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Thich Nhat Hanh : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming Thich Nhat Hanh : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming

Mindfulness practices allow us to touch life deeply. These include mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful eating… and generally doing anything mindfully. Doing things mindfully means doing them with your full attention in the present moment. Not being distracted by sadness from the past or worry for the future. Practical Action Plans. Transform knowledge into results with a ready list of action steps at the end of the book summary.

Mindfulness is the energy that allows us to recognize our habit energy and prevent it from dominating us. In the mid-2000s Nhat Hanh was finally allowed to return to Vietnam, but his health has been slowly declining. In 2014 he suffered a stroke leaving him in a wheelchair mostly unable to talk. He’s now returned to the same temple where he first became a monk and wants to remain there until he dies.

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Yet at 16 years old, he was just another novice monk at a temple in central Vietnam. In fact, his family believed a monk’s life would be too difficult for him, but after he entered the temple, he says he felt so joyful and free. On moonlit nights in front of the pond listening to the other monks chanting holy sutras, he felt like he was listening to a choir of angels. Mindfulness allows us to appreciate what we already have. When people become older or they have bad health, they always deeply miss being young and healthy. Yet young and healthy people usually never appreciate or even notice what they do have. Mindfulness can change this. For example, by giving your full attention to your breathing for a few moments, you can feel how good it feels to breath into your lungs. Someone who has breathing problems would pay anything to feel this. Thich Nhat Hanh says people are often awakened while going through a difficult time. Why? Because they are forced to face their suffering and they see how their own irresponsible behavior caused it to happen. While this is painful, it is the first step to not falling into that suffering again. Healing– If you stop, become calm and rest, then healing can happen in your mind and body. The other three functions are necessary for the healing to begin. It’s just like when an animal becomes hurt, it lays down and rests totally for many days so its body can be healed. But normally our human minds never stop and rest from our old patterns, so the wounds from our past don’t heal.

Nonetheless, in 1975 when the war was over, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from his own country by the North side which won the war. He spent the next part of his life promoting Buddhism in western countries, opening mindfulness centers under the name Plum Village in France, America and elsewhere. He wrote many popular books to spread the practice of mindfulness, including this one. Nhat Hanh focuses on the practical aspects of Buddhism, especially mindfulness. In this way, he resembles other teachers who also brought Buddhist ideas to the West beginning in the 1960s, including Alan Watts and Shunryu Suzuki. Now, The Northern Transmission is a separate record of Buddha’s teachings, written down in the language of Sanskrit in a part of India. The original Sanskrit writings are lost, but the Chinese and Tibetan translations survive. The Northern Transmission is followed by members of Mahayana Buddhism who live mostly in east asian countries like China and Japan. We chew the cud of our suffering, our despair, like the cows chew the regurgitated grass. Every time we think about being abused, we are abused once again. But actually that is not happening now; it is all over. Thinking like this, we can be abused every day, even though our childhood may have had a great deal of happiness and sweet moments. We ruminate on our hatred, suffering, and despair and it is not healthy food. Right Speech– Telling the truth and not changing what you say when you’re talking to different people. However, speaking the truth must be done in a way that does not cause hurt to others. So do your best to communicate the truth using language other people will be able to accept. The foundation of right speech is deep listening, which means listening non-judgmentally with your whole being. Therapists are trained to listen this way, and it nourishes both people in the conversation.

The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching | Plum Village

But then when Nhat Hanh was a young adult, his country erupted into war. The Vietnam War lasted almost 20 years and over one million soldiers and civilians died. To face your suffering, touch deeply both the good and bad parts of life. It’s about experiencing everything that happens to you indiscriminately. Knowing that both the positive and negative things pass with time. The heart of Buddha’s teachings are The Four Noble Truths. These truths were part of the first lesson Buddha gave his disciples after he became enlightened. Thich Nhat Hanh focuses heavily on these four truths at the beginning of the book to give us a foundational understanding of Buddhism. Buddhists believe that because Buddha shared these truths, he “put into motion the wheel of the Dharma” which in this context means “the Way of Understanding and Love”. These eight practices are not really religious or moral rules in the traditional sense. Buddha said you shouldn’t follow these rules because someone in authority tells you to. Instead, you should first see with your own awareness how the wrong practices lead to suffering and the right ones lead to peace.We have to learn the art of stopping — stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us. You must face your suffering, which means touching deeply both the good and bad, experiencing everything that happens indiscriminately. How? You can do it through mindfulness practices like mindful breathing and mindful walking. Mindfulness lets us appreciate all that we take for granted, like our great gifts of the ability to breathe, walk and see. 6. Follow the Noble Eightfold Path to stop doing what causes suffering (The Fourth Noble Truth) The next step to ending suffering is facing it directly, which means not avoiding aspects of experience which are unpleasant. (Remember Buddha didn’t just teach that life is suffering, but he also taught how to end suffering. )