Tonight,
I had planned to talk about Thich Nhat Hanh,
The great and wise Zen master and teacher who died just about a month ago at age 95 in his home temple in Vietnam.
But it also seems critical to acknowledge the grief of the war in Ukraine.
And so in Thich Nhat Hanh's honor,
I start with a story back in the 1970s when I was coming and going from Thailand and living there for some years as a monk.
There was a lot of conflict in the streets of Bangkok between the military dictatorship that had taken over the government and the protesting students.
And there were barricades that were there in the center of the city,
Not far from the grand palace and the government buildings.
And the fighting had escalated so that students had been shot and killed and Molotov cocktails.
And it was really getting terrible.
And there seemed to be no way to de-escalate it.
And then one morning,
Probably starting very early in the dark,
A meditation master from one of the forest monasteries called together his monks and nuns.
And they traveled to Bangkok and walked on foot along the way.
Then after dawn broke,
They walked and they simply stood in their robes silently with their bowls between the two lines,
Between the soldiers and the government side and the students on the other side.
And they stood and stood and stood for a good part of the day,
Just peacefully.
And then finally they left.
And somehow their presence of peace was powerful enough,
The respect for the robes and for what they carried of the treasures of the Buddha,
That everyone took a breath and the negotiations between the students and the government and military leaders began to take a new turn.
And after that,
An avenue to peace was found.
So here we are again with a war in Europe and Ukraine.
But of course,
Our media tends to be Euro North American centric,
Much of the world and Western media and very white centric.
And in fact,
There's the wars that are going on in Burma,
All in the ethnic states and the war in Eritrea and Ethiopia and continuing in Libya and South Sudan and Mali and so many places.
And it gets off of our radar.
But it's happening as we did in our compassion meditation.
It's happening to grandmothers holding their grandchildren.
It's happening to young people being conscripted or losing their chance to make a life,
To farmers and poets and merchants.
So let's take a breath and pause as we did in our compassion practice and hold all those places and struggles in our heart.
In some way,
It seems so foolish,
Almost astonishing that people would do this.
And yet,
And yet we do as human beings.
So now our heart cries,
We have grief and tears and shared sorrows and care.
I was with Thich Nhat Hanh at a gathering at one of the Zen centers on a particular day of his teachings.
And one of the students wanted to ask him about karma and they raised their hand and they said this,
They said,
Tai,
Which was what he was addressed as his teacher.
Is there such a thing as collective karma?
Why did the Vietnam American war happen to Vietnam,
Where we dropped more bombs on these little countries,
Cambodia and Vietnam and Laos,
Each country like the size of Michigan or Wisconsin,
More bombs than the entire of World War II,
Millions of tons.
Why did this happen to the Vietnamese people?
And he paused and his eyes got very soft.
And he looked out back and he said,
It didn't happen to the Vietnamese people.
It happened to all of us.
That is the deeper truth.
As it says in the Buddhist teachings and elsewhere in the wisdom teachings of the world,
In war,
There are no victors.
Hatred never ends by hatred,
But by love alone is healed.
And one of the first verses of the Buddha,
He says,
Better to conquer yourself than a thousand men in battle.
And I'm leaving it in the masculine,
Even though I often will change it to make it more inclusive,
But I'm sorry to say it's more accurate.
It's easy to get caught up in the war if you watch the media as if it's a video game in the kind of heroism of it.
Here are these Ukrainians now armed with javelin and Stinger missiles to bring down helicopters and blow up tanks.
And I could even feel myself get a little excited,
Like,
Yeah,
Fighting for the underdog there.
And then I realize in a moment that there's young men in each of those tanks,
Or young women,
But probably young men,
That there's young people in those helicopters,
That nobody is excluded from that suffering.
Promise me,
Says Thich Nhat Hanh,
This day while the sun shines upon some part of the earth,
Promise me,
Even as they strike you down with a mountain of hatred and violence and crush you,
Even as they dismember you,
Remember,
Brother or sister,
Humans,
Men,
Women are not our enemy.
