When I found Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) at Plum Village in southern France just over 20 years ago, I was on a bit of a pilgrimage. I didn't know exactly what I was seeking, but I had left my dot-com job in New York, shipped my motorcycle to London, and began riding rather aimlessly around Europe. I had just found out that someone I loved had been killed, and was having trouble making sense of the world. So a spiritual journey through Europe in the dead of winter seemed like a logical thing to do. And something must have guided me to type "meditation center southern France" into the computer at the internet cafe in Bourdeaux, and a picture of Thay's face popped up, with his gentle smile, and pictures of blossoming plum trees in a place called 'Plum Village'. So I headed that way, and found, when I arrived, a sweet, beautiful community of people living lives of mindfulness. And by that, I soon discovered, they did not mean that their minds were full. On the contrary, I found that mindfulness is a way to empty our minds of all of the thoughts, plans, worries, doubts, fears, anxieties and stress of our modern world, and to just be. To be present, conscious and aware of what is happening in our bodies and all around us.
To some, it may seem that the monks and nuns sitting quietly, legs crossed, on cushions on the floor are somehow disconnected from the world, lost in internal journeys of meditation. But they are deeply, intimately connected to the world. Through their silence, chanting, attuning themselves to the rhythms and cycles of life, they are creating havens of peace and joy in this tumultuous world. And that is what is truly needed in the world right now - at every moment, really. Havens of peace and joy are what everybody needs - people with stress in their lives, people who have experienced trauma and loss, people who are fearful and angry and prejudiced and suffering - all of these people need havens of peace and joy to return to themselves, to their home (their body) and make peace with themselves, and then to help others alleviate their suffering.
While I was at Plum Village, Thay sat with us, walked with us, spoke with us almost every day. His teachings were always there - in the way he sat, the way he folded his napkin, the way he walked, and each gem of wisdom that he spoke. Every moment was joyful meditation, and deep looking, listening and feeling. One day at breakfast, there were orange slices. As we ate them, Thay smiled and said, "Eating an orange is eating sunshine." During walking meditation, he paused at a tree and said, "The leaf is the mother of the tree". Every insight he made was gently spoken but deeply, intimately connected to the living world and our way of being in this world.
The time I spent at Plum Village was transformative. I grieved and made peace with the death of my friend, and opened my heart to healing. And when I left Plum Village, I drove my motorycle over the Pyrenees to study at a Peace and Justice program, returning to my home city of Washington DC just in time for the historic A16 protest against the World Bank which launched me into the global justice movement. I have been a social justice activist ever since, and I credit my time at Plum Village with helping set me on that path.
Thay was an activist as well, in his own way. When he started the Order of Interbeing, it was the early 1960s, and he and his fellow monks and nuns were living in a country under military occupation - first by the French, then by the Americans. His order, the Order of Interbeing, was a new approach to Buddhism - it didn't follow some of the old tenets or rigid practices. The members were free to marry or not marry, to shave their heads or not shave their heads as they chose. They were humble and committed, and their focus was always and fully on peace, harmony and the interrelatedness of all life on earth.
One of the small, early group of followers of the Order of Interbeing was Nhất Chi Mai, a young, very committed nun who, in 1967, immolated herself, or as Thay put it, made herself into a torch of peace for all humanity to see. The anguish of living as a person of peace in a war zone had led Nhất Chi Mai to make this ultimate sacrifice of herself.
Another was Sister Chan Kong, who came with Thay when he was exiled from Vietnam to France. Together, they took a small plot of land in the French countryside and turned it into the amazing community of Plum Village that is still there today.
Sister Chan Kong is still alive, and is now the elder leader at Plum Village. She is incredibly wise and insightful, and her influence and teachings have been just as transformative to me in my life as Thay himself.
Both of these women were and are as committed, consistent and devoted to peace as Thay, and I hope that their contributions and their legacy are inscribed in history with Thay, and are not forgotten because the patriarchy tends to only see the male figures as worth remembering and commemorating.
Sister Chan Kong and Thay led many retreats in the US and Europe. Many, many people found healing and transformation through these retreats. Thay once told the story of a retreat he gave in California with Vietnam Veterans. Imagine - being someone whose country was devastated by the US soldiers who came there and bombed and destroyed and took over the country for a while - and decades later, then coming to the US and hosting a retreat for these broken men who did so much harm and were themselves so harmed by the war. But Thay took it all in stride, he felt no anger toward these men, no vengeful feelings. He simply held a retreat for them, and breathed with them, meditated with them, as their inner demons came to the surface and they began to process what they had done. On the last day of the retreat, a man who had been very quiet most of the time ended up breaking down crying, and shared with the group a confession that he had never told anyone. He said that his squadron had been attacked by guerrilla fighters, and all of them were killed. The next day, he wanted to have revenge, so he went to the village where the guerrillas came from, and he put sandwiches that he had laced with poison on the gate. And he watched from the bushes as children took the sandwiches, and became sick from the poison and died. Six children died because of what he had done.
Thay sat and listened to the man's story, and he responded, "Those children are dead. You cannot bring them back. You have lived with them, and thought about them every day. But they are gone. Meanwhile, every day there are children who die all over the world. And those children you can help. If you really devote yourself to it, you can even save six children each day of your life." He said the man went on to start a foundation to help children, and he was now doing a lot of good in the world, supporting so many children with his work.
The world may have lost Thich Nhat Hanh as a living human being, but as he told us in a dharma talk when he was asked about death, he is not dead - he lives in all of us who knew him. In a hundred years, he said, come back to Plum Village and you will see him there - younger, and more beautiful, as he said it. Keep coming back and you will keep finding him there. Because we all 'inter-are', as Thay always said.