch with life, deeply in the present moment. He vowed to live his remaining days in full appreciation of each moment, and he did so for several days. Then, just three hours before the time of his execution, a priest came into the cell to receive a confession and administer the last rites. But the prisoner wanted only to be alone. He tried many ways to get the priest to leave, and when he finally succeeded, he told himself that the priest lived like a dead man. The prisoner saw that the priest who was trying to save him was less alive than he, the one about to be executed.
Many of us are like dead people, as Camus says. To help us unify our body and mind and be more fully alive in the present moment, we can practice conscious breathing. Human beings have been practicing this for more than three thousand years. When breathing consciously, as we breathe in we know we are breathing in, and as we breathe out we know we are breathing out.
When I saw those images, I identified with Rodney King, and I suffered a lot. . . . But I am also the five policemen who did the beating.
We can also touch ourselves and others with compassion. Our right hand has touched our left hand many times, but it may not have done so with compassion. Try touching your left hand with your right hand and, at the same time, with your compassion. You will notice that while your left hand is receiving comfort and love, your right hand is also receiving comfort and love. When we see someone suffering, if we touch her with compassion, she will receive our comfort and love, and we will also receive comfort and love. We can do the same when we ourselves are suffering.
It is possible to touch without this awareness. When you wash your face in the morning, you might touch your eyes without being aware that you are touching them. You might be thinking about other things. But if you are aware that your eyes can see, that the water comes from distant sources to make washing your face possible, the act will be much deeper.
Our eyes are refreshing and healing but we rarely take the time to appreciate them. When we touch our eyes with mindfulness, we notice that our eyes are precious jewels fundamental to our happiness. Those who have lost their sight feel that if they could see as well as we do, they would be in paradise. We only need to open our eyes, and we see the blue sky, the hills, the trees, the clouds, the rivers. Seeing is a miracle. When we become aware of our eyes, we touch real peace.
When we look deeply at a flower, we can see that it is made entirely of nonflower elements, like sunshine, rain, soil, compost, air, and time. If we continue to look deeply, we will also notice that the flower is on its way to becoming compost. When we look deeply at the compost, we see it is also on its way to becoming flowers, and we realize that flowers and compost need each other.
When we look deeply into ourselves, we see both flowers and garbage. Each of us has greed, violence, anger, hatred, depression, and racial discrimination in us. But just as a gardener transforms compost into flowers, we can learn the art of transforming our emotions.
According to Buddhist psychology, our consciousness is divided into mind consciousness and store consciousness. We can think of store consciousness as a field where every kind of seed can be planted: seeds of suffering, joy, fear, anger, and hope. When a seed from this field springs forth in our mind consciousness, it always returns to the field stronger. The quality of our life depends on which seeds are strongest in our store consciousness.
We may be in the habit of manifesting seeds of anger, sorrow, and fear in our mind consciousness; seeds of joy, happiness, and peace may not sprout up often. To practice mindfulness means to recognize each seed as it comes up from the storehouse and to practice watering the most wholesome seeds whenever possible. During each moment that we are aware of something peaceful and beautiful, we water seeds of peace and beauty in us, and beautiful flowers bloom in our consciousness. The length of time we water a seed determines its strength. For example, if we stand in front of a tree and consciously enjoy it for five minutes, seeds of happiness will be watered in us for five minutes, and those seeds will grow stronger. During the same five minutes, other seeds, like greed, violence, fear, or pain, will not be watered. We have to practice this way every day.
Mindfulness is an important agent for our transformation, but it has been buried under layers of forgetfulness for a long time. When we first start to practice, our mindfulness will be weak, like a fifteen-watt light bulb. But with time and attention, it will eventually grow stronger, and after a few weeks, our mindfulness will be as bright as a one hundred-watt bulb.
