Revisiting Thich Nhat Hanh

This Labor Day weekend I am going on a pilgrimage with one of my dearest friends.  We are going to travel 6 hours round trip to visit the Blue Cliff Monastery in Pine Bush, New York.  According to the website, this monastery is one of several established by Vietnamese Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh “to share the practice of mindful living.”

I have long wanted to visit an active monastery ever since I read the book Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris in which the author shared her experiences of visiting and experiencing aspects of monastic life of the Christian tradition.

I myself have never been to a monastery that was active with monastic men and women.  The closest I’ve come, and this is really not close at all, is visiting several cathedrals in Italy where it was permissible to watch and listen to the monastic chanting, and spending time at 2 former Christian monasteries that had since been converted into centers for spiritual exploration.

But this weekend is different. This weekend, I will be attending an event called A Day of Mindfulness that is part of The Miracle of Mindfulness Tour when the monks and nuns who live in Plum Village, the monastery in France where Thich Nhat Hanh resides himself, visit the other monasteries established by Thich Nhat Hanh worldwide, and I am super excited!

Therefore, I have spent this past week revisiting Thich Nhat Hanh’s classic book Peace is Every Step to prime and prepare my mind for this event.  If you have never spent time with this book, I’d certainly recommend it. 

Below I’ve included just one small excerpt from the mini-chapter called “What’s Not Wrong?”  It happened to catch my eye because my last blog post had been titled “Why Not Me?” which struck me as similar in message.

In this piece, he says:

“We often ask, ‘what’s wrong?’ Doing so, we invite painful seeds of sorrow to come up and manifest. We feel suffering, anger, and depression, and produce much more seeds. We would be much happier if we tried to stay in touch with the healthy, joyful seeds inside of us and around us.” We should learn to ask, ‘what’s not wrong?’ and be in touch with that.”

After reading this I was moved to try to shift my perspective to one of abundance rather than scarcity in terms of all that is “right” with my life and the world around me--a shift that typically does not come without intention—and I must say I found it helpful in the sense that it re-calibrated my mind to something less distorted by emotion and judgment and more based in reality.

I am certain this one-day journey will be a catalyst for more shifts in my perspective.

One last note, this week I was also re-listening to a favorite song of mine “One Voice” by the Wallin’ Jennys.  If you aren’t familiar with it, I’ve included the lyrics below.

Song lyrics are sacred to me.  Before I learned to pray or even understood how a poem could be holy, I was being held by song lyrics. 

The lyrics to “One Voice” reminded me of what the possibilities might be for a whole group of men, women, children, lay people and monastics who come together with the single intention to practice mindfulness in unison.  What might that be like? What organically unfolds when a beautiful acapella voice suddenly is joined by a harmony?  The words in the photo above are written by Hanh.  I look forward to the experience of joining with others as we embody this practice and message.

More to come…

"One Voice"

By the Wallin’ Jennys

This is the sound of one voice
One spirit, one voice
The sound of one who makes a choice
This is the sound of one voice

This is the sound of voices two
The sound of me singing with you
Helping each other to make it through
This is the sound of voices two

This is the sound of voices three
Singing together in harmony
Surrendering to the mystery
This is the sound of voices three

This is the sound of all of us
Singing with love and the will to trust
Leave the rest behind it will turn to dust
This is the sound of all of us

This is the sound of one voice
One people, one voice
A song for every one of us
This is the sound of one voice
This is the sound of one voice.