Lately I feel like all I do is run around. I never stop to "smell the roses," I don't spend time with the people I want,instead I fufill obligations to other people. Then, by the time I do have time to spend the time with the people I feel really matter, I'm too tired to pay attention. I stressed from my other activities. Sometimes I fear I am going to wake up and be 100 years old, never having spent time on what really matters! This article really helped, and I intend to try and incorporate it into my life...
"He's been a Buddist monk for more than 60 years, as well as a teacher, writer, and vocal opponent of war- a stance that left him exiled from his native Vietnam for four decades. Now the man Martin Luther Kin Jr. called "an apostle of peach and nonviolence" reflects on the beauty of the present moment, being grateful for every breath, and the freedom and happiness to be found in a simple cup of tea."
OPRAH: Okay. We've been talking about mindfulness and you've mentioned mindful walking. How does that work?
NHAT HANH: As you walk, you touch the ground mindfully, and every step can bring you solidity and joy and freedom. Freedom from your regret concerning the past, and freedom from your fear about the future.
OPRAH: Most people when they're walking are thinking about where they have to go and what they have to do. But you would say that removes us from happiness.
NHAT HANH: People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and now.
OPRAH: What if my bills need to be paid? I'm walking, but I'm thinking about the bills.
NHAT HANH: There is a time for everything. There is a time when I sit down, I concentrate myself on the problem of my bills, but I would not worry before that. One thing at a time. We practice mindful walking in order to heal ourselves, because walking like that really relieves our worries, the pressure, the tension in our body and mind.
Skip a bit...
OPRAH: The nature of Buddhism, as I understand it, is to believe that we are all pure and radiant at our core. And yet we see around us so much evidence that that people are not acting from a place of purity and radiance. How do we reconcile that?
NHAT HANH: Well happiness and suffering support each other. To be is to inter-be. It's like the left and the right. If the left is not there, the right cannot be there. The same is true with suffering and happiness, good and evil. In every one of us there are good seeds and bad. We have the seed of brotherhood, love , compassion, insight. But we have also the seed of anger, hate, dissent.
OPRAH: That's the nature of being human.
NHAT HANH: Yes. There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.
OPRAH: Can't have one without the other.
NHAT HANH: Yes. You can only recognize your happiness against the background of suffering. If you have not suffered hunger, you do not appreciate having something to eat. If you have not gone through a war, you don't know the value of peace. That is why we should not try to run away from one thing after another thing. Holding our suffering, looking deeply into it, we find a way to happiness.
There are so many good pieces of this interview, the entire interview is so eye-opening, I wish I could have included the entire piece here. But I will only post another question, which spoke to me.
OPRAH: And speaking of life, what about death? What happens when we die, do you believe?
NHAT HANH: The question can be answered when you answer this: What happens in the present moment? In the present moment, you are producing thought, speech, and action. And they continue in the world. Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears yours signature. Action is called karma. And that's your continuation. When this body disintegrates you continue on with your actions. It's like a cloud in the sky. When the cloud is not longer in the sky, it hasn't died. The cloud is continued on into other forms like rain or snow or ice. Our nature is the nature of no birth and no death. It is impossible for a cloud to pass from being into nonbeing. And that is true with a beloved person. They have not died. They have continued in many new forms and you can look deeply and recognize them in you and around you.
The article contains a great deal of material on Nhat Hanh's input on peaceful activism for the purpose of social reform. He, at the age of 16, opposed his own government during the Vietnam War. Just a few of the revolutionary things he did were to set up a relief organization that rebuilt bombed Vietnamese villages, set up schools and medical centers, and resettled homeless families. He created a Buddhist University, a publishing house, and a peace activist magazine- all of which led the Vietnamese government to forbid him, in 1966, to return home after he'd left the country on a peace mission. He remained in exile for 39 years. It isn't hard to see why this man was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 by Martin Luther Kind Jr. This was an immensely eye-opening interview, if you're interested further I highly recommend it. :)
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