SpiriReadings
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Peace of the Divine Reality
- Thich Nhat Hanh
- I would like to share with you, written by a friend who died at the age of twenty- eight in Saigon, about thirty years ago. After he died, people found many beautiful poems he had written, and I was startled when I read this poem.
- Standing
quietly by the fence,
- you
smile your wondrous smile.
- I
am speechless, and my senses are filled
- by
the sounds of your beautiful song,
- Beginningless
and endless
- I
bow deeply to you.
- “You” refers
to a flower, a dahlia. That morning as he passed by a fence, he saw a little
flower very deeply, and, struck by the sight of it, he stopped and wrote
that poem.
- I enjoy this poem
very much. You may think that the poet was a Zen Master, because his way of
looking and seeing things is very deep. But he was just an ordinary person,
a poet. I don’t exactly know how or why he was able to see that, but it is
exactly the way we practice Buddhist meditation, the practice of
mindfulness. We try to be in touch with life in the present moment and look
deeply into the things that happen to usin the present moment. We do that
while we drink tea, while we walk, sit down, and so on. The secret of the
success is that you are yourself, you are really yourself, and when you are
really yourself, you can encounter life in the present moment.
- During the last
supper, Jesus Christ told his disciples: “ This piece of bread is my
flesh. Eat it.” That was a radical statement. He must have noticed that
his twelve friends were not awake, and when he saw that he wanted to say
something strong to wake them up, to them live fully in the present moment.
HE also told them: “This is my blood. Drink it.” Eating bread and really
eating the bread, drinking wine and really drinking wine, looking at a
flower, looking at the eyes of a child, at the Kingdom of God, at the pure
land, is right here.
- There is another
story about a flower, a story well known in Zen circles. One day the Buddha
held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks. He did not saw
anything for quit a long time. Suddenly, he smiled. He smiled because
someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. The name of the
monk was Mahakashyapa. Only one person smiled, and the Buddha smiled back
and said, “I have a treasure of insight I have transmitted it to
Mahakashyapa.” That story has been discussed by many generations of
Buddhists and people continue to look for it’s meaning. To me the meaning
is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he
wants you to see it. And if you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The
person who is not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the
flower in depth, and he smiled.
- That is the
problem of life. If we are not here, if we are not in the present moment,
fully ourselves, we miss everything. When a child presents himself to you,
with his smile, and if you are not really there, you are thinking about the
future or you are thinking about the past, or you are preoccupied with other
problems, then the child is not really there for you. The technique of being
alive, of living in the divine and earthly realities simultaneously, is to
go back to yourself. Then the child will appear like a marvelous reality;
then you can see her smile and embrace her.
- Living in this
marvelous reality, living in peace, is something we all want. But I would
like to ask: Do we have the capacity of enjoying peace? If peace was there
would we be able to enjoy it, or will we find it boring? To me, peace and
happiness and joy and life all go together, and we can experience the peace
of the divine reality right in the present moment. It is available, inside
us and around us. If we are not able to enjoy that peace, how can we make
peace grow?
- When I have a
toothache, I discover that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. That
is peace. I had to have a toothache in order to be enlightened, to know that
not having one is wonderful. My non-toothache is peace, is joy. But when I
do not have a toothache, I do not seem to be happy. Therefore, I look deeply
in the present moment and see that I have a non-toothache, that can make me
very happy already.
- I know a doctor
who lost he eyesight because during the night, she used the wrong eye drops,
and a few months later, she was not able to see anything. Every time she
wants to remember the lines on her son’s face, she has to call him close
to her and rediscover those lines with her fingertips. To her, to be able to
see things would be a miracle. She says that she would be in paradise if she
could recover her eyesight. According to the criterion, most of us are
already in paradise, because we have eyes capable of seeing. If we open our
eyes we can see blue sky, the white clouds, the clear stream, the flowers,
the beautiful child. We need only to be mindful that we have eyes, and they
can make us happy. An element of peace is already here.
- There are so many
things that can provide us with peace. Next time you take a shower or a
bath, I suggest you hold your big toes in mindfulness. We pay attention to
everything except our toes.
When we hold our toes in mindfulness and smile at them, we will find
that our bodies have been very kind to us. We know that any cell in our toes
can be cancerous, but our toes have been behaving very well, avoiding that
king of problem. Yet, we have not been nice to them at all. These kinds of
practices can bring us happiness.