Every time I see someone without roots, I see him as a hungry ghost. In Buddhist mythology, the term “hungry ghost” describes a wandering soul who is extremely hungry and thirsty but whose throat is too narrow for food or drink to pass through. On the full-moon day of the seventh lunar month in Vietnam, we offer food and drink to the hungry ghosts. We know that it is difficult for them to receive our offerings, so we chant a “Mantra to Expand Hungry Ghosts’ Throats.” There are so many hungry ghosts, and our houses are small, so we make these offerings in the front yard.
Hungry ghosts long to be loved, but no matter how much we love and care for them, they may not have the capacity to receive it. They may understand in principle that beauty exists, but they cannot touch it. Something seems to stand in their way, preventing them from touching the refreshing and healing elements of life. They want only to forget life, and so they turn to alcohol, drugs, or sex. If we say, “Do not do that,” they will not respond. They have heard enough admonitions. What they need is something to believe in, something that proves life is meaningful. We all need something to believe in. To help hungry ghosts, we have to listen to them, provide them with an atmosphere of family, and help them experience something good, beautiful, and true.
One afternoon in Plum Village, I saw a woman who looked exactly like a hungry ghost. Plum Village was beautiful at that time of year — the flowers were blooming and everyone was smiling — but she could not touch anything. I could feel her pain and suffering. She walked alone, and she seemed to be dying of loneliness with each step.
Our society produces millions of hungry ghosts, people of all ages — I have seen some not yet ten years old — who have no roots at all. They have never experienced happiness at home, and they have nothing to believe in or belong to. This is the main sickness of our time. With nothing to believe in, how can you survive? How can you find the energy to smile or to touch the linden tree or the beautiful sky? You are lost, and you live without any sense of responsibility. Alcohol and drugs are destroying your body.
Our government believes that the way to deal with the problem of drugs is to try to prevent drugs from being smuggled into the country and to arrest those who sell or use them. But the availability of drugs is secondary to the lack of meaning in the lives of so many people. If you abuse drugs or alcohol, it is because you are not happy — you do not accept yourself, your family, your society, or your tradition, and you want to renounce them all.
You have probably tried to believe in many things, but maybe they were too abstract and presented too coercively. Perhaps you thought science would help society or that Marxism would bring social justice, and your beliefs have been shattered. Even the God you prayed to — the one President Bush invoked to help the United States defeat Iraq — was too small. Many of the people who represented your traditions had not themselves experienced the deepest values of the tradition; they only spoke in its name and tried to force you to believe.
Mindfulness is our capacity to be aware in the present moment. To believe in mindfulness is safe, and not at all abstract. When we drink a glass of water and know that we are drinking a glass of water, mindfulness is there. When we sit, walk, stand, or breathe, and know that we are sitting, walking, standing, or breathing, our mindfulness grows quite strong.
Our body and mind have their roots in society, in nature, and in those we love. Some of us may not like to talk or think about our roots because we have suffered so much from the violence of our family or our culture. We want to leave these things behind and search for something new. It is easy to understand why we feel this way, but when we look deeply, we discover that our ancestors and our traditions are still in us. We may be angry at them, but they are still there, urging us to come back and connect with their joys and their pains. The moment we connect with them, a transformation takes place in us and our pain begins to melt away. We are the continuation of our ancestors, and the way for future generations.
Many people were abused or beaten by their parents, and many more were severely criticized or rejected by them. These people have so many seeds of unhappiness they don’t even want to hear their father’s or their mother’s name. When I meet someone like this, I always offer the meditation on the five-year-old child. “Breathing in, I see myself as a five-year-old child. Breathing out, I smile to the five-year-old child in me.” During the meditation, you try to see yourself as a five-year-old child. If you can look deeply at that child, you can see that you are vulnerable and can be easily hurt. Living unhappily, your father or mother made you suffer a lot. Now when you smile at that child in yourself, you smile with compassion. “I was so young and tender, and I received so much pain.”
