Wake Up Paris; photo courtesy of Wake Up Every year they ask me to write something for the magazine La Thu Lang Mai [the annual magazine of Plum Village in Vietnamese], and every year I feel confused. What am I supposed to write? Who is the audience? These are the…
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Healing All Moments
A Retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh By Jill Siler The Vietnamese monk seemed to float onto the stage. He put his palms together and bowed his head. Then smiling, he folded his legs, effortlessly sank to the floor, and settled on a small round cushion. “Dear friends,” said Thich Nhat…
Finding Ways to Help
In 1975, Thich Nhat Hanh and I moved with several fliends to a house near Fontvannes, France. The war in Vietnam had ended and we were cut off from our country with no way to help. We named our community Les Patates Douces, Sweet Potatoes. In Vietnam, when peasants have no rice, they eat dried sweet potatoes.…
Plover Mind
By Michael Petracca I unlock the plover shed, a cinder block storeroom atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific. Through the shed’s salt filmy window, the sea looks glassy under a thick batting of overcast. Rust-colored kelp undulates slowly at low tide. Pelicans glide parallel to shore, pull up abruptly, plunge,…
Friends on the Path of Socially Engaged Buddhism
By Jack Lawlor Dean Kaufer; Soto Zen priest and teacher Taigen Dan Leighton; and Dharma teacher Jack Lawlor of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship’s Chicago Chapter at the 2012 NATO Conference protest march in Chicago Many of us attracted to the teachings of the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh have an interest…
Free Where I Am
By Patrick Doyle I’m currently serving my fifth year of a ten-year sentence for armed burglary. I can get out in 2016. When I got arrested in 2007, I was an angry, young, confused gang member looking at a life sentence. I didn’t care about life anymore. I was adopted…
Dharma Teachers’ Retreat
By Jack Lawlor Shortly after dawn on January 25,1998, seven of Thay's Dharma children serving as lay Dharmacharya in North America concluded their first Dharma teachers' weekend retreat by enjoying outdoor walking meditation among the silent grove of coastal redwoods known as Muir Woods. We don't understand why it took so long for us…
Compassion in the Courtroom
By Gerard B. Wattigny Not long ago, my job called me to sentence a man who was 76 years old. He had killed two men and wounded another. These shootings occurred in a small town where all of those involved knew one another. His son and family were very upset over the incident, feeling…
Finding Joy in the Present Moment
I was raised in the Christian tradition, but as an older adult, I became more and more interested in meditation. I began with Centering Prayer, a form of Christian meditation. I was introduced to the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh at an annual retreat for Centering Prayer. The retreat facilitator…
Salt in Clear Water
By Jennifer Shumaker Driving from Arkansas through Taos and the Carson National Forest, I had plenty of time to fantasize about the next six days. I was on my way to a mindfulness retreat with Therese Fitzgerald, Wendy Johnson, and a group of practitioners from activist professions at the Vallecitos Mountain Refuge in northern New…





