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Thich Nhat Hanh: “Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment.”

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Oct 17, 2023
Category: Spirituality

In 1997, it was my privilege to spend an evening with Thich Nhat Hanh. He didn’t use a telephone, so when I interviewed him for America Online, I had to pick him up and drive him to the office. TNH practiced “walking meditation.” That is, he walked very slowly, breathing very consciously, so that every breath and step become prayers. I knew this. And I walked very slowly. But not slowly enough. Every ten paces, I had to stop and go back. That is not because I am a speedwalker, but because I’m not truly mindful. In the interview room, I suspect I was vibrating at too high a frequency for him, for he put his hand on my back… and kept it there.

What was his core teaching?

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment.

That’s it. Fear of death? He had none — he didn’t believe death is real.

This body is not me. I am much more than this body. The space of 50 or 60 or 70 years is not my lifespan. It is not true that I did not exist before I was born. It is not true that I will no longer exist after the disintegration of this body. My ground of being is the reality of no birth, no death. No coming, no going. It is like water is the ground of being of a wave. The wave might be afraid of being or non-being. But if she knows that she is water, she will lose all her fear. Nothing is born…nothing dies. Birth and death cannot really touch us. If you know that, you will be able to enjoy every second of your daily life — even if you are in terminal illness.

Reading Thich Nhat Hanh is like having Michael Jordan teach you how to play basketball. The focus is not on the dazzling tricks. It’s about the fundamentals. And they are few — compassion, mindfulness, tolerance, breathing. Start anywhere.

I started with Essential Writings.

The Buddha confirmed that it is possible to live happily in the here and the now — even if you still have lots of pain and sorrow within yourself. Mindful breathing helps you become fully alive. And when you are really there, you can touch all the wonders of life that are available in this very moment for your enjoyment…for your nourishment…and for your healing.

Teachings on Love
In 183 pages, he reduces love to its essentials. Love is critical to a good life, he says, because everything else flows from it.
The first sentence of the book: “Happiness is only possible with true love.”
And what is true love?
It starts with loving yourself. Loving yourself first. Loving yourself most.
He offers some easy exercises to help you love yourself — or, in his words, to “stop treating yourself like an enemy.” From there, he moves on to your romantic partner. His advice is almost too simple: Be present. Listen. Respect. Encourage. This is not always pleasant: “The other person, like us, has both flowers and garbage inside.” But because we are intimate with our lover — because he/she takes us into the emotional and sexual equivalent of the Forbidden City — we have a special opportunity to live each moment fully and deeply.

Being Peace
This is his most popular book and his most accessible. Easy to see why:

Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby. To suffer is not enough. We must also be in touch with the wonders of life. They are within us all around us, everywhere, any time.
If we are not happy, if we are not peaceful, we cannot share peace and happiness with others, even those we love, those who live under the same roof. If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile and blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace. Do we need to make a special effort to enjoy the beauty of the blue sky? Do we have to practice to be able to enjoy it? No, we just enjoy it
.

Present Moment Wonderful Moment
If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert and a cup of tea, I will be equally incapable of doing these things joyfully. With the cup in my hands, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the fragrance and the flavor of the tea, together with the pleasure of drinking it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment. The time of dishwashing is as important as the time of meditation. That is why the everyday mind is called the Buddha’s mind.

Thich Nhat Hanh: Fragrant Palm Leaves
1962 to 1966 were key years for him. With some other “committed” Buddhist monks, he had tried to broker peace in his native Vietnam. No one — not even the Buddhist hierarchy — wanted any. In 1966, he was exiled. (He didn’t return to Vietnam for 40 years.)
“Fragrant Palm Leaves” begins in a cabin in the New Jersey woods. Thich Nhat Hanh is 36. American troops have not yet been dispatched to Vietnam, but there has already been death aplenty. Sick of heart, he has come to teach and study at Columbia University.
“Sick at heart” is a condition not unfamiliar to Americans. Sick at heart and not knowing how to make it better, or when it will change, or if life will get nastier before we feel a healing sun.
It begins with scenes of a peace that Thich Nhat Hanh can find anywhere, even in this unfamiliar country: “Some mornings I stay in the woods all day, strolling leisurely beneath the trees and lying down on the carpet of soft moss, my arms folded, my eyes looking up to the sky. In those moments, I’m a different person; it would probably be accurate to say that I am ‘my true’ self.” He is childlike: “Today I went with two eight-year-old boys to pick some [berries], and we stuffed our mouths until they turned blue!”
From the New Jersey woods to Vietnam, and then beyond — in just 212 pages, Thich Nhat Hanh takes you very far.

Living Buddha, Living Christ
Thich Nhat Hanh is completely comfortable with competing paths to spiritual wisdom:

To me, religious life is life. I do not see any reason to spend one’s whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. We human beings can be nourished by the best values of many traditions.

And by “life,” he means real life. That is: what we actually do, how we really express our values.

It seems too simple. But until I find something simpler, this will be my weapon against all the news that can bring me down::

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment.

A wonderful moment? Yes, because we get to be here. Yes, because someone in our lives has his/her hand on our back….