sermon

INTRODUCTION: Thich Nhat Hahn was born in central Vietnam in 1926 and joined the monkhood at the age of 16. He received training in Zen and the Mahayana school of Buddhism and was ordained as a monk at age 23. He was at one time Editor-in-Chief of Vietnamese Buddhism, the periodical of the Unified Vietnam Buddhist Association. Later, he was a student at Princeton and a teacher at Columbia University. He also founded the Van Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon, and during the war years in his country, he created the School of Youth for Social Service, a corps of some 10,000 Buddhist peaceworkers who went into rural areas to establish schools, build healthcare clinics, and help re-build villages.

Surprisingly, he was not aligned with either the North or South Vietnamese governments; in fact, he refused to support either side. The reason? He felt that the true enemies of Vietnam were not the communists nor the anti-communists, but ideology, hatred, and ignorance.

Hahn led the Buddhist delegation in the Paris Peace Talks, but when the 1973 Peace Accords were signed, the Vietnamese government refused to let him return home. He spent the next several years trying to help the boat people find homes. For himself, he requested and received asylum in France. And was finally allowed to return to Vietnam for an extended stay in 2005 and again this year, 2007.

Thich Naht Hahn is an eminently recognized Dharma teacher. “Dharma” when capitalized, refers to “the teachings of Buddhism.” When not capitalized, there are many definitions; one is “the way things are.”

Thich Nhat Hahn has combined his knowledge of Zen and Theravada Buddhism, with ideas from Western psychology interspersed. The result is his unique approach to modern Zen practice. His worldwide popularity underscores his unique influence in the development of Western Buddhism.

To accomplish this, Thich Nhat Hahn has expanded upon an ancient Buddhist concept taken hold of by millions around the world, known as “mindfulness.”

That means realizing that our existence is a miracle. Everything we touch is a miracle. If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, he says you will see traces of your parents and all the generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of them. That is a part of the miracle of self. The most precious gift we can pass on to others is to be fully and mindfully present. When mindfulness embraces others in loving ways, they bloom like flowers.

I visited this past Wednesday afternoon with Nancy McGlasson at SW Regional Hospital, where she had a complete knee replacement. She’s now in Lee Rehab. As we talked, Tom Hahn’s memorial service came up. Nancy mentioned how important his friendship had been to her. As most of you will remember, Tom passed away only a couple of weeks ago. Nancy knew that were he still alive, he would have been there to see her in the hospital. She said, “Tom had the gift of making everyone think they were special friends. And they were.” Tom knew also that the most precious gifts we can give to anyone are ourselves.

Others have told me similar stories of Tom’s special presence and what it did for them. Part of it had to do with his being a Native American shaman. Part of it had to do with Tom’s being Tom – Tom was special.

It also went the other way. Nathalie told me that one morning about 4 a.m., Tom had a panic attack because of his decreasing inability to breathe. He wanted Nathalie to call Nancy, who is a nurse practitioner. Nathalie initially resisted because of the early morning hour, but gave in and called Nancy, who immediately responded and made the trip over at 4 in the morning. She brought no meds nor miracle cures, but her mere presence calmed Tom down and eased his panic.

Our loving presence is a gift we can give to all. It’s not so much the Socratic appeal to “know thyself,” as much as it is to “know what a loving gift we can be to others.”

We have far more possibilities available in each moment than we realize. The past is gone, and the future is not yet here. So the key is awareness of the present moment. When we are carried away with our worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, we run away from ourselves and we lose ourselves. The practice of mindfulness is always to go back to ourselves.

The way we enter mindfulness is by concentrating on our breathing. Thich Nhat Hanh says that “Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness. To master our breath is to be in control of our bodies and minds. Making our breath calm and even is called the method of following one’s breath.”

In mindfulness, when we breathe in, we know it; when we breathe out, we know that too. Gradually, as we concentrate and practice on our breathing, our breathing becomes balanced, in and out – long in and long out.

When we come into contact with a person whose actions make it difficult to care for them, that person is actually a gift to us: we have the opportunity to be loving to the unlovable, even if the other person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person’s being lovable.

I’ve seen waitstaff at restaurants do this better than almost anyone. In Southwest Florida, it seems we have an inordinate amount of people who feel that they are not only entitled to instant service, but that they also have the right to be rude if they so choose.

