Tag Archives: Thich Nhat Hanh

a purposeful blindness

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There’s a purposeful blindness that centers our perception.  I went out into the garden that hugs the south side of the house.  It tends to be a haven for butterflies, moths, and assorted flying bugs and beetles.  Thankfully, the ravenous Japanese beetles have gone after decimating my lily collection over several years.

I go out with my camera into the adolescent growth which sways with a gangly awkwardness as I wade through it.  Usually this is enough to send most winged beings flying for safer havens.  But that’s only been my perception.  Going over several pictures, I was amazed to find little bugs and beetles, ants and bees tucked away in the recesses of petals and leaves.

The first few shots of this bee balm caught the blossom and my little green friend didn’t appear to me until I stepped into the shadows and enlarged the shot.  He (she?) must have been having a kindness practice day because when I turned back, he was still there, ready to pose in several more angles.  He walked daintily across the petals and paused on the crest of the flower.  It reminded me of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings; to walk on the earth as we would on lotus petals without crushing them.

It amazed me that he stayed for so long.  Mostly, it amazed me that I had not seen him in the viewfinder the first time.  And yet, it might have been a good thing because in the excitement of seeing that luminous green against the mouth-watering red, I might have become obsessed with getting the perfect picture and forgotten to be surprised by his tender relationship with the blossom.

Sometimes when we see everything, we miss what is important to truly see.

hearts that see the forest

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I’ve been immersed in books lately.  More so than usual.  Unfortunately these are not books I’m reading but books that are arriving, arriving at the door.  Books to be reviewed, books to be read, books to be studied.  Chaplaincy books, poetry books, psychology books, Buddhist books – all clamouring for attention.  And dare I mention the pixelated books in my e-readers that are sending me subliminal messages via 3G?  I can skate by with some of these by scanning the text and getting a feel for the author’s message.  Others are denser woods to navigate through and I risk not seeing the forest through the trees.

In some genres more than others, seeing the trees without losing sight of the forest is important.  The specifics of the book are critical to understanding the teachings they impart.  They must be practiced to be embodied and only then does a reflection on them have legs.  In particular, every book about Buddhism is a book with which one practices.  I’ve yet to find a book of this genre that didn’t demand this singular, whole-hearted commitment from the reader.  So, I quiver in fear at the number of Buddhist-y books stacking up on my shelf – I cleared out a single shelf solely populated by Buddhism-books-to-be-reviewed – because there are not enough life-times to practice what is contained between the covers of these volumes.

Somewhat disheartened, I stumbled around the megalithic bookstore in town wishing every sheet of paper bound between glossy laminates would leap up and flap their way up through the vents in the ceiling.  I stared at volumes of books by the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh – two of the most prolific authors.  I rolled glassy-eyeballs over titles that proclaimed liberation and peace were possible.  And I bought one of them.

I can justify this!  Really.  It comes to me unburdened by any publishing company’s publicity agent.  In fact, Parallax Press is rather firm in ignoring my offers to review Thich Nhat Hanh’s books despite the sycophantic waving of my brown Order of Interbeing jacket.  So, blessed by such ignominy, I feel free to recommend this book, unhampered by any need to please anyone.

Awakening of the Heart: Essential Buddhist sutras and commentaries initially looks like a compilation of Thấy’s various sutra commentary books.  It’s not.  It is 608 pages of revised translations and new commentaries on key sutras.  The Anapanasati, Satipatthana, Knowing a better way to live alone (my favourite and a life-changer), Better way to catch a snake, On the Middle Way, On Happiness, Eight Realizations of the Great Beings represent the Pali Canon.

The Heart and Diamond sutras bridge us into the Mahayana teachings.  Each sutra is given a clearer translation and deeper treatment in commentary than the previous single volumes.  This is followed with a series of sections focused solely on practice.  New and detailed exercises for the Awareness of Breathing and the Four Establishments of Mindfulness sutras are available in this voluminous text along with histories of and other texts related to the sutras.  The commentaries of the Diamond and Heart sutras are vastly expanded and directly connected to everyday life.

There’s a contemplative feel to the writing (though I admit often having trouble getting into Thấy’s style) and it promises to challenge anyone attempting a sutra study.  If ever there was a book that qualified being called a Buddhist Bible, this might be it.  I’m looking forward to practicing with it over my lifetime.

hearts that open

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At the end of a retreat conducted in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, retreatants are invited to take the Five Mindfulness Trainings.  These are the lay precepts cast in terms of positive engagement by Thich Nhat Hanh.  At one level that is so; at another, they continue to contain elements of the “do not” found in all calls for ethical behaviours.  While the terminology is not as directive, the commitment to not kill, not steal, not engage in sexual misconduct, not speak in anger or untruthfully, and not to use intoxicants is very much evident.  It’s unavoidable really.  The first step of any practice whose intention is well being begins with restraint.

This aspect of ethics is a touchy one for many of us.  We don’t like being told what to do; even more, we dislike being told what not to do.  And yet, in the liminal space between moving forward and holding back, there may be something valuable that can emerge.

So today, I’m watching the many ways in which I can act with restraint, hold back, pause.  Not as a process of denying myself or others but rather as a practice of awareness, of not obstructing the possibility of something different arising.

hearts that awaken

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I’m stretching my right brain a bit and trying out some abstracts. Thankfully, this is a low-risk proposal with few consequences to others and the world.  As with most of my spontaneous attempts at changing my mind’s stuck points, I started off on the wrong foot.  I thought I was splashing grays on the paper but in turned out to be sepia.  And yet… and yet… the tones seem quite at home and what was meant to be curtains of ethereal grays and blues ended up being something about earth and sky.

So it was with this past weekend.  Frank and I attended a retreat organized by the local sangha which practices in Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition.  It was being held in a center that is the home of the Grey Nuns (now the Grey Sisters).  The building is a residence for the Grey Sisters, a retreat center, a community resource for counselling and activities, and a museum of the history of the Grey Nuns.  And what started out as a practice of being in the present became a journey into my past.

You can read about the founder of the Grey Nuns, Marguerite D’Youville, here; a fascinating story of one woman’s life in the New France of the 1700′s, surviving adversity, and transforming her suffering into a path of service.  Her work with the poor was so reviled by the culture of the mid-1700′s that she and her supporters were mocked with the name “Les Grises” – the “grey women” or the “drunken women.”  Yet, despite the enormous opposition, they grew as a community and persevered to found and fund numerous hospitals, shelters, and schools globally.

Where does my past fit in this?  Walking down the hall of history at the retreat center and reading of the various schools the Grey Nuns founded, I realized I had been taught by them and two in particular might well have watered the seeds of practice for me.  As a child in elementary school, I only knew them as The Nuns and Sr. Leger in particular as the woman who saw through my defensive posturing and deep into my potential.  I lost touch with them only to reconnect with them in the Grey Nuns retirement residence in Montreal about 10 years ago when I was there for another retreat (in TNH’s tradition again).  There are few specific memories however what I remember of our relationship is set deep in my bones.  I know this because when went to meet Sr. Leger, I stood up taller and shook the cobwebs out of my brain.  She was never one to be tolerant of my tendency to sloppiness – whether it was in body or mind.  And through her persistence, I realize now that she transmitted to me an unrelenting devotion to the spirit of practice.

The pictures in the hallways were interesting relics.  What penetrated me was the interconnections and the surfacing of the past in a new perspective and with new understanding.