Thich Nhat Hanh Jewish Roots The Better Way to Live Alone in the ...

monastic INSIGHTOn the WayHomeBy Sister Annabel, True VirtueIn response to a request from her teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sister Annabelis writing about her life. Thay suggested that her story be serialized in theMindfulness Bell and then put together in a book. In this first installment,when the story begins she is in her early thirties.Sister Annabel, True Virtuephoto by John CottermanIn 1984 I was in Cheshire, England, working in an organic garden.In the winter it was sometimes very cold. As the wet English snowfell and the bitter easterly wind blew, we picked spinach. Whatcan be more painful than the blood trying to make its way throughfrozen fingertips? In the greenhouse the broccoli and Chinese cabbageflourished even in winter and if the mice did not come in andeat the seedlings, lettuce would grow too. It was wonderful howfine the vegetables looked without herbicides and artificial nitrates.I was happy to learn that cultivating organically is possible and Ifelt the vegetables were happy too.The garden, however, did not completely fulfill me. Somewheresomething very important was missing. I had not foundmy sangha. Because of this, Buddha and dharma or the spirituallife were lacking. I had not arrived, I was not at home. Still I wasable to dream and one night I had a dream to show me there was away ahead. In the dream I was walking up a green hill and I cameto the top of the hill. There was a wall or fence along the top ofthe hill, stopping me from going down the other side. I walkedup and down the fence, searching for a way to climb over. Withdifficulty, I did climb over. There was a farmer on the other side;it may have been my father. He showed me a gate in the fenceand asked me why I had not used it. It would have been so mucheasier. These years of wandering without arriving had been likestruggling over a fence and only now had I seen the gate. The gatehad always been there, only I was not aware, I had not seen it. It22 Summer 2006is not necessary to struggle, but because we cannot see, becausewe are ignorant, we struggle.Now that I have arrived, is that not the happiest thing? “Ihave arrived” does not necessarily mean that I have realized thepath. It just means that I know I am on the path and I do not needto be anywhere else.The dream was a presage because the next day I receivedthe newsletter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship U.K. and in thenewsletter was the poem “Please Call Me By My True Names”with a photograph of the Vietnamese Zen Monk Thich Nhat Hanh.Thay was smiling and holding a teapot. Photographs of Thay wererare at that time and this teapot photograph appeared in manyplaces. It was perhaps the only one available. I already had an ideaof what Buddhist monks looked like because I had spent time inIndia, but Thay did not conform to that idea. Intellectually I didnot understand the poem but the images were music to my soul:the caterpillar—whoever would look so deeply at caterpillars?Whoever would have the time to look deeply at caterpillars?Finding Safe AnchorageIn that poem and that photograph I was beginning to arrive. Idid not have the fruit of arrival but the fruit of going in the directionof arrival. There was a safe anchorage for my boat that hadbeen sailing for so many years without a port of call. In 1980, I