One of my students last semester, a senior now, works at least 40 hours a week at the Outback restaurant a few blocks from here. I imagine if you were served by her, you would feel fortunate. She’s very focused intelligent, articulate, attractive and has been waiting tables since age 14 and now is 22. She knows what she’s doing. Her dad’s in prison, her mother’s dying with breast cancer in Connecticut, and she’s here living alone, working and studying hard to get an education.

I was visiting with her about some assignments and asked her how she was doing. She teared as she told me that the night before she had been waiting tables, and had a table of 10. She went up to the table and did the routine they are all trained to go through, and the man who was evidently the head of the group asked, “Where are you from?” She answered, “I came down from Connecticut three years ago to attend FGCU.” To her absolute amazement, the man said, “I don’t want any damn Yankee waiting on me. Go tell the manager we want another waitress.”

She was so stunned that she didn’t really believe he meant it, and kept on trying to serve them, but he really did mean it. After she told the manager and assured him that she hadn’t had time to do anything wrong, she went into the bathroom, cried a minute, came out and worked until midnight and went home.

What was so amazing though was her response to this incredibly bigoted action: Our class in civic engagement had as its project, tutoring seniors who were on the fail/pass line at Estero High School, many for whom English was a second language. She was so determined that her student was going to pass, that she had been calling him every morning at 5:45, to make sure he got up and went to school, which was his biggest problem. Even though she’d had a lousy night, and got home past midnight, she called her student that morning, and told him for sure that she wanted him to be present for tutoring that day. That was the day I was there, and we visited as she waited to tutor her student.

She could have excused herself, blamed the world, or done any number of other things and probably have been justified in doing so. But she chose to let it be an opportunity to go on with her life, and to live and love regardless. That’s what an attitude of peace allows.

Once we have the condition of peace and joy in us, we can afford to be in any situation. Even in what seems like living hell, we will be able to contribute our peace and serenity.

Now rather than trying to define “mindfulness,” let’s describe one of the ordinary experiences Thich Nhat Hahn suggests where “mindfulness” can be brought to bear.

Imagine that we are taking an ordinary walk. Here’s what Thich Nhat Hahn offers about transforming it into a mindful walk. He says:

People consider walking on water or in thin air as a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle, which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, our own two eyes – all is a miracle.

The miracle of walking means that my brain has sent a message to my legs and feet: Lift up one leg and foot and keep the other one down while moving. While we’re walking, our brain is processing information. Tiny nerve endings are firing electrical currents from one to the other as we’re thinking – synapses they’re called. As that’s taking place up here in the brain center, down in our stomach, muscles are churning, juices are flowing, and millions of cells are working to digest what we’ve put into our stomachs recently. Those marvelous things we call lungs are taking in the air we breathe, processing the oxygen into the blood and passing it on to the heart, which then pumps it to every part of our body, including down to our feet while we’re walking. The liver, pancreas and gall bladder are doing their wonderfully important analysis and adjustments to what our stomach digested before it all passes into our disposal system. And because walking is a form of exercise, we’re breathing a little heavier, which means the hairs in our nostrils are waving back and forth as we take in air. The little drum in our ears is beating as it listens to the sounds we encounter as we’re walking. What a miracle is taking place!

As we’re walking we can look up and think: What a miracle the blue sky is, and the white fluffy clouds. When we bring our gaze down, there are the green leaves on the trees, and the grass growing all around.

If we stop walking and look down more closely, we’ll see a whole new world of insect life going on in the grass and the earth nearby. And – miracle of miracles – we have these two eyes to see it all in living color.

I’ve stood on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. I’ve read the story of Jesus in the Christian gospels where it purports that he walked on the waters. But, Thich Nat Hahn asks, which is the greater miracle: walking on water, or walking on the Earth? Thich Nhat Hahn says, “walking on the earth,” that is, if we are mindful of the miracle that it is.

In addition to walking, here’s an exercise he recommends that I like: When you first wake up in the morning, half-smile. Inhale and exhale three breaths before getting out of bed, while maintaining a half-smile. Then throughout the day, look at a child, a leaf, or a painting – anything relatively still – half-smile, inhale and exhale three times.

In his book on The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hahn tells the story of the Emperor’s Questions written by Tolstoy. It poses three questions, which I present to you:

There’s a much longer story that goes with answering the questions, but here are his answers: What is the best time to do each thing? “Remember there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion.”

In response to the second question, namely, Who are the most important people to work with? “The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future?”

And in response to the question, What is the most important thing to do at all times? “The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.”

[1] Given June 10, 2007, as the second Sunday of Unitarian Summer 2007, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, Ft. Myers, Florida, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1901 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.