Word-Of-the-Week #916: Mindfulness
February 24, 2022 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on Word-Of-the-Week #916: Mindfulness
Mindfulness – the ability to be fully present, aware of where you are and what you’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around you.
How often do you feel fully present in your surroundings? Does what’s going on around you ever make you feel reactive or overwhelmed?
This week features excerpts from NY Times writer Seth Mydans, “Thich Nhat Hanh, Monk, Zen Master and Activist, Dies at 95.”
“A monk with global influence and an ally of Martin Luther King, he championed what he called “engaged Buddhism,” applying its principles in pressing for peace.
Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was one of the world’s most influential Zen masters, spreading messages of mindfulness, compassion and nonviolence, died on Saturday, January 22nd at his home in the Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam. He was 95.
A prolific author, poet, teacher and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam after opposing the war in the 1960s and became a leading voice in a movement he called “engaged Buddhism,” the application of Buddhist principles to political and social reform.
Traveling widely on speaking tours in the United States and Europe he was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism, urging the embrace of mindfulness, which his website describes as “the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment.”
In his book “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life,” he wrote, “If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.”
His following grew as he established dozens of monasteries and practice centers around the world. In 2018, he returned home to Hue, in central Vietnam, to live out his last days at the Tu Hieu Temple, where he had become a novice as a teenager.
Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the idea of death. “Birth and death are only notions,” he wrote in his book “No Death, No Fear.” “They are not real.”
He added: “The Buddha taught that there is no birth; there is no death; there is no coming; there is no going; there is no same; there is no different; there is no permanent self; there is no annihilation. We only think there is.”
That understanding, he wrote, can liberate people from fear and allow them to “enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.”
Dr. King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, but the prize was not awarded to anyone that year.
In the early 1960s, he founded Youth for Social Services, a grass-roots relief organization in what was then South Vietnam. It rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools, established medical centers and reunited families left homeless by the war.
Thich Nhat Hanh began writing and speaking out against the war and in 1964 published a poem called “Condemnation” in a Buddhist weekly. It reads in part:
Whoever is listening, be my witness:
I cannot accept this war.
I never could I never will.
I must say this a thousand times before I am killed.
I am like the bird who dies for the sake of its mate,
dripping blood from its broken beak and crying out:
“Beware! Turn around and face your real enemies
— ambition, violence hatred and greed.”
The poem earned him the label “antiwar poet,” and he was denounced as a pro-Communist propagandist. His antiwar activism continued, and in a talk in Hanoi in 2008 he said the Iraq war had resulted from fear and misunderstanding in which violence fed on itself.
“We know very well that airplanes, guns and bombs cannot remove wrong perceptions,” he said. “Only loving speech and compassionate listening can help people correct wrong perceptions. But our leaders are not trained in that discipline, and they rely only on the armed forces to remove terrorism.”
In 2013, on one of his many visits to centers of influence in the West, he spoke at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, bringing his message of quiet contemplation to the forefront of the high-energy digital age.
“We have the feeling that we are overwhelmed by information,” he told the assembled workers. “We don’t need that much information.”
And he said: “Do not try to find the solution with your thinking mind. Nonthinking is the secret of success. And that is why the time when we are not working, that time can be very productive, if we know how to focus on the moment.”
This week’s focus is on mindfulness. Are you enjoying life to the fullest? Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the information you get? Have you ever missed out on something because you were not fully present in the moment?
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