“The kingdom of God is a reality that you can live every day. It is available to us; are we available to it?”

These are words of Thich Nhat Hanh, spoken by him last week before a large and receptive gathering in the Harvard University church. A thousand students and others came to hear this Vietnamese Buddhist monk with a wide reputation for spiritual insight combined with zeal to bring peace, inner and outer, to the world at large.

This is the man whom Martin Luther King nominated for the Nobel peace prize. He often receives some credit for the spread of Zen Buddhism in the United States, France, and other western nations.

Before his talk audience members, led by a monk from Maple Forest Monastery in Vermont, sang in order to induce a mood of calm and relaxation:

“Breathing in, breathing out.
I am blooming as a flower. I am fresh as the dew.
I am solid as a mountain. I am firm as the earth. I am free.”

Then a bell rang and we focused on our breathing, calming our thoughts.

When Thich Nhat Hanh appeared on the platform he was accompanied by some twenty Buddhist monks and nuns who showed forth the deep recollection that the master teaches. Familiarly, he is called Thây or the Teacher, a sign of the respect and affection that his followers feel for him.

In his talk, the Teacher focused on mindfulness as he outlined what its practice can do for both soul and body. Paying attention to one’s breathing, he indicated, is the way to become mindful.

“Every time you pay attention to your breathing,” he said, “something important may happen. We breathe all the time, but we seldom become aware.”

When you do become aware, “your mind comes home to your body, you are there fully present. We make the body and the mind one.”

According to Thây, this practice opens the way to great gifts. “It brings peace and happiness. You become aware of many wonderful things about yourself, inside and outside.”

This formula for happiness comes from a man who seems at peace with himself. Dressed in a simple brown robe, his head shaven, he stands before the microphone, his hands sometimes moving in and out of each other. Only the wisp of a smile appears at times, though he often mentions smiling as a product of mindfulness.

“There is no day I don’t enjoy walking in the kingdom of God,” the Teacher tells us. Then he goes on to tell us about various kinds of seeds that lay within our psyches.

“There is a seed of fear, of anger in our consciousness,” he explains. “There is a seed of stability, of love. There are energies that help us to be loving and compassionate.”

So, in his teaching, each of us has both positive and negative seeds. So does the one whom we love. “Do not water the negative seeds in her,” warns Thich Nhat Hanh. Instead ask, “How can I best love you, how can I best protect you?”

This approach, the Teacher assured listeners, brings another important value –  –  security. In his words, “When you have love, compassion, understanding within you, you will be safe.”

He shared with us an encounter with a woman terribly distressed over feeling unloved. “Your flower needs watering,” he told her. The woman’s husband also took in this message, changed his ways, and the situation changed from bitterness to peace and love.

At points in his talk, the teacher would ring a large gong and the sound would reverberate, calling listeners to renewed mindfulness. Responding to this ringing, another monk uttered a prayer: “May the sound of the bell penetrate the cosmos, even the darkest places.”

He then spoke of those, like himself, who are social activists. “We want to reduce the level of violence, but we must take care of ourselves. Every day, water the seeds of compassion,” he advised those working to change the world.

The Teacher advises a similar approach to depression. “Fear and emotion is us make us suffer,” he says, “breathing and meditation can help us calm down.” When compassion is there, you suffer much less.”

Robert Griffin