The concentration on nonself reveals the stream of ancestors that flows through every cell in our body: a stream transmitted to us by our parents, teachers, friends, and all beings. In this issue we invite monastics and lay practitioners from our international community, Thầy’s continuation body, to reflect on the lineage that we have been transmitted: a lineage of nonviolent action that unites body and mind as one in the present moment. Their words bear witness to how this transmission evolves in the crucible of our practice.
The concentration on nonself reveals the stream of ancestors that flows through every cell in our body: a stream transmitted to us by our parents, teachers, friends, and all beings. In this issue we invite monastics and lay practitioners from our international community, Thầy’s continuation body, to reflect on the lineage that we have been transmitted: a lineage of nonviolent action that unites body and mind as one in the present moment. Their words bear witness to how this transmission evolves in the crucible of our practice.
Our lineage is also nonlinear, incorporating past and future in this present moment in a way that transcends political and proprietary boundaries of space and scheduled, measured boundaries of time. It includes peace work, scientific inquiry, poetry, applied ethics, Buddhist psychology, and a powerful, community-based resistance to the forces that lead us away from our true—and human—nature. We move, as a community, at the speed of trust.
Two years after Thầy’s passing, we celebrate him in the root temple of Từ Hiếu as our ancestor—the teacher of mindful living and the founder of the Plum Village tradition—and we invite you to open your heart to the presence of our ancestral teachers in the here and now.
Brother Pháp Lưu
Advisor and Editor