Thich Nhat Hanh, Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1999) ( The poem "Unclasp": "Deserted beach, / footsteps in the sand / erased by rain-- / this anguish comes from nowhere, / and its feet do not yet touch the Earth. // Suddenly I hear a far-off whisper / of the gentle winds of Spring, / and the anguish is gone." Thich Nhat Hanh explains, "A feeling of anxiety can be transformed with a few conscious breaths. The anxiety is like a cloud trying to land on me. I breathe in and out, and it vanishes." Id. at 96.).
Thich Nhat Hanh, Finding Our True Home: Living in the Pure Land Here and Now, with a Preface by Sister Annabel Laity (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2003) ("As human beings, our deepest desire is to find a secure environment where there is love and understanding. . . We all imagine establishing a place where we can nourish ourselves and other people. In such a place, we have the right conditions to develop our understanding and love, to transform our own suffering and that of others. The place is called the Pure Land." "The notion that the Pure Land is an exterior reality, a place to be found far away in the western direction, is just for beginners. If we deepen our practice, the Buddha and the Buddha's land become a reality in our mind. Our ancestral teachers have always said this. If we practice well, we can experience Amitabha Buddha and the Pure Land wherever we are in the present moment. Id. at 22-23. "In the beginning we talk about pure as the absence of pollution. It means the pollution of being busy, of money, or power, of jealousy, of anxiety, or of fear. Pollution is the garbage. If we know how to do it we shall be able to transform garbage into flowers, fruits, and vegetables for our daily use. So 'Pure' in the context of Pure Land means not to be polluted by the afflictions. It does not mean no toilets, no bathrooms, no cooking and no washing up." Id. at 63-64.).
Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home: Jesus and Buddhas as Brothers (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999) ("When we hate someone, we are angry at him because we do not understand him or his environment. By practicing deep looking, we realize that if we grew up like him, in his set of circumstances and having lived in his environment, we would be just like him. The kind of understanding removes your anger, removes your discrimination, and suddenly that person is no longer your enemy. Then you can love him. As long as he or she remains an enemy, love is impossible. Loving your enemy is only possible when you don't see him as your enemy any more, and the only way to do this is by practicing deep looking. That person has made you suffer quite a lot in the past. The practice is to ask why." Id. at 34-35.).
Thich Nhat Hanh, Making Space: Creating a Home Meditation Practice, with an introduction by Phap Dung (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2012) ("May I [you] be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit. May I [you] be safe and free from injury. May I [you] be free from anger, afflictions, fear, and anxiety." Id. at 60.).
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation, Rev' ed., translated by Mobi Ho, with drawings by Vo-Dinh Mai (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975, 1987) ("Some people have said that if you look at reality with the eyes of a Buddhist, you become pessimistic. But to think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. A pessimistic attitude can never create the calm and serene smile which blossoms on the lips of the Bodhisattvas and all others who obtain the Way." Id. at 52.).
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Sun My Heart: From Mindfulness to Insight Contemplation (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1998).
Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1998) ("For love to be true love, it must contain compassion, joy, and equanimity. For compassion to be true compassion, it has to have love, joy, and equanimity in it. True joy has to contain love, compassion, and equanimity. And true equanimity has to have love, compassion, and joy in it. This is the interbeing nature of the Four Immeasurable Minds. When the Buddha told the Brahman man to practice the Four Immeasurable Minds, he was offering all of us a very important teaching. But we must look deeply and practice them for ourselves to bring these four aspects of love into our own lives and into the lives of those we love." Id. at 9.).
Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Keys, with an Introduction by Philip Kapleau (New York: An Image Book /Doubleday, 1974, 1995) ("Although Zen declares that it is not based on words and concepts, it in fact manipulates words and concepts in order to reveal the reality that transcends words and concepts.... It must be clearly understood that though Zen masters may not encourage their disciples to spend time studying the Madhyamika and the Vijnanavada, it is not because these doctrines contradict Zen; in fact, they can very well illustrate the development of Zen. But Zen is not the study of Zen, Zen is life. Zen is direct contact with reality. The Madhyamika and the Vijnanavada doctrines can explain many things, but they do not put the practitioner in direct contact with living reality. Zen can only be lived and experienced. A Master Tue Trung said, 'This marvelous piece must be played.' What is the good of discussing a musical masterpiece? It is the performance that counts." Id. at 139-140. "The process of Zen finding roots in Western soil is an ongoing one. Cultural, economic, and psychological conditions are different in the West. One cannot become a practitioner of Zen just by imitating the way of eating, sitting, or dressing of Chinese or Japanese practitioners. Zen is life; Zen does not imitate. If Zen is to fully take root in the West, it must acquire a Western form, different from Oriental Zen." Id. at 102. "Contemporary man is dragged along in a producing and consuming treadmill to the point where he begins to become a part of the machine and loses mastery of himself. Daily life dissipates our spirit, eats up our time, and thus does not leave the opportunity to become aware of ourselves or return to our deeper self. Accustomed as we are to being constantly 'occupied,' if these occupations should be taken from us, we find ourselves empty and abandoned. Still, we refuse to confront ourself and instead go off in search of friends, to mix in with the crowd, to listen to the radio or to the television, to get rid of this impression of emptiness." "[] The economic, political, and military systems we have established have turned against us and imposed themselves on us, and we have become increasingly 'dehumanized.'" Id. at 151-152. 'Scientists, historians, and sociologists have sounded the alarm, but our societies do not seem to change. We continue our daily lives contributing to the maintenance and consolidation of the machinery of production and consumption. We eat, drink, work, and distract ourselves, as if nothing is going to happen." Id.at 154-155.).
NOTE OF CAUTION: The more I read and think about Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, I am coming to sense that being enlightened, being awakened, is to be able to tell one's life story without making oneself the hero/heroine, without making oneself the victim, or even the central character; and to be able to tell the story honestly, yet without the self-deception that the story is really complete or even true. These are some of the aspects of Buddhism which will make it difficult, though not impossible, for a truly American form of Buddhism to firmly establish itself, that is, to become mainstream. The American culture, as it is now, is far too narcissistic, far too self-centered, etc., to embraced any form of Buddhism worthy of that name. This concern about the viability of Buddhism, especially Zen Buddhism, in a western or American form has been touch upon by Thomas Merton:
"However, let us be on our guard. This reference to Zen, which naturally suggests itself at a time when Zen is still somewhat popular in the western world, may be a clue, but it may also be a misleading cliche. There are quite a few western readers who have in one way or another heard about Zen and even tasted a little of it with the tip of the tongue. But tasting is one thing and swallowing is another, especially when, having only tasted, one proceeds to identify the thing tasted with something else which it seems to resemble.
"The fashion of Zen in certain western circles fits into the rather confused pattern of spiritual revolution and renewal. It represents a certain understandable dissatisfaction with conventional spiritual patterns and with ethical and religious formalism. It is a symptom of western man's desperate need to recover spontaneity and depth in a world which his technological skill has made rigid artificial, and spiritually void. But in its association with the need to recover authentic sense experience, western Zen has become identified with a spirit of improvisation and experimentation--with a sort of moral anarchy that forgets how much tough discipline and what severe traditional mores are presupposed by the Zen of China and Japan...." Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu (New York & Boston: Shambhala, 2004), at 2-3.