You might also want to practice seeing your father as a five-year-old child, and smiling at that child with compassion. We are not used to seeing our father as a five-year-old. We think of him as having always been an adult — stern and authoritative. We’ve never seen our father as a tender young boy who can also be easily wounded by others. Now you may want to visualize him as a fragile, vulnerable, and easily hurt child. You can even look in the family album to study the image of your father as a boy. When you are able to visualize him as vulnerable, you will realize that he may have been the victim of his father. If he received too many seeds of suffering from his father, of course he will not know how to treat his own son or daughter well. So he made you suffer, and the circle of samsara continues. If you don’t practice mindfulness, you will do exactly the same to your children. The moment you see your father as a victim, compassion will be born in your heart. When you smile to him with compassion, you will begin to bring mindfulness and insight into your pain.
Meditation can teach us how to transform our suffering and obtain basic relief. But the deepest kind of relief is the realization of nirvana.
There are two dimensions to life, and we should be able to touch both. One is like a wave, and we call it the historical dimension. The other is like the water, and we call it the ultimate dimension, or nirvana. We usually touch just the wave, but when we discover how to touch the water, we receive the highest fruit that meditation can offer.
In the historical dimension, we have birth certificates and death certificates. When your mother passes away, you suffer. If someone sits close to you and shows concern, you feel some relief. You have that person’s friendship, support, and warm hand to hold. This is the world of waves. It is characterized by birth and death, ups and downs, being and nonbeing. A wave has a beginning and an end, but we cannot ascribe these characteristics to water. In the world of water, there is no birth or death, no being or nonbeing, no beginning or end. When we touch the water, we touch reality in its ultimate dimension and are liberated from all of these concepts.
Perhaps you thought science would help society or that Marxism would bring social justice, and your beliefs have been shattered. Even the God you prayed to — the one President Bush invoked to help the United States defeat Iraq — was too small.
The second-century philosopher Nagarjuna said nothing is ever born; it is already present. To be born means from nothing you become something; from no one, you become someone. But nothing can be born from nothing. A flower is born from soil, minerals, seeds, sunshine, rain, and many other things. Meditation reveals to us the nonbirth of all things. Life is a continuation. Even the day of our mother’s death is a day of continuation; she continues in many other forms.
A friend of mine has been taking care of her ninety-three-year-old mother. The doctors say her mother will die any day. For more than a year, my friend has been teaching her mother meditation exercises that have been very helpful. She began by watering the seeds of happiness in her mother, and now her mother becomes very alive every time my friend comes around. Recently she told her mother, “This body is not exactly yours. Your body is much larger. You have nine children, dozens of grandchildren, and also great-grandchildren. We are all continuations of you, and we are very happy and healthy. You are quite alive in us.”
Her mother was able to see that, and she smiled. My friend continued, “When you were young, you were able to teach many people how to cook and do many other things. You made people happy. Now we are doing the same thing; we are continuing the work you have begun. When you were young, you wrote poetry and sang, and now many of us write poems and sing. You are continuing in us. You are many beings at the same time.” This is a meditation on nonself. It helps her mother see that her body is just a small part of her true self. She understands that when her body departs, she will continue in many other forms.
Who can say that your mother has passed away? You cannot describe her as being or nonbeing, alive or dead, except in the historical dimension. When you touch your mother in the ultimate dimension, you see that she is still with you.
One day as I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but it was merging with the moist soil and preparing to appear on the tree the following spring in another form. I smiled at the leaf and said, “You are pretending.”
Everything is pretending to be born and pretending to die, including the leaf I almost stepped on. The Buddha said, “When conditions are sufficient, the body reveals itself, and we say the body is. When conditions are not sufficient, the body cannot be perceived by us, and we say the body is not.” The day of our so-called death is a day of our continuation in many other forms. If you know how to touch your mother in the ultimate dimension, she will always be there with you. If you touch your hand, your face, or your hair, and look very deeply, you can see that she is there in you, smiling.
Our thanks to Parallax Press for permission to reprint these excerpts from Thich Nhat Hanh’s most recent book of talks, Touching Peace: Practicing The Art Of Mindful Living. The book is available for $13 postpaid from Parallax Press, P.O. Box 7355, Berkeley, CA 94707.
— Cassandra Sitterly
