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January 9 - January 11, 2025
He cherishes life and, despite all the adverse conditions he has encountered over the years—including war, exile, betrayal, and ill health—he has never given up. He has taken refuge in his breathing and in the wonders of the present moment. Thay is a survivor. He has survived thanks to the love of his students and his community, and thanks to the nourishment he receives from his meditation, mindful breathing, and relaxing moments walking and resting in nature.
Spirituality is not religion. It is a path for us to generate happiness, understanding, and love, so we can live deeply each moment of our life. Having a spiritual dimension in our lives does not mean escaping life or dwelling in a place of bliss outside this world but discovering ways to handle life’s difficulties and generate peace, joy, and happiness right where we are, on this beautiful planet.
The first wrong view we need to liberate ourselves from is the idea that we are a separate self cut off from the rest of the world.
The second wrong view that many of us hold is the view that we are only this body, and that when we die we cease to exist.
The third wrong view that many of us have is the idea that what we are looking for—whether it be happiness, heaven, or love—can be found only outside us in a distant future.
There are three fundamental practices to help liberate us from these three wrong views: the concentrations on emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness.
Impermanence means that nothing remains the same thing in two consecutive moments. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus said, “You can never bathe in the same river twice.” The river is always flowing, so as soon as we climb out onto the bank and then return again to bathe, the water has already changed. And even in that short space of time we too have changed.
So, if you call me Thich Nhat Hanh, I will say, “Yes, that is me.” And if you call me the young girl, I will say, “Yes, that is me.” If you call me the pirate, I will also say, “Yes, that is me.” These are all my true names. If you call me an impoverished child in a war zone with no future, I will say, “Yes, that is me.” And if you call me the arms merchant selling weapons to support that war, I will say, “Yes, that is me.” All of these people are us. We inter-are with everyone.
When we can free ourselves from the idea of separateness, we have compassion, we have understanding, and we have the energy we need to help.
I think (too much), therefore I am (not there to live my life).
This story teaches that even Jesus is not to be found only in his physical body. His living reality extends far beyond his physical body. Jesus was fully present in the way the bread was broken and in the way the wine was poured. That is the living Christ. That is why he can say, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I among them.” It is not only Jesus or the Buddha or any other great spiritual teacher who is with us after their death; all of us continue as energy long after our physical body has changed form.
While we are alive, our life is energy, and after death, we continue to be energy. That energy is continually changing and transforming. It can never be lost. We cannot assert that after death there is nothing. Something can never become nothing.
In the light of emptiness and interbeing we know they have not died or disappeared: they continue in their actions and in us. We can still talk to them. We can say something like, “I know you are there. I’m breathing for you. I’m smiling for you. I’m enjoying looking around with your eyes. I am enjoying life with you. I know that you are still there very close to me, and that now you continue in me.”
Once a young child asked me, “How does it feel to be dead?” This is a very good, very deep question. I used the example of a cloud to explain to her about birth, death, and continuation. I explained that a cloud can never die. A cloud can only become something else, like rain or snow or hail. When you are a cloud, you feel like a cloud. And when you become rain, you feel like the rain. And when you become snow, you feel like the snow. Remanifestation is wonderful.
When we see something we recognize in the phenomenal world, like a cloud, we say it is there, it exists. And when we can no longer see it, we say it is not there, it no longer exists. But the underlying truth is that it still exists, even if its appearance has changed. The challenge is to recognize that thing in its new forms. This is the meditation on signlessness.
Every day you transform. Some part of you is being born and some part is dying.
There is an intimate connection between birth and death. Without the one, we cannot have the other. As it says in the gospel, unless the seed dies, it could never bear fruit.
If we listen carefully, we can hear our body telling us all the time what it does and does not need. Although its voice is very clear, we seem to have lost our capacity to listen to it. We’ve pushed our body too hard, and so tension and pain have accumulated. We’ve been neglecting our body so long, it may be lonely. Our body has wisdom, and we need to give ourselves a chance to hear it. In this very moment you may like to pause and reconnect with your body. Simply bring your awareness to your breathing, and recognize and acknowledge the presence of your whole body. You may like to say to
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The word “buddha” means someone who is awakened and who is working for the awakening of other beings. “Buddha body” is just a shorthand way of describing our capacity to be awake and fully present, to be understanding, compassionate, and loving.
The more you water the seeds of mindfulness, concentration, insight, and love in you, the more your buddha body will grow, and the happier and freer you’ll become.
To be a buddha—to wake up—also means to wake up to the suffering in the world and find ways to bring relief and transformation. This requires a tremendous source of energy. Your strong aspiration—your mind of love—is that immense source of energy that helps wake you up to the nourishing and healing beauties of nature and to the suffering of the world. It gives you a lot of energy to help. This is the career of a buddha. And if you have that source of strength in you, if you have the mind of love, you are a buddha in action.
THIRD BODY: THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICE BODY Our spiritual practice body grows from our buddha body. Spiritual practice is the art of knowing how to generate happiness and handle suffering, just as a gardener knows how to make good use of mud in order to grow lotus flowers. Spiritual practice is what helps us to overcome challenging and difficult moments.