The only thing worthy of you is compassion,
Invincible,
Limitless,
Unconditioned.
And even as you face this,
A smile will bloom like a flower.
For when you face the beast of war with your courage intact and your eyes kind,
And your smile blooming as a flower,
Those who love you and behold you across 10,
000 worlds of birth and dying will bow as well.
And he saw this.
He lived in it.
Wisdom says,
Don't look at the results,
But look at the causes and conditions,
Because it's not this war,
That war,
Those people doing it.
It's us.
The $3 trillion spent every year on military in this world.
The US is by far the largest of these,
Spending more than the next nine countries all put together.
We are also the largest exporter of weaponry in the world,
Way more than anybody else,
Sending killing machines of all kinds to countries all over the world and then worrying,
Why aren't we safe?
We have defunded the State Department.
We have refused the repeated efforts starting at the time of the Constitution from one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence,
Benjamin Rush,
Who wanted to start a Department of Peace parallel to the Department of War.
And year after year,
People have proposed a Department of Peace in Congress only to have it ignored or voted down.
There has to be a better game than war for human beings.
Competition,
Yes,
But some other way.
We sell all these weapons for our trade balance to import cheaper goods or luxury goods.
Who are we?
What is our moral center?
So when we look at war,
We have to look at the war in ourselves as well.
What to do?
What can we do in a world,
As Thich Nhat Hanh says,
Burning with suffering and hatred?
What must we do?
And his instruction is very simple,
To stop.
Probably his best selling book of all is Being Peace.
Out of his hundred books,
This carries the voice of being peace.
To stop making enemies wherever they are.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
The great Russian dissident and poet who was in the gulags in Siberia,
Suffered tremendously.
He said,
If only it were so simple.
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
And who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?
To stop making enemies.
I think of the Ukrainians I had,
Great grandparents who came from Kiev and parts of Ukraine,
And how many Jews in Ukraine were killed during the Holocaust.
Huge numbers.
And yet they have a Jewish president now.
As that prayer from John O'Donoghue that I read to you,
As the fever of day comes toward twilight,
May all that is strained in us come to ease.
May those who enjoy the privilege of peace not forget their tormented brothers and sisters,
That the wolf might lie down with the lamb,
That our swords be beaten into plowshares and no hurt or harm be done anywhere along this holy mountain.
Stop making enemies.
Make prayers.
Make blessings.
This is our moral task.
It's really the task of our human hearts.
You know it,
I know it,
We know it together.
I was recently on the campus at Spirit Rock.
It's the middle of the two month silent retreat.
And it was just beautiful to see people walking quietly,
People sitting in meditation.
The campus is mostly closed to outsiders to keep it safe and protected.
And when I was there reflecting about teaching tonight,
I remembered the times that we hosted Thich Nhat Hanh.
And one of the times he came,
There was a gathering,
Perhaps 2000 people flooded into Spirit Rock,
And we had built a platform for him to teach with big loudspeakers and so forth down near the stream where the current dining hall is.
And people sat up on the hillside all the way up to where we now have the upper retreat hall,
2000 of them.
And Thich Nhat Hanh's monks and nuns sat on the platform,
Passed out apples and had people pause and slowly eat and taste and savor the cloud and the sun and everything in that apple was beautiful and sit quietly and kind of get prepared for Thich Nhat Hanh and his teaching.
And then all of a sudden,
I felt something happening and I turned around,
I've been looking from that stage up to all 2000 people.
And there,
100 yards back or 150 yards back,
Thich Nhat Hanh had appeared on the road walking toward us.
And he walked so slowly and with such dignity and presence,
He talks about walking meditation,
Letting each foot kiss the earth.
And as he did,
I could feel all 2000 people go,
Ah,
Oh,
Oh my heavens,
Oh,
That's what it's like to really be present,
To carry a sense of peace and attention and love.
And it says in the Dhammapada that the perfumes of Rose Bay and Sandalwood and Jasmine travel only as far as the wind,
But the perfume of goodness,
Of the heart of a being,
Of their goodness spreads far and wide,
Arising even to the heavens.
