A Public Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh at the Riverside Church, New
York - September 25th, 2001.
This transcript was made and edited from the Audio broadcast on the Internet and consisted
of three parts. All three parts are included in the transcript.
Part I
My Dear friends, I would like to tell you how I practice when I get angry.
During the war in Vietnam, there was a lot of injustice, and many thousands,
including friends of mine, many disciples of mine, were killed. I got very
angry. One time I learned that the city of Ben Tre was bombarded by American aviation. And the city was destroyed.
The
military man who was responsible for that declared later that he had to destroy
the city of Ben Tre to save it. I was very angry.
But at that time, I was already a practitioner, a solid practitioner. I did not
say anything, I did not act, because I knew that acting or saying things while
you are angry is not wise. It may create a lot of destruction. I went back to
myself, recognizing my anger, embracing it, and
looked deeply into the nature of my suffering.
In the Buddhist tradition, we have the practice of mindful breathing, of
mindful walking, to generate the energy of mindfulness. It is exactly with that
energy of mindfulness that we can recognize, embrace, and transform our anger.
Mindfulness is the kind of energy that helps us to be aware of what is going on
inside of us and around us, and anybody can be mindful. If you drink a cup of
tea and you know that you are drinking a cup of tea, that is mindful drinking.
When you breathe in and you know that you are breathing in, and you focus your
attention on your in-breath, that is mindfulness of breathing. When you make a
step and you are aware you are making a step, that is called mindfulness of
walking. The basic practice in Zen centers, meditation centers, is the practice
of generating mindfulness every moment of your daily life. When you are angry,
you are aware that you are angry. Because you already have the energy of
mindfulness in you created by the practice, that is why you have enough of it in
order to recognize, embrace, look deeply, and understand the nature of your
suffering.
I was able to understand the nature of the suffering in Vietnam. I saw that not
only Vietnamese suffered, but Americans suffered as well during the war in
Vietnam. The young American man who was sent to Vietnam in order to kill and be
killed underwent a lot of suffering, and the suffering continues today. The
family, the nation also suffers. I could see that the cause of our suffering in
Vietnam is not American soldiers. It is a kind of policy that is not wise. It is
a misunderstanding. It is fear that lies at the foundation of the policy.
Many in Vietnam had burned themselves in order to call for a cessation of the
destruction. They did not want to inflict pain on other people, they wanted to
take the pain on themselves in order to get the message across. But the sounds
of planes and bombs was too loud. The people in the world, not many of them were
capable of hearing us. So I decided to go to America and call for a cessation of
the violence. That was in 1966, and because of that I was prevented from going
home. And I have lived in exile since that time, 1966.
I was able to see that the real enemy of man is not man. The real enemy is our
ignorance, discrimination, fear, craving, and violence. I did not have hate the
American people, the American nation. I came to America in order to plead for a
kind of looking deeply so that your government could revise that kind of policy.
I remember I met with Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara. I told him the
truth about the suffering. He kept me with him for a long time and he listened
deeply to me, and I was very grateful for his quality of listening. Three months
later, when the war intensified, I heard that he resigned from his post.
Hatred and anger was not in my heart. That is why I was listened to by many
young people in my country, advocating them to follow the path of
reconciliation, and together we helped to bring about the new organizations for
peace in Paris. I hope my friends here in New York are able to practice the
same. I understood, I understand suffering and injustice, and I feel that I
understand deeply the suffering of New York, of America. I feel I am a New
Yorker. I feel I am an American.
You want to be there for you, to be with you, not to act, not to say things when
you are not calm. There are ways that we can go back to ourselves and practice
so that we rediscover our calmness, our tranquility, our lucidity. There are
ways that we can practice so that we
understand the real causes of the suffering. And that understanding will help us
to do what needs to be done, and not do what could be harmful to us and to other
people. Let us practice mindful breathing for half a minute before we continue.
In Buddhist psychology, we speak of consciousness in terms of seeds. We have the
seed of anger in our consciousness. We have the seed of despair, of fear. But we
also have the seed of understanding, wisdom, compassion, and forgiveness. If we
know how to water the seed of wisdom and compassion in us, that seed, these
seeds will manifest themselves as powerful sorts of energy helping us to perform
an act of forgiveness and compassion. It will be able to bring relief right away
to our nation, to our world. That is my conviction.
I believe very strongly that the American people have a lot of wisdom and
compassion within themselves. I want you to be your best when you begin to act,
for the sake of America and for the sake of the world. With lucidity, with
understanding and compassion, you will turn to the people who have caused a lot
of damage and suffering to you and ask them a lot of questions.
"We do not understand enough of your suffering, could you tell us? We have
not done anything to you, we have not tried to destroy you, to discriminate
against you, and we do not understand why you have done this to us. There must
be a lot of suffering within you. We want to listen to you. We may be able to
help you. And together we can help build peace in the world." And if you
are solid, if you are compassionate when you make this statement, they will tell
you about their suffering.
