Thich Nhat Hanh

This morning in Vietnam, 95 year old human Thich Nhat Hanh died. He was one of my favorite humans, along with the beautiful Desmond Tutu, who also recently left us. I think they have gone ahead to prepare a way and help us in the coming collapse. But what do I know.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote my favorite poem. Here it is:

Please Call Me by My True Names – Thich Nhat Hanh

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-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.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter 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.

He knew that we are all the same. Deep inside. Rooted and connected. Did you know that recently scientists have discovered that this is true of trees? I’ll link a couple of things to read for those who are interested. I realize that this stuff is why I don’t like hydroponics- something in me has always known it was removing a plant from nearly everything it is a natural part of.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/02/magazine/tree-communication-mycorrhiza.html

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/04/993430007/trees-talk-to-each-other-mother-tree-ecologist-hears-lessons-for-people-too

https://e360.yale.edu/features/exploring_how_and_why_trees_talk_to_each_other

There is a Youtube channel called Plum Village that has a lot of videos of his teachings. Here are a couple:

Thich Nhat Hahn did not eat animals or their milk or eggs. He felt it to be wrong to cause them to suffer.

He wrote this on living fully in the present moment and knowing that you will die:

“Are you ready to die now? Are you ready to arrange your schedule in such a way that you could die in peace tonight? That may be a challenge, but that’s the practice. If you don’t do this, you will always be tormented by regret. If you don’t want to suffer, if you don’t want to be tormented by regret, the only solution is to live every minute you are given in a deep way. That’s all there is to it. The only way to deal with insecurity, fear, and suffering is to live the present moment in a profound way. If you do that, you will have no regrets.

That’s what the young man who was told he had three months to live chose to do. He decided to live every moment of his life in a very deep way. When he started doing that, he felt the sources of his despair leaving him, and he got himself back on his feet. It was a miracle. Though his doctor had pronounced a kind of death sentence on him, he lived another fifteen years. I gave him the Dharma name Chân Sinh, which means “true life.” before he was told he was going to die, he didn’t know what real life was. but after that happened, he learned what real life was, because he was there for every moment of every day.

Albert Camus, in his novel The Stranger, used the term “the moment of awareness.” When the protagonist of the novel, Meursault, learns he is going to be executed for the murder he has committed, anxiety, fear, and anger are born in him. In despair, he is lying on his prison bed looking at the ceiling when, for the first time, he sees the square of blue sky through the skylight. The sky is so blue—it’s the first time in his life that he has gotten deeply in touch with the blue sky. He has already lived for decades without ever really seeing the blue sky. Perhaps he has looked at the sky from time to time, but he has not seen it in a deep way. Now, three days before his death, he is able to touch the blue sky in a very deep way. The moment of awareness has manifested.

Meursault decides to live every minute he has left fully and deeply. Here is a prisoner who is practicing deep meditation. He lives his three last days in his cell within that square of blue sky. That is his freedom. On the afternoon of the last day, a Catholic priest comes to Meursault’s prison cell to give him the last rites, but Meursault refuses. He doesn’t want to waste the few hours left to him talking to the priest, and he doesn’t let him come in. He says, “The priest is living like a dead man. He is not living like me, I am truly alive.”

Maybe we too are living like dead people. We move about life in our own corpse because we are not touching life in depth. We live a kind of artificial life, with lots of plans, lots of worries and anger. Never are we able to establish ourselves in the here and now and live our lives deeply. We have to wake up! We have to make it possible for the moment of awareness to manifest. This is the practice that will save us—this is the revolution.

Has the most wonderful moment of your life already happened? Ask yourself that question. Most of us will answer that it hasn’t happened yet, but that it could happen at any time. No matter how old we are, we tend to feel that the most wonderful moment of our life has not happened yet. We fear maybe it’s too late, but we are still hoping. but the truth is, if we continue to live in forgetfulness—that is, without the presence of mindfulness—that moment is never going to happen.

The teaching of the buddha tells you clearly and plainly to make this the most magnificent and wonderful moment of your life. This present moment must become the most wonderful moment in your life. All you need to transform this present moment into a wonderful one is freedom. All you need to do is free yourself from your worries and preoccupations about the past, the future, and so on.

The deep insight of impermanence is what helps us do this. It is very useful to keep our concentration on impermanence alive. You think the other person in your life is going to be there forever, but that is not true. That person is impermanent, just like you. So if you can do something to make that person happy, you should do it right away. Anything you can do or say to make him or her happy— say it or do it now. It’s now or never.”

He wrote a lot about such things. My favorite poem, above, is not the most beautiful poem, the most beautiful cobbling together of words or dreams or phrases. But it speaks to me the most. I am the raped girl and the raping pirate. I am human. This is how I work on not judging people. Especially myself. And people who hurt animals. And destroyers of ecosystems. And…well, see…I have a lot of judgment to work on, still. So I need my favorite poem.

Help us, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Desmond Tutu, from where and when and how you are now. And thank you for your love and service and guiding lights.