And there was a kind of sweetness and perfume,
Peacefulness and strength just in Thich Nhat Hanh's presence and his steps.
Being with him at one teaching that he was giving,
We gathered a number of us who were in the role of Buddhist teachers with him at Green Cold Zen Center at one point.
And as he was teaching mindfulness and attention to breath and so forth,
He talked,
As he often did about putting a half smile on your face,
Of breathing in with ease and breathing out with joy.
And he talked quite a bit about joy,
But the strange thing was,
As I sat there near him and listened to him,
I started to feel sad and grief in my heart,
Even as he spoke of joy.
I was confused.
So later we had lunch together and I sat near him and I said,
Ty,
I'm confused.
You talked about joy and bringing the smile and happiness into meditation,
But as you did,
I felt this wave of sorrow and grief.
And what I don't know,
Because we pick up things from each other,
You know how that is.
What I don't know is,
Was it mine or was it yours?
And his eyes again got very soft and he said,
I've seen so much suffering.
He said,
That's why I must teach joy.
Why I must do it.
And you know,
He started that school during the Vietnam American War where not taking sides of the North and the South and bringing the youth for social services in to serve everyone and a number of the young people he brought together were killed.
If you can imagine bringing people who love you and you care about to do something and then being killed.
Thich Nhat Hanh says,
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.
You must also be in touch with the wonders of life.
They are within us and all around us,
Everywhere,
Anytime.
So suffering,
The first noble truth of the Buddha,
Is not the end of the story.
There is also the noble truths of the causes and the path to the end of suffering.
And that path is not a grim duty that one has to do.
But as Thich Nhat Hanh invited through his poetry and presence,
He said,
It's like the soft spring rain,
The breezes that blow,
The causes and conditions that make these happen.
It is a happiness that is unborn.
There is a vastness and a silence.
And this is your birthright.
This is your true home.
He said,
This is where you will find me.
I am vastness and silence and love.
Thich Nhat Hanh had a major stroke about five years ago,
Before five or six years ago.
And he was in France at the time and taken to the hospital and for some months given intensive medical care because he could hardly speak anything,
Maybe only move one arm a little bit.
And then he came to San Francisco.
He was brought to San Francisco by some folks who really loved him and were inspired by him.
He had a group of monks and nuns.
And they were staying in the city.
And Trudy,
My beloved wife and I,
Would go and sit in the mornings sometimes there.
And they set up in the living room of one of these big houses where Thich Nhat Hanh had been staying,
A kind of a meditation hall or zendo.
And so people would sit,
Those around him,
Some of the monks and nuns,
A few visitors,
And then he would be wheeled in.
This was the last day before he was to return to France and then eventually return to Vietnam.
So he was wheeled in and we all sat.
And when the bell rang to the end of the sitting out of that very deep silence that was present,
Thich Nhat Hanh raised his head and looked around.
He couldn't really speak much at that point at all.
And he looked at us.
Trudy described it this way.
She said,
He was looking with two different eyes.
One eye was an eye on eternity.
Outside of time,
After his stroke,
Here he was 90 years old,
Just seeing the vastness and the play of birth and death and joy and sorrow and human incarnation coming and going.
An eye on eternity.
And the other eye peered at each one of us.
So present and nodded as he could because he knew everyone in the room.
Oh,
You and you,
I'm about to leave for France.
Oh,
I see you.
I am present.
I am with you.
You are with me.
And this is where he lived in the vastness and in the reality of the present moment.
With mindful,
Loving attention to each moment and each thing with care.
One aspect of Thich Nhat Hanh and part of his brilliance was that he was able to take ancient teachings and sometimes very deep teachings and make them really simple.
Some of it seemed to come through his love of children,
As you could see in that photo that we had at the beginning of the meditation.
Where he was holding hands with the children doing a walking meditation.
Where he explained that sitting in meditation,
He explained to the children,
Is like having a glass of that kind of unfiltered apple juice that's sort of cloudy.
