Engaged Buddhism_Honoring Thich Nhat Hanh Part 2

This week we are honoring the life and teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh who passed away. When I was doing a little research for this talk, I found out that his name, the Thich part, means he's a child of the Buddha. He's in the clan of the Buddha.. And Hanh means action. So he was a man of action and his action was Engaged Buddhism. He was actively engaged in the social welfare of the world.

Transcript

So,

This is from Thich Nhat Hanh.

Mindfulness must be engaged.

Once there is seeing,

There must be acting.

Otherwise,

What's the use of seeing?

So this week we're honoring the life and the teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh who passed away last Saturday at ninety five.

And when I was doing a little bit of research for this talk I found out that his name,

The Thich part,

Means that he's a child of the Buddha.

He's in the clan of the Buddha,

Thich.

And Hanh means action.

So he was a man of action.

And his action was what I just read,

Engaged Buddhism.

He was actively engaged in the social welfare of the world.

And one of the extraordinary qualities of Thich was that he had this ability to speak and act without taking sides.

It's not about someone being right or about someone being wrong.

In one of his most famous poems,

It's called Call Me By My True Names,

He shares from the perspective of a young girl being raped by the sea pirate and the perspective of being the sea pirate.

I'll share this poem with you.

It's powerful.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird which when spring comes arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond.

And I'm also the grass snake who approaching in silence feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda,

Full skin and bones,

My legs as thin as bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the 12 year old girl refugee on a small boat who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,

My heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

Please call me by my true names so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once.

So I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names so I can wake up.

And so the door of my heart can be left open.

The door of compassion.

So part of our practice is to see beyond the opposites.

We talk a lot about opposites in this Buddhist path that we're on.

Suffering and happiness are opposites.

Wholesome and unwholesome are opposites.

Evil and goodness are opposites.

Left and right,

Up and down.

We can keep going on and on.

And what's true in reality is if there is happiness,

There is suffering.

If there is death,

There is life.

And if there's life,

There's death.

And we're all of this nature of these opposites also.

We are.

We are the starving child in Uganda and the arms dealer.

We are the frog and the snake.

Thay said our enemies are not human beings.

They are craving,

Anger,

Hatred,

Suspicion and despair.

He said the energy of mindfulness is healing and helps us recognize that.

When you suffer less,

You are lighter and more compassionate.

So our practice is to understand the roots of suffering.

And a lot of the time,

The root of our actions,

Whether they're good or bad,

Come from how we're cultivating our minds.

So are we cultivating our capacity for compassion,

For understanding?

That's what we do here in the morning time.

Or are we are we letting our conditioned views run the show?

Sometimes we do that too.

So Dharma practice is an active practice.

Doing is part of it.

And hopefully what we're doing is learning how to act in ways that are wise and healthy.

Free of strain or obligation.

Action is so important in the teachings of the Buddha.

He was referred to as a teacher of action.

And Thay was also a teacher of action.

So one action that is emphasized throughout of all of Thay's teachings is that simplicity of mindfulness.

Breathing in,

I know I'm breathing in.

Breathing out,

I know I'm breathing out.

To be consciously aware of our experience.

You know,

To live in awareness,

Knowing and recognizing what's happening moment by moment,

What's going on and not really interfering.

Like one of the characteristics of mindfulness is letting things be,

Just letting things be.

We don't have to act on every thought,

Every emotion.

So there is a certain passivity in mindfulness practice,

Making space and allowing and learning to kind of feel what's moving through us.

And oftentimes when things are moving through us that don't feel good,

We want to push them away.

So as we live our lives,

When we have to act,

If we are acting with mindfulness,

And we're informed by clear understanding of what's wholesome and what's not wholesome,

This may be more beneficial to us.

Back when I was at Spirit Rock,

They used to call it the sacred pause.

Mindfulness is kind of like the sacred pause,

The space that we give here and now to know what's here.

And then it gives,

Then there's opportunity.

We can see it,

Then we have choice.

But the problem,

The habit pattern is that we don't always see it.

And the practice definitely involves a degree of living a life of choice.

But we don't do that so much because you know our culture,

We're always so busy.

Trying to figure things out is so embedded in our culture here.

So our practice is really to begin to really practice and just when breathing in,

Know I'm breathing in,

Breathing out,

Know I'm breathing out.

And feel and sense and connect to ourselves when we say those phrases.

And when the mind goes off with planning some sort of retaliation against somebody or,

You know,

We recognize this is unwholesome or this is wholesome.

This thought,

This action is helpful or not helpful.

This rumination is healthy or not healthy.

And what becomes more natural,

Easier,

I guess,

Is going in the direction of health and wholesomeness.

Maybe it takes a little time but it then becomes like,

Ah,

What is healthy?

What is wholesome?

Let's do that.

And as in time as we keep moving towards what is wholesome,

This is what the heart wants.

This is what the inner system wants.

It's the way of our leaning.

So Tai dedicated himself to teaching people what he called the miracle of mindfulness.

To show up for this moment right here.

But it wasn't just showing up,

You know,

It wasn't just showing up for it.

He emphasized penetrating through the depths of it.

In the Chan Zen tradition that he was part of classically they use a lot of gatas and these gatas are four line verses.

So he had one here.

I'll share it with you.

I have arrived.

I am home.

In the here.

In the now.

I am solid.

I am free.

In the ultimate I dwell.

So we emphasize looking deeply.

I have arrived.

I am home.

This is home.

This body.

And he also really emphasized looking deeply into impermanence.

In a kind of famous exercise he gave,

It was to look at a piece of paper and looking deeply with your imagination.

You see more than just the paper.

You see the tree that grew that became the paper.

You see the rain and the soil that nourished the tree to grow.

You see the sun that shone on the sunlight on the tree that allowed it to grow.

You see the person who cut down the tree.

The people who converted it to paper.

The people who brought the paper to the store.

The storekeeper who sold it to you.

And you see this rich world that includes all of the social world,

Like the social world that we live in.

And to see all of it together is what it means to wake up in the world.

To see that.

He saw us living in what he called the interbeing world,

Which is really this interdependent world that we're not separate from anyone else.

We all exist because someone else existed.

So as I said in the first talk on Tuesday,

Thich Nhat Hanh said,

My life is my teaching.

My life is my message.

And his passing too is a message.

And to not see his passing as part of his teaching,

Part of his message is to miss his teaching.

Miss who he was and what he's about.

His message was to see with the eyes of impermanence.

See with depth.

To be fully present in the moment.

This is where we find our freedom.

Here.

This is where we find our freedom.

So may,

May his message continue to live in us.

To live in our actions.

To live in our mindfulness.

Thank you for your kind attention and for spending this week honoring this great soul,

This beautiful human being.

Reviews

Thich Nhat Hanh was my first real exposure to Buddhism. Such applicable teachings. 🪷