Thich Nhat Hanh’s ultimate mindfulness lesson: The best way to die peacefully

Editor’s notice: The Worldwide Plum Village Neighborhood of Engaged Buddhism has introduced that Thich Nhat Hanh died on January 22, 2022, in Huế, Vietnam. The interview beneath with one in all his senior disciples was first revealed in March 2019.

Thich Nhat Hanh has achieved greater than maybe any Buddhist alive in the present day to articulate and disseminate the core Buddhist teachings of mindfulness, kindness, and compassion to a broad international viewers. The Vietnamese monk, who has written greater than 100 books, is second solely to the Dalai Lama in fame and affect.

Nhat Hanh made his title doing human rights and reconciliation work through the Vietnam Battle, which led Martin Luther King Jr. to appoint him for a Nobel Prize.

He’s thought-about the daddy of “engaged Buddhism,” a motion linking mindfulness observe with social motion. He’s additionally constructed a community of monasteries and retreat facilities in six international locations world wide, together with the US.

In 2014, Nhat Hanh, who’s now 93 years previous, had a stroke at Plum Village, the monastery and retreat middle in southwest France he based in 1982 that was additionally his dwelling base. Although he was unable to talk after the stroke, he continued to steer the neighborhood, utilizing his left arm and facial expressions to speak.

In October 2018, Nhat Hanh surprised his disciples by informing them that he want to return dwelling to Vietnam to cross his ultimate days on the Tu Hieu root temple in Hue, the place he turned a monk in 1942 at age 16. (The New York Occasions reviews that 9 US senators visited him there in April.)

As Time’s Liam Fitzpatrick wrote, Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam for his antiwar activism from 1966 till he was lastly invited again in 2005. However his return to his homeland is much less about political reconciliation than one thing a lot deeper. And it comprises classes for all of us about easy methods to die peacefully and easy methods to let go of the folks we love.

After I heard that Nhat Hanh had returned to Vietnam, I wished to be taught extra in regards to the choice. So in February I referred to as up Brother Phap Dung, a senior disciple and monk who helps to run Plum Village in Nhat Hanh’s absence. (I spoke to Phap Dung in 2016 proper after Donald Trump gained the presidential election, about how we are able to use mindfulness in occasions of battle.)

Our dialog has been edited for size and readability.

Wouter Verhoeven

Eliza Barclay

Inform me about your trainer’s choice to go to Vietnam and the way you interpret the which means of it.

Phap Dung

He’s undoubtedly coming again to his roots.

He has come again to the place the place he grew up as a monk. The message is to recollect we don’t come from nowhere. We’ve roots. We’ve ancestors. We’re a part of a lineage or stream.

It’s a stupendous message, to see ourselves as a stream, as a lineage, and it’s the deepest instructing in Buddhism: non-self. We’re empty of a separate self, and but on the identical time, we’re filled with our ancestors.

He has emphasised this Vietnamese custom of ancestral worship as a observe in our neighborhood. Worship right here means to recollect. For him to return to Vietnam is to level out that we’re a stream that runs approach again to the time of the Buddha in India, past even Vietnam and China.

Eliza Barclay

So he’s reconnecting to the stream that got here earlier than him. And that means the bigger neighborhood he has constructed is related to that stream too. The stream will proceed flowing after him.

Phap Dung

It’s just like the circle that he usually attracts with the calligraphy brush. He’s returned to Vietnam after 50 years of being within the West. When he first left to name for peace through the Vietnam Battle was the beginning of the circle; slowly, he traveled to different international locations to do the instructing, making the rounds. After which slowly he returned to Asia, to Indonesia, Hong Kong, China. Finally, Vietnam opened as much as enable him to return three different occasions. This return now could be form of like a closing of the circle.

It’s additionally like the sunshine of the candle being transferred, to the subsequent candle, to many different candles, for us to proceed to stay and observe and to proceed his work. For me, it looks like that, like the sunshine is lit in every one in all us.

Eliza Barclay

And as one in all his senior monks, do you are feeling like you might be passing the candle too?

Phap Dung

Earlier than I met Thay in 1992, I used to be not conscious, I used to be working busy and doing my architectural, formidable issues within the US. However he taught me to essentially get pleasure from dwelling within the current second, that it’s one thing that we are able to prepare in.

Now as I observe, I’m maintaining the candlelight illuminated, and I may also share the observe with others. Now I’m instructing and caring for the monks, nuns, and lay mates who come to our neighborhood simply as our trainer did.