And if you place the glass of unfiltered apple juice on the table and just wait quietly,
Gradually the particles will settle.
And pretty soon it will become transparent and clear and you can see through it.
And so he said to the children,
Let yourself settle like the glass of apple juice.
Or another time he said,
It's like let yourself become a pebble that's thrown into the river and slowly sinks to the bottom and rests there even as it's caressed by the water that goes by.
He invited the children and the child of the spirit in each one of us into the reality of the present,
Into the moment of eternity,
Which is now.
When you sit and meditate,
When I sit,
Practicing compassion,
Mindful loving awareness,
One thing we can do is to step back in a moment to acknowledge what's happening.
Here's the thoughts,
Here's the emotions.
We can even name them.
Sadness,
Excitement,
Planning,
All the things the mind's doing,
All the emotions of the heart.
And when we name them gently,
We can become that vast perspective that's not caught and not identified and just says,
Oh yes,
This is worry.
This is love.
This is longing.
This is analyzing and planning or anxiety or creativity.
This is grief.
We acknowledge it and we become the space,
The heart space of loving,
Loving awareness of mindful loving awareness itself.
For this is who we really are and in a moment we can remember this and be free.
Sounds easy,
Doesn't it?
It is actually in a moment and it's fantastic.
But then,
Ah yes,
There's the rub.
But then we start to see how the mind is untrained.
And even though we can step out and step back and disidentify and not be so caught,
Then the freight train of thoughts and plans and memories and emotions and all those things starts up again or continues,
Gets full,
Fills our consciousness.
So the second thing is that we can train the mind.
And here Thich Nhat Hanh invites us to use the breath,
That most central teachings of the Buddhist mindfulness.
And he adds his own flavor,
Which comes from the Anapanasati Sutta,
From the text on the training of the mind and heart with the breath.
We use this as a phrase,
Breathing in,
I calm the mind,
Breathing out,
I sit with ease or different versions of that,
Calm and ease,
Inviting beneath all the busyness of the mind,
The attention to settle,
The body and mind to come together,
The steadiness of concentration to grow so that the disturbances on the surface of the ocean are distant from the deep still illness that can come underneath them all.
And this training of the mind to settle and focus and quiet and concentrate is another dimension of our meditation and a tremendous gift because it allows us to be really present for each thing.
Making art or writing a poem or writing code or driving or playing golf or making love or doing business or looking in the eyes of those around us or taking a walk with each step quite present.
Fast perspective,
Training of the mind,
Settling,
Focusing.
And the other is to understand that mindful loving awareness is not about complacency.
Once you quiet the mind and open the heart,
There's one other pesky little thing that you have to attend to,
Dear ones.
That's called your life.
You have to change your life.
You have to change the rhythm of your life and the inner dimensions of it so that you notice when there's lack of forgiveness or grasping or fear,
Anxiety,
Confusion and so forth.
And instead of living from fear or grasping or frustration or anger,
You more and more turn to live from gratitude,
From love,
From fearlessness.
You become the bodhisattva embodied.
You take those bodhisattva vows,
May I be of service to all,
May I help alleviate the suffering of beings.
And you embody them in your life.
Fear is an insult to the imagination,
Says Wade Davis,
Wonderful anthropologist and writer.
Despair is an insult to the imagination.
Because what's possible for you and me and human beings is freedom,
Gratitude,
Love,
Fearlessness.
We can learn it,
We can embody it,
And we can teach it to others.
And Thich Nhat Hanh,
Unlike the traditional role of many monks and nuns,
Chose to speak out against war,
To travel,
To become a peace activist in ways that the Buddha did at times in his own life.
He pleaded with all he could see,
Starting in Vietnam and of course in his famous relationship with Dr.
Martin Luther King,
For us to stop the war,
To stop the war inwardly and outwardly.
And one of the precepts that those who followed Thich Nhat Hanh and his order would take,
Aware of the great suffering caused by war and conflict,
We are determined to cultivate nonviolence,
Understanding and compassion all in our lives to promote peace education,
Mindful meditation,
Mediation and reconciliation within families,
Communities,
Nations,
And the world.
