By Cameron Barnett

Over the summer I went to a Buddhist retreat in Plum Village, France. Plum Village is a community of Buddhist monks and nuns located about an hour and a half from Bordeaux. The head of this community is a man named Thich Nhat Hanh. He is a Vietnamese monk who was forced to leave Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

He was forced to leave because he was opposed to the war and both sides wanted him to join them. He left Vietnam to come to the United States to speak out against the war and when he tried to return to Vietnam, the government refused to let him back in. He then moved to France where he remains today.

Plum Village is made up of four communities where the monks and nuns live during the year. At different times during the year Thich Nhat Hanh offers retreats where people can come and stay for one or two weeks. The community where I stayed was very peaceful with a meditation hall, dining room, and ceremonial bell located in the very center. I lived in a farm house which was about a ten-minute walk from the center. It was an eight-room house which held about twenty people. Altogether at the retreat there were about 700 people coming from fifty countries.

Hearing Thich Nhat Hanh and visiting Plum Village were so important to me because it showed me the importance of being in the moment and taking things step by step. Thay taught me to feel sympathy for those who are mean to others or who picked on me because their souls were not better off for what they were doing. He is an extraordinary person. In his presence I felt that somehow anything that I had ever done wrong was OK, and I was happy.

When I returned home, I was much more relaxed and helped some new kids in the school dorm move in. One particular individual who before had picked on me came up to me the next day after I got back and made fun of me for going on this retreat. Although it was an extremely offensive remark, I thought back to what Thich Nhat Hanh had told me and simply replied, “How are you today?” He yelled at me again and I said, “I had a great break, how was yours?” It took about a week but by the next Monday, he no longer picked on me. Today we are good friends.

My teachers also noticed a change in me. From the second I got back to school I was much more relaxed, calm, and patient. I was also happier. Before when someone had done something I did not agree with, I put up a shell and refused to talk to that person. Thich Nhat Hanh taught me that shutting out the person was no better than picking on him and that if I shut someone out once it would become a habit. With this in mind I worked hard on becoming friendly to everyone and listening to what they were saying. It was a truly amazing experience and it has changed my life forever.

Cameron Barnett, age 13, and his mother JoAnn attended the family retreat at Plum Village in 2006, having previously attended a family retreat in Massachusetts