The Contemplative Body
Every book becomes my body outside the body. I can enter a home in the form of one of my calligraphies. I can go to a prison in the form of a DVD.
It is the same for a father and son, or a mother and daughter. When a father looks at his son with the eyes of signlessness, he sees that his son is also himself. He is the father, but he is also the son. When a father looks like that, he can see his body outside his body. When the child looks at his father and sees himself in his father, he sees his body outside his body. When looking at our children or grandchildren, we see ourselves, and we begin to see our body outside this body.
Every day we can practice producing thoughts of compassion. Thinking is already action. Every compassionate thought bears our signature. It is our continuation.
If we can see our continuation body while we’re still alive, we’ll know how to cultivate it to ensure a beautiful continuation in the future. This is the true art of living. Then, when the time comes for the dissolution of our physical body, we will be able to release it easily.
So the shortest answer to the question “What happens when I die?” is that you don’t die. And that is the truth, because when you understand the nature of the person who is dying, and you understand the nature of the act of dying, you will see there is no such thing as death anymore. There is no self who dies. There is only transformation.
Our cosmic body encompasses the entire phenomenal world.
With the insight of interbeing we can see that there are clouds inside us. There are mountains and rivers, fields and trees. There is sunshine. We are children of light. We are sons and daughters of the sun and stars. The whole cosmos is coming together to support our body in this very moment. Our little human body contains the entire realm of all phenomena.
and see the world in a grain of sand
We don’t need to go looking for our cosmic body outside us. It is right here within us at this very moment. We are made of stardust. We are children of the Earth, made of all the same elements and minerals.
We are already inside the earth, and the earth is inside us.
When we live in such a way that we take good care of our body, we are taking care of our ancestors and we are taking care of our cosmic body.
Our eighth body is the deepest level of the cosmic: the nature of reality itself, beyond all perceptions, forms, signs, and ideas. This is our “true nature of the cosmos” body. When we get in touch with everything that is—whether it is a wave, sunshine, forests, air, water, or stars—we perceive the phenomenal world of appearances and signs.
As you get in touch with your cosmic body, it’s as though you stop being a block of ice floating on the ocean and you become the water. With our mindful breathing and deep awareness of our body, we are able to leave the zone of cogitating, discriminating, and analyzing, and enter the realm of interbeing.
we can say that the true nature of the cosmos is God. Looking deeply into creation, we see the creator.
We cannot take anything out of anything else. We are the mountains and rivers; we are the sun and stars. Everything inter-is. This is what the physicist David Bohm called “the implicate order.” At first we see only “the explicate order,” but as soon as we realize that things do not exist outside one another, we touch the deepest level of the cosmic.
Nirvana is there within you.
Contemplating deeply the body from within, we can touch reality in itself. If your mindfulness and concentration are deep as you practice walking meditation in nature, or as you contemplate a beautiful sunset or your own human body, you can touch the true nature of the cosmos.
Breathing in, I see that nothing is created, nothing is destroyed; everything is in transformation.
The Kingdom of God is available in every moment. The question is whether we are available to it.
AIMLESSNESS: THE THIRD DOOR OF LIBERATION
The concentration on aimlessness means arriving in the present moment to discover that the present moment is the only moment in which you can find everything you’ve been looking for, and that you already are everything you want to become.
To practice meditation means to have the time to look deeply and see these things. If you feel restless in the here and now, or you feel ill at ease, you need to ask yourself: “What am I longing for?” “What am I searching for?” “What am I waiting for?”
As dawn broke over the mountain peak we admired its beauty together. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. We were free. We needed only to sit there and enjoy the sunrise. Our ancestors may never have had a chance to sit quietly, peacefully, and enjoy the sunrise like that. When we can stop the running, all our ancestors can also stop at the same time. With the energy of mindfulness and awakening, we can stop on behalf of all our ancestors. It is not the stopping of a separate self alone, but of a whole lineage.
The past and the future are right here in the present moment. God, nirvana, the cosmic body, are available. The moment becomes an eternal, fulfilled moment. Where is your father, your mother, your grandfather or grandmother? Right here in the present moment. Where are your children, grandchildren, and future generations? Where are Jesus Christ and the Buddha? Where are love and compassion? They are here. They are not realities independent from our consciousness, from our being, from our life. They are not objects of hope or pursuit outside of us. And where is heaven, the Kingdom of God? Also
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The Gospel of Matthew tells the story of a farmer who discovers treasure hidden in a field and returns home to sell everything he has so he can buy the field. That treasure is the Kingdom of God, which is found only in the present moment. You need only one moment of awakening to realize that what you are looking for is already there, in you and around you. Like the farmer, as soon as we discover this, we can easily let go of everything else in order to touch true peace, happiness, and freedom in the present moment. It’s worth it. To lose the present moment is to lose our only chance to
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Mindfulness helps us arrive in the present moment to see and hear the wonders of life—to see and hear God.
If there is a spiritual crisis in the twenty-first century, it is that we have not put God in the right place, namely within ourselves and in the world around us. Can you take God out of the cosmos? Can you take the cosmos out of God?
