Mindful Living

I just met Thich Nhat Hanh through his book Going Home ~ Jesus and Buddha as Brothers and based on his list of previous books, can’t understand why I haven’t met him before now. Nhat Hanh is seventy-two and has lived an extraordinary life, having become a Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen, he is the master of a temple in Vietnam whose lineage goes back over two thousand years and is traceable to the Buddha himself. He has written more than one hundred books of poetry, fiction and philosophy, founded universities and social service organizations, rescued boat people, led the Buddhist delegation at the Paris Peace Talks and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King. Having lived in exile from Vietnam for thirty-three years, he is the founder of Plum Village, a string of three small hamlets located in the area southwest of France known as Dordogne, a remote region east of Bordeaux.

Nhat Hanh’s message is a simple one and seems to weave around the central thread of mindfulness, being fully present in the moment…living in the moment. As I read his words setting forth the similarities between Buddha and Jesus and their teachings I feel that familiar stirring, the way you do when someone or something tickles that stash of beliefs you have collected and tucked away to become part of who and what you are. I’ve been thinking a lot these past days about mindful living…being fully engaged in the now and all that is happening in the moment. Somehow during our journey through life, we become separated from now and begin to focus on the future and even the past.

One day when I was six years old I watched a garden spider take hours to spin his web and then I marveled as he patiently waited for his world to suddenly explode when an unsuspecting fly was caught up in the silken death trap. I watched as he rushed to the struggling fly and began to wrap him in a cocoon, slowly imprisoning and suffocating him and on some level I realized that it was all part of the orchestration of life. That was in Chicago in the backyard flower garden of a big house we shared with an even bigger Italian family…we had one of two apartments upstairs. The heat of that day has traveled through all these years with me and I remember how badly I wanted a drink of water, but also I didn’t want to leave that spider.

The second two decades of my life were filled with survival and I had very little time to watch spiders. I ran too fast and worked too hard. At night I worried too much and regretted too many things. I ran the race for things that ultimately didn’t bring me happiness or peace or contentment. I kept trying and kept trying until finally I just couldn’t try anymore. What I miraculously found when I gave it up was that the world kept on turning. I didn’t go hungry or naked. My children loved me as much as ever and somehow along the way I had won the love of a good, kind and gentle man and I returned that love. Maybe that’s a large part of what life is about…simply finding out what it isn’t about.

My life has slowed these days and I no longer fear I may not make it. I’m not so scared and uncertain about what the next day will bring and whether I will be alright. My sons are grown there are no little faces looking to me for food, clothing , warmth and security. Somehow I believe I was able to foster some sense of security and wellbeing in them even though those feelings were so alien to me for so much of my life. I watch my son and smile at the frequency of the kisses and hugs he gives my grandson. I know well the depth of feeling and emotion behind those simple acts. Maybe that was my legacy to my sons…the simplicity of being able first of all to feel deeply and secondly, to demonstrate those feelings. Not a bad legacy.

Many years ago in the 70’s, I recall slipping out of bed just after dawn, brewing a quick cup of coffee and slipping out onto the old screen porch. The birds were just beginning to feed and call to one another and the gentle lapping of the water against the pier drew me down the grassy slope nearer to the lake where I sank down carefully balancing my cup as I did so. Any other time I would have said I was alone, but here in the quietness of this Alabama dawn I was completely aware of everything around me. The new pier we had built just last summer was the only testament to civilization in my view as I sat there and watched the day open up.

The dragonflies were beautiful, how had I never noticed all the colors in their wings? There were at least a million birds trying to get the attention of one another as they went about their business of locating breakfast and they seemed to take soaring little flights to nowhere, just for the pure joy of feeling the air against their bodies.

Fish lazily splashed as they broke the quiet surface of the water to feel the rising sun on their skin before the heat sat in and they retreated to deeper depths. Here and there were turtles on the bank or a half submerged log, their heads raised toward the sun as they drank in the energy. I looked down beside where I had landed in the grass to see a colony of ants busily rushing along on some invisible highway leading to and from their latest found feast. Occasionally one would stop dead still, turn around and rush back the other way as if remembering something he had forgotten to do.

The gentle lapping of the water around the pilings of the pier were the only evidence of the lake breathing to and fro in the gentle morning air. I noticed for the first time how the trees bent over the water as if trying to reach down and feel the coolness move over their branches. I thought how miraculous it was that the tiniest leaf managed to hang onto that branch through the most fierce of summer storms until that certain one moment on a cool tinged fall morning when it surrendered to the earth and became once more all that it had ever been.

There must have been other times – I know there were other times. But for me, these two memories are profoundly imprinted on my soul. They are proof positive that God is found in the most simple of things. I find myself longing these days for more moments of wonderment in a quiet corner of a simple flower garden and I eagerly look forward to sharing a sunrise with a few good friends.