Having
had cardiac by-pass surgery last year, I am supposed to take good exercise,
walking each day. But in spite of the target and the evident consequence for my
well-being, it is hard to make the effort every day.
Last week I picked a small
book off my shelf by Thich Nhat Hanh entitled “The
long road turns to joy -
a guide to walking meditation”
and I have begun re-reading it. A short book, but a book full of
meaningful reflections on each page. Not about the past, nor the future but the
now of being, this moment, this place. It is a book that requires space and time
for considered reflection.
We are not good at that,
always moving on to the next occasion, the next meeting, the immense hurry of
living that we have constructed about us. It is too easy to open the car door
and drive a short distance when walking would be better for us and for the
atmosphere of our planet.
Now Nhat Hanh, well into his
late 80s, is seriously ill having had a brain haemorrhage a couple of weeks ago.
A Buddhist monk from
Vietnam
who came to the West during the troubled times of the
Vietnamese war, later formed a community at
Plum
Village
in
France
, having been refused entry to return to his homeland with
the conclusion of the war. Since its foundation it has grown as a centre of
peace and mindfulness, with many visitors each year. They have a website, http://plumvillage.org/news
well worth visiting. An excellent video link is posted there of a talk by Nhat
Hanh, to an Israeli – Palestinian retreat group.
He was a friend of the
Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton, during the Sixties, a friendship brought short
by Merton’s untimely death in 1968. Merton wrote of Nhat Hanh in these words.
“I have said
Nhat Hanh is my brother, and it is true. We are both monks, and we have lived
the monastic life about the same number of years. We are both poets, both
existentialists. I have far more in common with Nhat Hanh than I have with many
Americans, and I do not hesitate to say it”. They met face to face only
once but in so many ways they were following the same path, each within the
construct of their own religious background. But above all, they recognised the
commonalty of much that they held to be important in life.
Within a couple of months, we will be remembering the 100th
anniversary of Merton’s birth,
January 31, 1915
at Prades in
France
.
Both were men of great vision and their influence has extended beyond the
confines of their community, each in his own way reminding us that the Path is
You. The
title of this piece is taken from one of the pages in the Long
Road book. Here is the text.
The Path is You
That path is you,
that is why we never tire of
waiting
whether it is covered with
red dust,
Autumn leaves,
or icy snow,
come back to the path.
You will be like the tree of
life
your leaves, trunk,
branches,
and the blossoms of your
soul
will be fresh and beautiful,
once you enter the practice
of Earth Touching
In
a few words, we are given a reflection that offers so much for our
contemplation. We commend his life at the point and place that he has reached to
the ultimate mercy of God.
END
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