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

monastic INSIGHThad gone to India to practice Buddhism with Tibetan nuns. Beforethat I had lived in a community along with practitioners of differentfaiths. I had even camped out around Greenham Commonin order to resist any attempt to move nuclear missiles from thatbase. But in my heart I was not at home and I had not found thepath I most wanted to tread.As I became more involved with the Buddhist Peace Fellowship,I learned about the Vietnamese refugees detained in refugeecamps in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a British protectorate at thattime. So I met people who had been in those camps and I heardtheir stories. I learned that there was a place called Plum Villagethat opened its doors to guest practitioners for one month everyyear from July 15th until August 15th. A friend and I thought ofgoing in the summer of 1985, but when I wrote I received a replyfrom Sister True Emptiness (Sister Chan Khong) saying all placeswere taken. It was not yet time for me to go.I was still not sure if Plum Village was my true spiritual home.Indeed when I first read part of The Miracle of Mindfulness, I wasnot sure if it was for me. After the intricacies of Tibetan Buddhism,its complex rituals, its teachings couched in descriptions of strangeand distant scenes, something so homely and simple was a shockthat was difficult to accept. When I could fully accept Plum Villageteachings, Plum Village would accept me. To do that I hadto meet Thay and Sister True Emptiness.Fortunately Thay agreed to come to England in March 1986.It was still bitterly cold and I organized a retreat in Cumbria in adrafty old castle that some Tibetan monks had acquired and rentedout for others to have their retreats. This castle had huge roomsthat could never be heated. The fireplaces gave out heat to a spaceonly one meter in front of them. One day it snowed and one day itwas fine enough for us to walk to the sea. Thay did not complain.He ate the English food that the retreatants ate. He attended allactivities on the schedule and led them all as well as giving thedharma talk. Gently he encouraged me to practice by saying “andyou do not need to hurry, just take one step at a time,” because Iwanted to run everywhere, doing everything. Before the retreatbegan, Thay invited me into his room to ask me what I thought ofthe daily schedule he proposed for the retreat. I was moved: whywould Thay ask me? After all I was a complete beginner, I knewnothing. Still, I said the proposed schedule was very good.Thay had someone bring a cloud bell from Plum Village touse to announce activities and summon us to mindfulness. A cloudbell is a flat piece of bronze molded in the shape of a cloud. It hasa sharper sound than the round bowl-shaped bell. It was invitedin the draughty corridor on the ground floor of that castle twentyyears ago. Thay must have felt cold. When I looked at Thay’s bedit looked as if it had never been slept in. I imagined Thay sat inmeditation all night long. Sister True Emptiness asked me to tryto find an electric heater for Thay’s room. I do not remember thatwe paid Thay or Sister True Emptiness any honorarium.The Door OpensWhen we went to London Thay gave a talk in Friend House onEuston Road, the main center for Quakers in the United Kingdom.Again I was moved when Thay asked me to tell the audience aboutthe Buddhist Peace Fellowship, as if I had something worth saying.Thay treated others with that kind of respect. Everyone hadsomething to offer and Thay gave them a chance to offer it.How lucky I felt as I went to sleep! How lucky to have metThay, although I was on my own again. I joined a Tibetan Sanghain London for a time and I was happy that having practiced withThay I now knew how to prostrate. Before I met Thay I did notlike to prostrate. It was just an outer form. Thay taught me thecontent of prostration—surrendering all idea of a separate selfand touching the quality of great understanding, great action, andgreat compassion—not as mine and also not apart from me; realbut neither inside or outside. My practice in that Tibetan-basedSangha was successful because of what I had learned in the fivedayretreat from Thay.Before, Thay’s teachings had seemed too simple for me;now they were miraculously simple, real, and concrete. Duringthat retreat I wore brown clothes, not intentionally; it was justthat the warm clothes I had with me were brown. And sitting infront of Thay, who was wearing a brown robe, I felt we were one.The simple act of holding up a sheet of paper, as Thay did in thedharma talk on the last day of the retreat, touched me deeply. Thetalk was on the Heart Sutra. That sutra had been a closed door forme; the commentaries I had seen and heard on it had been complexand difficult to understand. Now it sufficed to look at a piece ofpaper and see the cloud floating in it. The piece of paper was trulyempty of a separate self—that, the intellect could understand—butThay transmitted something else. Thay’s own emptiness and myemptiness were in it.How lucky to meet my enlightened teacher in my own country!The Tibetans had told me that that was where I would meetmy teacher and he would not be Tibetan, but from Far East Asia.The prophecy came true. Prophecy comes not just from the mindof the one who prophesies but from the mind of the one who isprophesied to.“Here Is India”In Plum Village Thay sat on a hammock in a gray robe. Hewas preparing the Upper Hamlet for the summer opening. Thay’sfirst words to me were “Here is India, India is here.” I thought Thaymeant it was very hot, as hot as in India. It was deeper than that. Tome India was home, at least my spiritual home. I believed spiritualhome could not be found anywhere else. I missed India with akind of longing. “Here is India” meant you have arrived, you arehome. My conscious mind did not realize it, but deep down, theseed was sown. One month later, in the Lower Hamlet, I realizedI was home. It was a feeling of being at home that I had not feltsince I was a child. Looking up at the hills of the Dordogne to thenorth of the Lower Hamlet, I was home. Contemplating the whiteknobbed stones that made the walls of the Red Candle MeditationHall, I was home. These things had always been part of me and Ihad always been part of them.At first Thay allowed me to dream of my Indian home, perhapsit was part of Thay’s dream too. Thay said: “Although you cannotbe in India you can dream of being there. For instance there isthe little hut you make of bamboo with its banana leaf roof andthe Mindfulness Bell 23