Eliza Barclay

So he’s 92 and his well being is fragile, however he’s not bedridden. What’s he as much as in Vietnam?

Phap Dung

The very first thing he did when he received there was to go to the stupa [shrine], gentle a candle, and contact the earth. Paying respect like that — it’s like plugging in. You will get a lot vitality when you possibly can keep in mind your trainer.

He’s not sitting round ready. He’s doing his greatest to get pleasure from the remainder of his life. He’s consuming frequently. He even can now drink tea and invite his college students to get pleasure from a cup with him. And his actions are very deliberate.

As soon as, the attendants took him out to go to earlier than the lunar new 12 months to benefit from the flower market. On their approach again, he directed the entourage to vary course and to go to some explicit temples. At first, everybody was confused, till they discovered that these temples had an affiliation to our neighborhood. He remembered the precise location of those temples and the route to get there. The attendants realized that he wished to go to the temple of a monk who had lived a very long time in Plum Village, France; and one other one the place he studied as a younger monk. It’s very clear that though he’s bodily restricted, and in a wheelchair, he’s nonetheless dwelling his life, doing what his physique and well being permits.

Anytime he’s wholesome sufficient, he reveals up for sangha gatherings and neighborhood gatherings. Regardless that he doesn’t should do something. For him, there isn’t any such factor as retirement.

Eliza Barclay

However you might be additionally on this means of letting him go, proper?

Phap Dung

In fact, letting go is one in all our important practices. It goes together with recognizing the impermanent nature of issues, of the world, and of our family members.

This transition interval is his final and deepest instructing to our neighborhood. He’s displaying us easy methods to make the transition gracefully, even after the stroke and being restricted bodily. He nonetheless enjoys his day each probability he will get.

My observe is to not look forward to the second when he takes his final breath. Every day I observe to let him go, by letting him be with me, inside me, and with every of my acutely aware breaths. He’s alive in my breath, in my consciousness.

Inhaling, I breathe with my trainer inside me; respiratory out, I see him smiling with me. Once we make a step with gentleness, we let him stroll with us, and we enable him to proceed inside our steps. Letting go can be the observe of letting in, letting your trainer be alive in you, and to see that he’s greater than only a bodily physique now in Vietnam.

Eliza Barclay

What have you ever realized about dying out of your trainer?

Phap Dung

There may be dying within the sense of letting this physique go, letting go of emotions, feelings, this stuff we name our id, and practising to let these go.

The difficulty is, we don’t let ourselves die day-to-day. As a substitute, we supply concepts about one another and ourselves. Typically it’s good, however typically it’s detrimental to our progress. We model ourselves and imprison ourselves to an thought.

Letting go is a observe not solely whenever you attain 90. It’s one of many highest practices. This may transfer you towards equanimity, a state of freedom, a type of peace. Waking up every day as a rebirth, now that may be a observe.

Within the historic dimension, we observe to just accept that we’ll get to some extent the place the physique shall be restricted and we shall be sick. There may be beginning, previous age, illness, and demise. How will we take care of it?

PVCEB

Eliza Barclay

What are a few of the most necessary teachings from Buddhism about dying?

Phap Dung

We’re conscious that at some point we’re all going to deteriorate and die — our neurons, our arms, our flesh and bones. But when our observe and our consciousness is robust sufficient, we are able to see past the dying physique and listen additionally to the religious physique. We proceed by means of the spirit of our speech, our considering, and our actions. These three facets of physique, speech, and thoughts continues.

In Buddhism, we name this the character of no beginning and no demise. It’s the different dimension of the final word. It’s not one thing idealized, or clear. The physique has to do what it does, and the thoughts as nicely.

However within the final dimension, there may be continuation. We will domesticate this consciousness of this nature of no beginning and no demise, this way of life within the final dimension; then slowly our worry of demise will reduce.

This consciousness additionally helps us be extra aware in our every day life, to cherish each second and everybody in our life.

One of the highly effective teachings that he shared with us earlier than he received sick was about not constructing a stupa [shrine for his remains] for him and placing his ashes in an urn for us to hope to. He strongly commanded us not to do that. I’ll paraphrase his message:

“Please don’t construct a stupa for me. Please don’t put my ashes in a vase, lock me inside, and restrict who I’m. I do know this shall be tough for a few of you. In the event you should construct a stupa although, please just remember to put an indication on it that claims, ‘I’m not in right here.’ As well as, you may as well put one other signal that claims, ‘I’m not on the market both,’ and a 3rd signal that claims, ‘If I’m anyplace, it’s in your aware respiratory and in your peaceable steps.’”

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