- When we
contemplate the body in the body, we can discover these kinds of things.
When we contemplate the feelings in the feelings, we discover there are many
beautiful seeds of feelings in us. We can help ourselves to happiness and
joy, because if we do not, we shall be in touch only with the painful
aspects of life. We usually ask
- We were able to
smile a lot when we were young, but life is so hard that when we grow up, we
hardly smile. I know people who have not smiled for ten or twenty years. The
seeds of the smiles in the depths of their consciousness have not had a
chance to arise for a long time. They only ask “What is wrong?” So,
asking the question “What is right, what is wrong?” is a good beginning.
By asking in this way and paying attention to these fresh elements that are
healing and refreshing, we are able to heal ourselves, to grow, and to
generate joy and happiness for our sake and the sake of people around us.
- The Buddha
delivered a sermon on the mindfulness of breathing. He proposed sixteen
exercises for us to practice. These exercises are wonderful. The first exercise
is so simple: “ Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in. Breathing
out, I know that I am breathing out.” Just that. If you find these
sentences to long, you can say just two words: “in, out.” You breath in
and know that it is an in breath, and you breath out and say “out,”
recognizing it as an out breath. That is all.
- I think
Mahakashyapa was practicing this mindfulness when the Buddha held up the
flower, and
that is why the encounter between him and the flower was possible. All the
others were thinking, and their thinking blocked the encounter. Thinking is
important, but most of our thinking is useless. It seems that we have
cassette tapes in our heads, always running, day or night. We think of this
and we think of that, and it is difficult for us to stop. With a cassette,
we can’t just press the stop button. But with our thinking, we do not have
such a button. So when we think too much, we worry, we cannot sleep, we
block our encounters with the present moment.
- According to this
method of breathing, when
we breathing and out, we stop thinking, because “in, out” are not
thoughts- they are only words that help us concentrate on our breathing. If
we keep breathing in and out and smiling for a few minutes, we become quite
refreshed. We recover ourselves, and when we can recover the flower, the
piece of bread, the wine, the child. We do not miss anything that is
happening in the present moment.
- Breathing in and
out is very important, and it is enjoyable! You know, when you have a
stiffed nose, you cannot enjoy breathing. When you asthma, you cannot enjoy
breathing. But when the air is clean and you do not have asthma, it is
wonderful to breathe. To me, breathing is a joy that I cannot miss. Everyday
I practice breathing, and in my small meditation room is this sentence: “
Breathe, you are alive!” Just breathing and smiling can make us very
happy, and when we breathe consciously we recover ourselves completely and
encounter life in the present moment. To me, this is the Kingdom of Heaven.
The real miracle is not to walk on water, but to walk on the earth, to be
alive in the present moment. If we live in mindfulness, it is possible to
encounter God right in the present moment while we are washing the dishes,
looking at the flower, looking in the eyes of a child.
- When we are in
touch with the refreshing, peaceful, and healing elements within ourselves
and around us, we learn how to cherish and protect these things that make
them grow. These are the elements of peace and happiness available to us at
anytime. If we do not look closely at these simple things, we may find them
boring.
- There are people
who cannot enjoy simple pleasures, and that is why they seek drugs, alcohol,
sexual misconduct, and many other things that destroy them, their bodies,
their minds, and their families, and cause their children and grandchildren
to suffer. If we educate ourselves and our children on how to enjoy peace in
the present moment and to be happy with the refreshing and healing elements
that are available, we will avoid these kinds of traps. Life can be found
only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here,
and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in
touch with life.
-
- Thich Nhat Hanh
was born in central Vietnam in 1926, and at the age of sixteen he entered
the monkhood, which he thought would be a “ very pleasant thing to do.”
In 1966 he was invited by the Fellowship of Reconciliation to tour the
United States to describe the aspirations and the agony of the voiceless
masses of Vietnam. He met with hundreds of groups and individuals and was
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thomas Merton
called him “my brother.”
- Forged in the crucible of war and agony, his presence exudes love and gentleness.
- The title of his book, Being Peace, fully characterizes this remarkable man.
- from For the Love of God: Handbook for the Spirit edited by Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield
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