In Buddhism we speak of the practice of deep listening, compassionate listening,
a wonderful method by which we can restore communication -- communication
between partners, communication between father and son, communication between
mother and daughter, communication between nations. The practice of deep
listening should be taken up by parents, by partners, so that they can
understand the suffering of the other person. That person might beour wife, our
husband, our son, or our daughter. We may have enough good will to listen, but
many of us have lost our capacity to listen because we have a lot of anger and
violence in us. The other people do not know how to use kind speech; they always
blame and judge. And language is very often sour, bitter. That kind of speech
will always touch off the irritation and the anger in us and prevent us from
listening deeply and with compassion. That is why good will to
listen is not enough. We need some training in order to listen deeply with
compassion. I think, I believe, I have the conviction, that a father, if he
knows how to listen to his son deeply and with compassion, he will be able to
open the door of his son’s heart and restore communication.
People in our Congress and our Senate should also train themselves in the art of
deep listening, of compassionate listening. There is a lot of suffering within
the country, and many people feel their suffering is not understood. That is why
politicians, members of the Parliament, members of the Congress have to train
themselves in the art of deep listening -- listening to their own people,
listening to the suffering in the country, because there is injustice in the
country, there is discrimination in the country. There is a lot of anger in the
country. If we can listen to each other, we can also listen to the people
outside of the country. Many of them are in a situation of despair, many suffer
because of injustice and discrimination. The amount of violence and despair in
them is very huge. And if we know how to listen as a nation to their suffering,
we can already bring a lot of relief. They will feel that they are being
understood. That can diffuse the bomb already.
I always advise a couple that when they are angry with each other, they should
go back to their breathing, their mindful walking, embrace their anger, and look
deeply into the nature of their anger. And they may be able to transform that
anger in just fifteen minutes or a few hours. If they cannot do that, then they
will have to tell the other person that they suffer, that they are angry, and
that they want the other person to know it. They will try to say it in a calm
way. "Darling, I suffer, and I want you to know it." And
in Plum Village, where I live and practice, we advise our friends not to keep
their anger for more than twenty-four hours without telling the other person.
"Darling, I suffer, and I want you to know it. I do not know why you have
done such a thing to me. I do not know why you have said such a thing to
me." That is the first thing they should tell the other person. And if they
are not calm enough to say it, they can write it down on a piece of paper.
The second thing they can say or write down is, "I am doing my
best." It means "I am practicing not to say anything, not to do
anything with anger, because I know that in doing so I will create more
suffering. So I am embracing my anger, I am looking deeply into the nature of my
anger." You tell the other person that you are practicing holding
your anger, understanding your anger, in order to find out whether that anger
has come from your own misunderstanding, wrong perception, your lack of
mindfulness and your lack of skillfulness.
And the third thing you might like to say to him or her is, "I need
your help." Usually when we get angry with someone, we want to do
the opposite. We want to say, "I don't need you. I can survive by myself
alone." "I need your help" means "I need your practice, I
need your deep looking, I need you to help me to overcome this anger because I
suffer." And if I suffer, there is no way that you can be happy, because
happiness is not an individual matter. If the other person suffers, there is no
way that you can be truly happy alone. So helping the other person to suffer
less, to smile, will make you happy also.
The Buddha said, "This is like this, because that is like that. This is
because that is." The three sentences I propose are the language of true
love. It will inspire the other person to practice, to look deeply, and together
you will bring about understanding and reconciliation. I propose to my friends
to write down these sentences on a piece of paper and slip it into their wallet.
Every time they get angry at their partner or their son or daughter, they can
practice mindful breathing, take it out, and read. It will be a bell of
mindfulness telling them what to do and what not to do. These are the
three sentences: "I suffer and I want you to know it." "I am
doing my best." "Please help."
I believe that in an international conflict, the same kind of practice
is possible also. That is why I propose to America as a nation to do the same.
You tell the people you believe to be the cause of your suffering that you
suffer, that you want them to know it, that you want to know why they have done
such a thing to you, and you practice listening deeply and with compassion.
The quality of our being is very important, because that question, that
statement is not a condemnation, but a willingness to create true communication.
"We are ready to listen to you. We know that you must have suffered a lot
in order to have done such a thing to us. You may have thought that we are the
cause of your suffering. So please tell us whether we have tried to destroy you,
whether we have tried to discriminate against you, so that we can understand.
And we know that when we understand your suffering, we may be able to help
you." That is what we call in Buddhism "loving speech" or
"kind language," and it has the purpose of creating communication,
restoring communication. And with communication restored, peace will be
possible.
