It's one year since our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) passed and for me it has been a year of gratitude and creativity.
What gifts Thay gave the community when he shared ancient Buddhist practices without dogma.
Practices for everyone, for people of all faiths and no faiths. Practices as simple as breathing. As simple as walking.
It’s a beautiful way of life or it’s a few simple practices. It’s a global ethic for a more engaged, fairer world. It’s a love and deeper respect for the environment, the kind that can slow or even reverse the destruction we do to the planet and ourselves every day.
It’s hope and respect and compassion for ourselves and each other.
It’s a community of beautiful, kind, compassionate people worldwide.
Am I a ‘perfect’ meditator with a straight back and no distractions? No way, not even for a minute. And is that ok? Is that welcome? Absolutely. It’s all welcome.
The Plum Village practice of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh has changed the way I engage with the world, my world and the one around me, in so many ways and always for the better.
And so today, one year after his passing, I sit in gratitude at his wisdom and his generosity and the generosity of the whole community, the global sangha.
And I marvel at the way the community has stepped up in this last year, especially dear Brother Phap Huu and everyone else at Plum Village and in practice communities around the world.
Our teacher would smile and remind us that when the blossoms fall from the plum tree, the tree does not die. A cloud never dies, it is transformed into rain and back into cloud.
We are not our bodies. We are love, we are connection, we are peace.