Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh
Visit
Magnolia Village October 10 - 13, 2005
Russell Smith - Waynesville, NC
Imagine being around thousands of years ago, and
having the chance to spend a few days with the Buddha or Jesus Christ. Or
going back to the 1800’s, and hanging out with Ramakrishna. That is how it
felt to be with Thich Nhat Hanh during his 80th birthday this week.
In case anyone was wondering, the trial mentioned in my
last blog post was settled on the eve of our picking the jury. The
settlement was very fat. Our previously wronged client was set right. With
lots of fees flowing toward me like a waterfall from the mountains after a
thaw, I wondered if I would take the opportunity to change my life. Or
squander it. In India, and in some other countries more
spiritually-oriented than the United States, there is a tradition, for
people other than priests and monks, to spend the first half of their lives
getting situated in the material world, and the second half on
transcendence. I’ve been looking forward to the second half. No more
excuses!
A few days after the money came in by wire, so did an
email, announcing a surprise visit by the living Buddhist saint, Thich Nhat
Hanh, who many believe is the closest thing we now have to the Buddha
himself. He was coming for a retreat at a monastery in of all places, rural
Mississippi. I’ve belonged to a Thich Nhat Hanh-oriented sangha in
Waynesville, North Carolina for about two years, so this news was like a
benevolent bolt of lightning. Several of us, those who could get out of
work, jumped all over it.
After nine hours of driving, we arrived at Memphis
International Airport, eager to meet and greet our teacher. He was flying
in from Los Angeles, where he recently had led a silent peaceful peace march
of thousands who carried no signs and shouted no slogans. The flight was
due in at 6:28 p.m. As we had counted the miles to the airport (100 miles
to Thich Nhat Hanh, 10 miles to Thich Nhat Hanh, etc.), now we counted the
minutes. I guess we were not living in the moment.
By the time the arrivals screen quietly announced that the
plane had landed, a crowd of about a hundred people had gathered as close as
possible to the gate, from States all over the Southeast. A monk distributed
yellow roses, one for each of us to hold. Travelers began emerging out of
the corridor from the flight, perplexed at all the smiling people holding
flowers. One passenger, probably a Hollywood agent, raised his arms and
laughingly pretended to greet his followers. When it looked like everyone
had arrived except the one we were waiting for, we knew better. We had
heard that Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh’s nickname, pronounced “tie”) walks
mindfully in meditation wherever he goes. He wisely does not believe in
hurrying for anything.
There was a bit of a commotion. Someone said, “There he
is!” I could see some of the monks in Thay’s entourage coming toward the
arrivals hall, but I could not see Thay anywhere. I mistakenly had
overlooked the little man with the brown wool ski cap. Sticking out from
under the cap were his funny ears. His mouth showed a faint smile and buck
teeth. Brown robes stuck out from under a brown winter jacket that was
about as big as he was. Below the brown robes, he wore little brown socks
and little brown clog shoes. He paused at each person, looking him or her
in the eyes and nodding in gratitude, as he accepted a rose from each. The
look he gave me was unforgettable, and beyond description. Call it wishful
thinking, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, or even a cliché, if you want, but
it seemed as if in Thay’s small brown eyes was the answer to all of life’s
questions.
The whole time in the airport, as he personally
encountered dozens of us one by one, not a word was spoken by anyone. I was
to learn later that this is an important part of Thay’s teaching. Although
he has written over 60 books, he believes that words, like thinking, often
become an obstacle.
The next day, in the sticks of Mississippi, the retreat
began. On the back roads along the way, we thought about the civil rights
workers who were killed there, and about the contrast between our good
fortune and the hardships endured by others. We thought about how Thich
Nhat Hanh had stood shoulder to shoulder with Martin Luther King, Jr. during
those times, and about how he had convinced King to oppose the war in Thay’s
native country, Viet Nam, perhaps leading to the ultimate end of that war.
No wonder King nominated Thay for a Nobel Peace Prize. In the parking lot
of the monastery, we ran into some earnest young people from Mississippi who
knew very little about any of this, but who were drawn to the retreat for
other good reasons. They said that in the Mississippi public schools, they
were taught that the civil rights struggles happened elsewhere. One nice
aspiring Buddhist boy from Hinds County did not even know that in his own
Mississippi home town, civil rights leader Medgar Evers had been shot to
death. This made me feel not so much more knowledgeable, but old, which is
fine!
Anyway, back to the retreat. There is so much to say
about it, but I think the gist can be encapsulated in just a few stories, or
probably less. One is our first walking meditation. The bell rang, the
people gathered, and Thich Nhat Hanh said, “come closer.” He said that
during the walk, when we breathe in, we should say to ourselves, “I have
arrived,” and that when we breathe out, we should say, again silently, “I am
home.” He then started walking, two steps for each breath. It was a surreal
event, with morning mists rolling in over dew-covered, green fields.
Laughing children intuitively knew to come close to him and hold his hands.