How could it be that we defund the State Department?
How could it be that we don't create a Department of Peace?
But what Thich Nhat Hanh also said was,
As the Buddha in his phrase,
To conquer oneself is greater than conquering a thousand in battle,
Is you must always start with yourself.
And I remember teaching with Thich Nhat Hanh at a big conference at UCLA,
There were probably 2000 people,
And we were alternating,
Teaching in the morning and the afternoon,
It was on Buddhist and Western psychology in part,
And it was a weekend,
A decade or 15 years ago,
When the US was about to bomb somewhere in the Middle East,
I don't remember exactly,
Because we are a warlike nation,
I'm sorry to say,
And we've done a lot of harm in the world.
And so many of us had been part of demonstrations going out,
As I will myself again standing up with the people of Ukraine,
Wearing black arm bands,
There was a whole group of us in that hall who had been out in demonstrations,
And we were about to do a walking meditation,
2000 people slowly and mindfully in a circuit around the UCLA campus.
So I said to Thich Nhat Hanh,
I said,
Ty,
Why don't we give out black armbands to everyone,
So that we can also stand against the bombing,
Which I knew he cared about so much.
And he paused and he said,
No.
He said,
When we walk,
We just walk.
When we walk,
We're not demonstrating for or anything,
We become the peace that the world needs.
And this was part of his message,
To not make enemies anywhere.
In meditation,
He described sitting and taking tea with Mara.
And you all remember who Mara was,
The Indian god or whatever form being that came when the Buddha was seated under the tree of enlightenment with all his armies first,
With all the temptations,
The Buddha was unmoved,
And then with the armies of Mara and the aggression,
All these things that you meet,
By the way,
If you happen to come on retreat at Spirit Rock,
Mara is waiting for you,
As you said.
And then Mara came in the form of doubt until the Buddha finally touched the earth with his hand and called on the mother earth herself to bear witness to his pure heart,
To his ability to awaken.
He raised his hand and touched every spear and flaming arrow with the heart of compassion,
And they turned flower petals at his feet.
But it turns out in the Buddhist text that Mara comes back 40 more times during the Buddhist life.
And each time the Buddha recognizes him,
Oh,
Is that you,
Mara?
And Mara then goes away,
Generally speaking.
Once in a while,
There's a little negotiation where the end of the last year of life,
Mara says you've lived a long time,
You've succeeded in everything you wanted,
You have a sangha and community,
Laypeople,
Monks,
Nuns,
Isn't it time to hang it up?
And the Buddha said,
Yes,
Within this year,
It will be the end of my life.
So they had a little dialogue,
But mostly,
I see you,
Mara.
And Mara goes away.
Thich Nhat Hanh took this and he said,
Oh,
When Mara comes,
And he told a beautiful little story as he did,
There's Buddha sitting quietly with his attendant Ananda nearby,
And then someone lurking nearby comes up and it's Mara,
And Ananda,
His attendant,
Tries to get rid of Mara.
And the Buddha says,
Wait,
Is that my old friend Mara who's come?
Would you set out some tea for him,
Ananda?
And they sit together and they talk about their lives.
And the Buddha says,
It must be very hard for you to be Mara all the time.
Mara says,
Yes,
It's a really terrible job.
And the Buddha says,
Well,
It's not that easy being Buddha either.
Let me tell you what they do with my teachings.
Oh.
And so they talk in that way.
And then Mara goes on his way.
But Thich Nhat Hanh said,
When Mara comes,
You might serve tea a little bit,
But don't let him stay very long.
Mara of aggression or greed,
Mara of uncertainty or self-doubt,
All of these forms of Mara.
You can take tea,
You can even say to your anxiety and your fear and your self-doubt,
You can even bow as you sit quietly in their eyes and say,
Thank you.
Thank you for trying to protect me to your anxiety.
Thank you for trying to take care of me.
I'm okay just now,
Just where I am.
I'm okay just where I am.