This summer, a group of Palestinians came to Plum Village and practiced together
with a group of Israelis, a few dozen of them. We sponsored their coming and
practicing together. In two weeks, they learned to sit together, walk mindfully
together, enjoy silent meals together, and sit quietly in order to listen to
each other. The practice taken up was very successful. At the end of the two
weeks practice, they gave us a wonderful, wonderful report. One lady said,
"Thay, this is the first time in my life that I see that peace in the
Middle East is possible." Another young person said, "Thay, when I
first arrived in Plum Village, I did not believe that Plum Village was something
real because in the situation of my country, you live in constant fear and
anger. When your children get onto the bus, you are not sure that they will be
coming home. When you go to the market, you are not sure that you will survive
to go home to your family. When you come to Plum Village, you see people looking
at each other with loving kindness, talking with other kindly, walking
peacefully, and doing everything mindfully. We did not believe that it was
possible. It did not look real to me."
But in the peaceful setting of Plum Village, they were able to be together, to
live together, and to listen to each other, and finally understanding came. They
promised that when they returned to the Middle East, they would continue the
practice. They will organize a day of practice every week at the local level and
a day of mindfulness at the national level. And they plan to come to Plum
Village as a bigger group to continue the practice.
I think that if nations like America can organize that kind of setting where
people can come together and spend their time practicing peace, then they will
be able to calm down their feelings, their fears, and peaceful negotiation will
be much easier.
Part II
All things need food to be alive and to grow, including our love or our hate.
Love is a living thing, hate is a living thing. If you do not nourish your love,
it will die. If you cut the source of nutriment for your violence, your violence
will also die. That is why the path shown by the Buddha is the path of mindful
consumption.
The Buddha told the following story. There was a couple who wanted to cross
the desert to go to another country in order to seek freedom. They brought with
them their little boy and a quantity of food and water. But they did not
calculate well, and that is why halfway through the desert they ran out of food,
and they knew that they were going to die. So after a lot of anguish, they
decided to eat the little boy so that they could survive and go to the other
country, and that's what they did. And every time they ate a piece of flesh from
their son, they cried.
The Buddha asked his monks, "My dear friends: Do you think that the couple
enjoyed eating the flesh of their son?" The Buddha said, "It is
impossible to enjoy eating the flesh of our son. If you do not eat mindfully,
you are eating the flesh of your son and daughter, you are
eating the flesh of your parent."
If we look deeply, we will see that eating can be extremely violent. UNESCO
tells us that every day, forty thousand children in the world die because of a
lack of nutrition, of food. Every day, forty thousand children. And the amount
of grain that we grow in the West is mostly used to feed our cattle. Eighty
percent of the corn grown in this country is to feed the cattle to make meat.
Ninety-five percent of the oats produced in this country is not for us to eat,
but for the animals raised for food. According to this recent report that we
received of all the agricultural land in the US, eighty-seven percent is used to
raise animals for food. That is forty-five percent of the total land mass in the
US.
Water
More than half of all the water consumed in the US whole purpose is to raise
animals for food. It takes 2500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but
only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. A totally vegetarian diet requires
300 gallons of water per day, while a
meat-eating diet requires more than 4000 gallons of water per day.
Pollution
Raising animals for food causes more water pollution than any other industry in
the US because animals raised for food produce one hundred thirty times the
excrement of the entire human population. It means 87,000 pounds per second.
Much of the waste from factory farms and slaughter houses flows into streams and
rivers, contaminating water sources.
Deforestation
Each vegetarian can save one acre of trees per year. More than 260 million acres
of US forests have been cleared to grow crops to feed animals raised for meat.
And another acre of trees disappears every eight seconds. The tropical rain
forests are also being destroyed to
create grazing land for cattle.
Resources
In the US, animals raised for food are fed more than eighty percent of the corn
we grow and more than ninety-five percent of the oats. We are eating our
country, we are eating our earth, we are eating our children. And I have learned
that more than half the people in this country overeat.
Mindful eating can help maintain compassion within our heart. A person without
compassion cannot be happy, cannot relate to other human beings and to other
living beings. And eating the flesh of our own son is what is going on in the
world, because we do not practice mindful eating.
The Buddha spoke about the second kind of food that we consume every day --
sense impressions -- the kind of food that we take in by the way of the eyes,
the ears, the tongue, the body, and the mind. When we read a magazine, we
consume. When you watch television, you consume. When you listen to a
conversation, you consume. And these items can be highly toxic. There may be a
lot of poisons, like craving, like violence, like anger, and despair. We allow
ourselves to be intoxicated by what we consume in terms of sense impressions. We
allow our children to intoxicate themselves because of these products. That is
why it is very important to look deeply into our ill-being, into the nature of
our ill-being, in order to recognize the sources of nutriment we have used to
bring it into us and into our society.