He led us in a very long, mindful, silent trip through the fields, down
rocky gullies, through trees, and again through more fields. At one point,
he sat down in the wet grass, and we all sat around him. Thich Nhat Hanh,
an oft-quoted scholar and former professor at Columbia and the Sorbonne, led
us in what some might say are unbearably silly songs, but which I now am
convinced are profound. Here are the lyrics to one of them:
"Breathing in, breathing out,
Breathing in, breathing out,
I am blooming as a flower,
I am fresh as the dew.
I am solid as a mountain,
I am firm as the earth.
I am free.
Breathing in, breathing out.
Breathing in, breathing out.
I am water, reflecting what is real, what is true.
And I feel there is space, Deep inside of me.
I am free, I am free, I am free."
Later in the day, we all had a silent, mindful lunch with
Thay in the meditation hall. That was followed by Dharma discussions in the
afternoon, silent dinner, and then talks on “The Five Mindfulness
Trainings,” also known as The Five Precepts. At one point in a ceremony,
Thay dipped a rose upside down in a glass of water, and patiently and slowly
walked throughout the hall, dripping water from the rose onto the tops of
each of our heads.
At a previous retreat, someone said, “I have begun to hate
our silent meals.” He or she asked, “How can we draw energy from the Sangha
when we, mostly strangers, are stopped from developing the relationships we
need to be a Sangha?” This is a condensation of Thay’s answer:
“Dear friends, you have been eating and talking for many,
many years. We only have twenty-one days to practice together. We
shouldn’t believe that talking is the only way to communicate; talking may
be an obstacle to communication…. When we share a meal in mindfulness, the
object of our mindfulness is the food. We communicate with the cosmos and
recognize the food as a gift from the cosmos. If we are careful, we can
communicate with the sunshine, the clouds, the Earth, with everything…. The
second object of our mindfulness is the person sitting with us…. You don’t
need to talk to communicate. If you sit and radiate peace, stability, and
joy, you are offering something very special to the other person…. True
communication is possible in silence. Silence can be very elegant. It is a
method of training.”
The next day, before walking meditation, Thay said nothing
at all. Once again, we mindfully and meditatively followed him through the
fields and forests. This time, by luck or whatever (I hope it wasn’t
pushiness), I ended up next to him for most of the walk. Once again, after
much walking, he picked a place in a meadow to sit down. By virtue of my
lucky position, I ended up sitting a few feet across from him. This time,
he said nothing.
As we all sat in the morning fog, I watched him pick a
blade of grass to play with a grasshopper. As we all waited eagerly for any
pronouncement that he might care to make, he took the blade of grass,
stripped it in half, rolled it with his fingers, put it in his mouth, and
blew it like a toy whistle. That was his only pronouncement for the
morning. Everybody laughed.
We then sat in silence for a long time, as Thay
alternately played with the grass in front of him, and looked deeply into
the faces around him. He did not look at me, although I wanted very much
for him to do so. In the long, long silence, I looked down and became lost
in thoughts of contracts for film shoots, unreturned business emails and
phone calls, and the like. After a very long time, I woke up from my
diversions, looked up, and saw Thich Nhat Hanh staring directly at me. This
was as if to say, "Russell, whenever you are finished with your useless
thoughts, we’ll go."
I looked into his peaceful eyes, and forgot about my thoughts. He then
stood up, and led us on a long, wonderful walk back to the meditation hall.
If there was a recurring theme for me during the retreat, it was that
whatever I want or need, it is always under my nose, without me being aware
of it.
I wanted and needed Thay’s gaze, and it was there without
me knowing it. When we were late for breakfast, I was pathetically scraping
a tray like a hungry ghost, for the tiniest bits of mashed potato, out of
fear of being too famished to appreciate the retreat. I failed to realize
that at the end of the breakfast line was a big pot of stew, full of
potatoes and other more tasty vegetables. Later, I regretted not bringing a
camera, and wondered if I could possibly ask for an autograph from Thay to
memorialize the event. I agonized about it, not wanting to act like a
tourist, and ended up not having the nerve to ask. Later, after I agreed to
accept The Five Mindfulness Trainings, there was an elaborate ceremony in
which Thay issued to me (and several dozen others who agreed to take the
plunge into aspiring Buddhahood), a “Five Mindfulness Trainings
Certificate,” signed by him as my “Ordination Teacher” and addressed to me
personally, even giving me a “Dharma Name.”
So what is the lesson? It’s the same old one that I’ve
been trying to learn and relearn like a bad student for a long time. To
paraphrase the Bible, “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all other
things shall be added upon you,” including, but not limited to, gazes,
potatoes, and autographs. Or as Sri K Pattabhi Jois puts it more
succinctly, "Practice, and all is coming." Thay teaches that by mindfully
breathing in, and breathing out, we can eventually and fully realize that
there is nothing to achieve -- a realization that is the greatest
achievement of all.