And as Thich Nhat Hanh said,
The present moment becomes a wonderful moment.
When you let yourself see Mara come,
Acknowledge and go,
And who you are is the Buddha,
Unshaken and unmoving,
Compassionate and wise for all.
One of the greatest gifts of Thich Nhat Hanh was this profound simplicity of taking the most complex teachings,
For example,
The teachings of dependent origination with the 12 links,
The Patitcasamupada,
And translating it as interbeing.
His famous poem saying,
In this sheet of paper is the tree from which it came and the logger who cut the tree down,
The rain that gave nurturance to that tree,
The earthworms in the soil that let its roots drink deep,
The wife of the logger who made the sandwich and lunch for that logger that day when he cut the tree down and the people in the mill.
In this paper are rain clouds and storms and sunshine and human beings,
Mechanical equipment,
Everything is in this paper.
And he showed in the simplest way the very deep truth that we need to know,
The deep truth that we are with the pandemic,
With the calls for racial justice and economic justice,
With climate change,
We are interconnected.
There's a beautiful essay in the new version of Being Peace that was just published.
It's kind of the process by one of our most beloved and celebrated elders,
Jane Goodall.
And she talks about how she never had the chance to be with Thich Nhat Hanh,
But reading and seeing his words and hearing his words touched her so deeply,
She said,
Because while he was there teaching interdependence and not making enemies anywhere in Vietnam and around the world teaching peace,
She said,
There I was in Gombe,
And I was seeing the interdependence of all life in the same way between the trees and the chimpanzees and the other animals that lived on this land,
Movement of the sun and the rain.
I immersed myself until I became part of that landscape and part of that life in my consciousness in ways that I'd never known before.
And she writes about how important and how critical it is to have this sense of preciousness and wonder and connection at this time,
Especially with the global climate crisis,
That we are not separate.
Remember that poem from David White,
Where he says,
The great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation.
The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink.
The cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and see the good in you at last.
All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves.
Everything is waiting for you.
And I love this poem from an aboriginal elder in Australia.
And of course,
I can't read it with his words and accent,
But I'll try to read it to you because it has that same consciousness that Thich Nhat Hanh teaches and that Jane Goodall embodies and that you can remember because it's true.
It's from Bill Neige,
An aboriginal stockman,
Road worker,
Song man,
Whose long stream of poetry essay is titled Story About Feeling.
And he's chants and sings about belonging.
Well,
I'll tell you about this story,
About story where you feel.
Listen carefully this,
You can hear me.
I'm telling you because earth,
Just like mother and father or brother of you,
That tree,
Same thing.
Your body,
My body,
I suppose.
I'm same as you,
Anyone.
Tree working when you sleeping and dream.
That star you work in there.
See?
It working.
I can see.
Always at night.
If you lie down,
Look careful.
It working.
See?
When you sleep,
Blood pumping.
So you look,
You go pink,
You come white.
See him work.
He work.
In the night you dream,
You lay down.
That star working for you.
Tree grass working for you.
And it's so extraordinary because he uses that word E sort of genderless,
You know,
It's not you or he or something or she,
It's E.
It's us.
Thich Nhat Hanh was a great world teacher.
And he combined the Mahayana tradition of Vietnam and Zen and some of the most profound Mahayana teachings of mind only school and the Theravada,
Which they had in Zen center.
And some of his teachings weren't that simple.
If you look at a book called Transformation at the Base,
50 Verses on the Nature of Consciousness,
It's one of the most profound essays on the nature of mind that a teacher is offered in modern times.
And underneath it,
The principle that he exclaims again and again is whatever seeds in consciousness you water will grow.
So this asks for your reflection.
Are you watering seeds of forgiveness?
Are you watering seeds of generosity?
You can,
You know.
Are you watering seeds of patience?
Of compassion?
Of wonder?
Or what you water will grow?
Kind of amazing,
Our human incarnation,
Our consciousness is like this.
This is part of the depth of what the Buddha saw and offered as a way for us to awaken,
To awaken the wise heart,
To live with freedom.
