Farewell Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh died yesterday.  Dave Bonta made this interesting observation on Facebook:  "Centuries from now, when the French and US wars in Indochina merit little more than a footnote in history textbooks, Thich Nhat Hanh will be remembered as one of the great teachers of the 20th century."

Many people who are posting tributes to him today are commenting on his practice of mindfulness, a skill most of us sorely need.  For my certificate in spiritual direction program, we read his book Silence, which was one of the better books of the program.  As I recall, it's a book that explores all the inner voices that can make us miserable.  Hanh says, “If you’re like most people, you probably have a notion that there’s some as yet unrealized condition that has to be attained before you can be happy” (p. 71). He goes on to talk about analyzing where we got these ideas of happiness and what would make us happy—and more importantly he goes on to talk about how we need to let go of those ideas of what would make us happy and just focus on what we have in our life, focus on what’s there.

I realize how I approach so much of my life as a giant self-improvement project, a self-improvement project that I’m failing all the time. What a relief it would be to let go of that and just focus on what is.  I imagine that many of us would find it a relief.

In this book, Hanh reminds us again and again that there are many kinds of non-silence, and a meditative mindset is the only way to silence. That doesn’t mean we never talk or that we never go online. It means that if we’re eating, we’re eating and focused on truly experiencing the food and the sensations of eating. If we want to talk, we focus on that. We don’t walk and think. We walk and focus on the sensations of walking, along with noticing and appreciating our surroundings.

For people who feel that all of this silence can slip into a solipsistic mindset, Hanh reminds us :  “Your thoughts can make you and the world around you suffer more or suffer less” (p. 54).  Maybe we would be more mindful of our thoughts if we truly believed we could repair the world by doing so.

Of course, most of us have trouble mastering mindfulness even when the goal is simply to heal ourselves.  It's a spiritual practice that requires more of most of us.

But Hanh never stopped reminding us of how important it is.  And it's only one of the principles and commitments that he advocated.  Truly, one of our important spiritual minds is gone, at least in the human flesh format.