The Buddha had this to say: "What has come to be - if you know how to look
deeply into its nature and identify its source of nutriment, you are already on
the path of emancipation." What has come to be is our illness, our
ill-being, our suffering, our violence, our despair. And if you practice looking
deeply, meditation, you'll be able to identify the sources of nutriments, of
food, that has brought it into us.
Therefore the whole nation has to practice looking deeply into the nature of
what we consume every day. And consuming mindfully is the only way to protect
our nation, ourselves, and our society. We have to learn how to consume
mindfully as a family, as a city, as a nation. We have to learn what to produce
and what not to produce in order to provide our people with only the items that
are nourishing and healing. We have to refrain from producing the kinds of items
that bring war and despair into our body, into our consciousness, and into the
collective body and consciousness of our nation, our society. And Congress has
to practice that. We have elected members of the Congress. We expect them to
practice deeply, listening to the suffering of the people, to the real causes of
that suffering, and to make the kind of laws that can protect us from
self-destruction. And America is great. I have the conviction that you can do it
and help the world. You can offer the world wisdom, mindfulness, and compassion.
Nowadays I enjoy places where people do not smoke. There are nonsmoking flights
that you can enjoy. Ten years ago they did not exist, nonsmoking flights. And in
America on every box of cigarettes there is the message: "Beware: Smoking
can be hazardous to your health." That is a bell of mindfulness. That is
the practice of mindful consumption. You do not say that you are practicing
mindfulness, but you are really practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness of smoking
is what allowed you to see that smoking is not healthy.
In America, people are very aware of the food they eat. They want every package
of food to be labeled so that they can know what is in it. They don't want to
eat the kind of food that will bring toxins and poisons into their bodies. This
is the practice of mindful eating.
But we can go further. We can do better, as parents, as teachers, as artists and
as politicians. If you are a teacher, you can contribute a lot in awakening
people of the need for mindful consumption, because that is the way to real
emancipation. If you are a journalist, you have the means to educate people, to
wake people up to the nature of our situation. Every one of us can transform
himself or herself into a bodhisattva doing the work of awakening. Because only
awakening can help us to stop the course we are taking, the course of
destruction. Then we will know in which direction we should go to make the earth
a safe place for us, for our children, and for their children.
Part III
The third nutriment that the Buddha spoke of is volition. Volition is what you want to do the most, your deepest desire. Every one of us has a deepest desire. We have to identify it, we have to call it by its true name. The Buddha had a desire; he wanted to transform all his sufferin. He wanted to get enlightened in order to be able to help other people. He did not believe that by being a politician he could help many people, that is why he chose the way of a monk. There are those of us who believe that happiness is only possible when we get a lot of money, a lot of fame, a lot of power, and a lot of sex. That kind of desire belongs to the third category of food spoken of by the Buddha.
The Buddha offered this image to illustrate his teaching: There is a young man who loves to be alive, he doesn’t want to die. And yet two very strong men are dragging him to a place where there is a pit of burning charcoal and want to throw him into the glowing embers so he will die.
He resisted but he had to die because the two men were too strong. The Buddha said, "Your deepest desire will bring you either to a place where there is happiness or to hell." That is why it is very important to look into the nature of your deepest desire, namely volition. The Buddha said that craving will lead you to a lot of suffering, whether there is craving for wealth, sex, power, or fame. But if you have a healthy desire; like the desire to protect life, to protect the environment or to help people to live a simple life with time to take care of yourself, to love and to take care of your beloved ones, that is the kind of desire that will bring you to happiness. But if you are pushed by the craving for fame, for wealth, for power, you will have to suffer a lot. And that desire will drag you into hell, into the pit of glowing embers, and you will have to die.
There are people everywhere in the world that consider vengeance as their deepest desire. They become terrorists. When we have hatred and vengeance as our deepest desire, we will suffer terribly also, like the young person who has been dragged by the two strong men to be thrown into the pit of glowing embers. Our deepest desire should be to love, to help and not to revenge, not to punish, not to kill. And I am confident that New Yorkers have that wisdom. Hatred can never answer hatred; all violence is injustice. Responding to violence with violence can only bring more violence and injustice, more suffering, not only to other people but suffering to ourselves. This is wisdom that is in every one of us. We need to breathe deeply, to get calm in order to touch the seed of wisdom. I know that if the seed of wisdom and of compassion of the American people could be watered regularly during one week or so, it will bring a lot of relief, it will reduce the anger and the hatred. And America will be able to perform an act of forgiveness that will bring about a great relief to America and to the world. That is why my suggestion is the practice of being calm, being concentrated, watering the seeds of wisdom and compassion that are already in us, and learning the art of mindful consumption. This is a true revolution, the only kind of revolution that can help us get out from this difficult situation where violence and hatred prevail.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands.
To keep my loneliness warm
Two hands, protecting,
Two hands, nourishing,
Two hands preventing
My soul from leaving me in anger.