Of course,
This is not just hagiography about a saint,
He was also human.
And one of my favorite stories about Thich Nhat Hanh,
He was going to give a teachings on the Brahma Vihara as the four expressions of the awakened heart,
Loving kindness,
Compassion,
Joy,
And peace or equanimity.
And he started to give a series of talks and people were sitting there in his center,
Listening to him because these are famous teachings that all these traditions hold.
It's like,
Okay,
He's giving these teachings,
We've heard him talk about love and so forth.
And then part ways halfway through the first lecture,
Or maybe at the beginning of the second lecture,
Because it's set as chapters in the book.
He changed from talking about love and the abstract and he said,
She was 18 years old when I first saw her walk down the steps in the temple in Chulai,
North Vietnam,
Or whatever the name of that temple was.
And he talks about falling in love with this young nun.
And all of a sudden people were going,
Oh yeah,
He's going on about loving kindness and compassion and joy,
Like sat up,
Oh,
He's telling a story.
And it's the real deal.
Because he was human as well as all of us.
He was so upset by the bombing that the US had started and so angry that he wouldn't even travel to the US for a while.
It was the trauma that he carried from being under those bombs in Vietnam was just too much.
And he could be tough.
And there were conflicts in his community,
Conflicts between some of his senior students in him or conflicts between the monastic or the laity or the Western students and Vietnamese students.
But it didn't matter.
He carried the great medicine,
The medicine of a free heart.
That's who he was.
When he first came to San Francisco Zen Center,
There was a kind of,
How to say it,
If not a disdain,
A kind of looking down on Theravada mindfulness practices,
Kind of second class compared to the poetry and rigor of Zen practice that's non dual.
And they thought mindfulness was somehow dualistic.
I'm going to become mindful.
And he went in and he said,
You don't understand Zen is mindfulness.
That is what Zen is.
It's the capacity to enter so fully into the present moment that you become that which you see,
That you see we are all of it.
The abbot of Zen Center at that time said Thich Nhat Hanh was like a cloud,
A snail,
And a piece of heavy machinery.
I love this description.
He described him a cloud,
A snail,
And a piece of heavy machinery.
He was a gateway,
A door to the infinite,
An invitation to us to remember who we really are to vastness and awakening.
He was a Buddha field and a magnet.
And you can feel it.
You even can feel it as you listen to me and remember and hear these words because he's here.
And when he died,
You know,
There were all the memorials and beautiful things written.
And he was shaking his head.
Even after he died,
Because he wrote before and he said,
People will tell you I died.
It is not true.
I've never died.
He said,
Look at the clouds in the sky.
They become rain.
They become snow.
They enter the land and the rivers and return to the oceans.
And the sunlight on the ocean brings them back up to be clouds in the sky.
A cloud can never die.
And neither can I.
I am you.
I am in you.
All of his teachings.
And I am you.
And you are me.
All of his teachings.
Just as Thich Nhat Hanh made himself a beacon of peace.
Just as he would not take sides,
But at the same time with tremendous courage stood up for peace everywhere,
Wherever he could.
He spoke,
He stood,
He walked,
He did all the things that would contribute to peace.
You can do the same.
I will.
I'll see you there.
To stand up and it's not just one place.
Although yes,
I may stand up for those in Ukraine and those in Eritrea and those in Myanmar as I have in other places to offer our hearts.
But we can also support the creation of a different world.
A department of peace.
The training of those who mediate,
Who understand the power of listening,
Deep listening and nonviolence that Thich Nhat Hanh taught.
We can work toward the elimination of oppression and injustice.
We can become the department of peace.
That's the invitation.
Nati santi parang sukham.
There's no higher happiness than peace,
Says the Buddha.
So let's sit quietly for a minute.
Just take this in and become it.
Yep.
Beautiful.
Breathing calm and ease.
The mind quiets.
The heart's offense.
And we become a being of compassion and peace.
We become a being of compassion and peace.
Thank you for your good hearts.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Good night.
