Thich Nhat Hanh

The teaching

Taught from his own books, above all The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975), The Heart of Understanding (1988) and Peace Is Every Step.

The miracle

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that mindfulness is keeping one's consciousness alive to the present reality, and that the miracle is not to walk on water but to walk on the earth, knowing it. Every act can be practice: drinking tea, washing up, walking to the bus. The dishes are washed in order to wash the dishes, not to be done with them and get to the tea, since one who hurries through the dishes will hurry through the tea as well and miss both. His way of walking is taught in the branch called Walking practice.

Conscious breathing

The breath is the bridge between body and mind. The practice begins with knowing: breathing in, one knows that one is breathing in; breathing out, one knows that one is breathing out. Then the breath is joined to short verses that a beginner can carry anywhere: with the in-breath the body is calmed, with the out-breath the face smiles, and then the mind rests in the present moment, knowing it as a wonderful moment. The smile is a half smile, light and relaxed, which in his teaching calms the face and the mind together. He takes these exercises from the Buddha's own discourse on the full awareness of breathing, with its sixteen steps from the breath to the body, the feelings, the mind and the nature of things.

The bell

In his communities a bell is sounded at intervals through the day, and at its sound everyone stops what they are doing, the talk, the work, the walk, and breathes three times in mindfulness before going on. Anything can serve as a bell in ordinary life: the telephone, left to ring three times while one breathes before answering; a red light in traffic; a clock striking. For daily acts he wrote short verses, gathas, to be said silently on waking, on washing, on turning on a tap or starting a car, so that each becomes a door back into the present.

Interbeing

His word for emptiness is interbeing. A poet, he says, sees a cloud floating in a sheet of paper: without the cloud there is no rain, without rain no trees, without trees no paper. The sunshine is in it too, and the logger who cut the tree, and the wheat that became the logger's bread, and the logger's mother and father. The paper is made wholly of things that are not paper, and if any of them were taken back there would be no paper. Nothing can be by itself alone; everything inter-is. So he reads the Heart Sutra's teaching that form is emptiness: empty of a separate self, and full of everything.

Seeds

The mind, in the psychology he teaches, is like a field in two layers. Below is store consciousness, holding seeds of every quality, joy and compassion, anger and fear; above is mind consciousness, where a seed appears when it is watered. Practice is wise gardening: water the seeds of joy and understanding in oneself and in others, and do not water the seeds of anger and despair. Mindfulness is itself a seed, and grows stronger each time it is used. Even suffering has its use, as compost feeds a flower: without mud there is no lotus.

Embracing anger

When anger rises he asks neither that it be pushed down nor that it be thrown at someone, but that it be recognised and held. Breathing in and out, the practitioner says inwardly, this is my anger, and holds it as a mother holds a crying baby, tenderly, until it calms. Anger is part of oneself and needs care. When it has quietened, one looks deeply into its roots, which are often a wrong perception and an old pain. Couples in his communities sign a peace treaty, promising to wait before speaking in anger, and then to tell the other, within a day, that they are suffering and to ask for help.

Deep listening and loving speech

Deep listening is listening with one purpose, to help the other empty their heart, without interrupting, correcting or judging, even when what they say is unjust; correction can wait for another day. Loving speech is speaking truthfully, in words that give confidence and hope, without blame or condemnation. Together they make the practice of beginning anew, in which members of a community water one another's good seeds, say what they regret, and speak of their own hurt without accusing.

The trainings

Mindfulness, in his teaching, is never without ethics. His five mindfulness trainings renew the Buddha's precepts for daily life: reverence for life; true happiness, through generosity; true love, with sexual responsibility; loving speech and deep listening; and nourishment and healing, through mindful consuming of food, of media and of conversation. The fourteen trainings of his Order of Interbeing begin with openness: not to be bound to any doctrine or ideology, even a Buddhist one, since teachings are guiding means, like a raft for crossing a river, and not an absolute truth to be fought for.

Being peace

Peace in the world begins with being peace. When the crowded boats of refugees put out from Vietnam and met storms or pirates, he recalls, if one person aboard stayed calm it could save everyone, and each practitioner is to be that person. Practice and action are not two: mindfulness that sees suffering leads to the work of relieving it, and the work, done mindfully, is itself practice.