A meditation on Thich Nhat Hanh’s Touching Peace

Thich Nhat Hanh is a wisdom practitioner. Take his advice for better health. Mindfulness. Mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. If you’re walking, say to yourself, I am walking. If you're sitting, say to yourself, I am sitting. He provides it as the best workable cure for all the world's ills.

Sure, suffering will always be here, but we must learn how to deal with it. 

In this book, he provides a summary rundown of all his usual favorite points.

Mindfully strengthen goodness, weaken negativity. 

We all need a sangha.

A peace treaty: how to resolve conflict within the sangha.

If you transform yourself, you do so for the benefit of all of us.

Tradition is irrelevant. These are very simple practices that can be used by anyone at any time. He aims at tying cultures together. ‘Think globally.’ Think in terms of the water, not the waves, the ‘ultimate,’ not the limited historical perspective, nirvana, not samsara.

Includes the 5 precepts: Don’t kill, Don’t steal, Don’t participate in sexual misconduct, Use your tongue mindfully, Watch your consumption. 

Don't abuse. 

Know that your parents were once children themselves: vulnerable. You yourself are the crucible that carries the habits of your ancestors and your parents, and will transfer those to your children and future generations. Watch yourself. Your body does not belong exclusively to you. It is actually the belonging of everyone.

Go beyond thyself. Do not think in terms of yourSELF. Think in terms of the society, the community, the sangha. 

Life is really a process of transformation. There is no final stage. 

Write a list of what you have consumed that you shouldn't have. Vow not to repeat it. 

You cannot have someone else suffer and be totally happy yourself. This should be fairly obvious. We inter-are; we are co existent, interdependent, and mutually reliant. If you or I do something right, you or I will be responsible to the herd. If you or I do something wrong, you or I will be culpable to the herd.

Slow down, calm down, and practice wholesome living.

Everyone can benefit from a sangha. It's a place where as a literal or a figurative family, we can resist, using each other as a support, the toxic elements of the world.

His dream at the end is very telling. In it he dreams that he and his brother An are at the marketplace, and for sale on one of the tables is every terrible, awful, and horrible experience he has ever had: warfare, disease, fire, famine, racial oppression, hatred, injustice, ignorance, misery and death. The man selling the ‘goods’ asserts that Thich Nhat Hanh and A will have to undergo these things forevermore, without cessation, on endless repeat. At first, he's down-hearted, but then he gains strength & courage, and shouts in the man's face, ‘If that's the way it is, so be it! If that's the way it must be, then we'll face it!’

This goes in the face of anyone and everyone who is always like, ‘Let’s put off true living for the afterlife,’ ‘This life is insignificant compared with the afterlife,’ ‘I'm just waiting for heaven.’ Thich Nhat Hanh is wise enough to realize that THIS life IS the afterlife, THIS IS the meaningful one, THIS life IS what matters. Reality must be lived fully. We must emBrace THIS life, despite all its imperfections & flaws, nay, misery, depression, & suffering. Because there IS no other life! This defies the nihilism many profess. It turns it on its head, and asserts rather that we are here in this life for the sake of FIXING IT. We can't give up. We can't throw up our hands and say that this life wouldn’t compare with the afterlife, just to wait for some eternal redemption. On whose terms? Our own? Individually? Personally? Selfishly? Or do we expect our family to be there, and do we get the chance to spread out? Nah. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that as hellacious as life can get, he and his family will face it. If he has that kind of courage in the face of never-ending life, why can't we?