Daily Mindfulness
by Thich Nhat Hanh
Mindful
Eating
Mindful eating is very pleasant. We sit beautifully. We are aware of the
people that are sitting around us. We are aware of the food on our plates. This
is a deep practice. Each morsel of food is an ambassador from the cosmos. When
we pick up a piece of a vegetable, we look at it for half a second. We look
mindfully to really recognize the piece of food, the piece of carrot or string
bean. We should know that this is a piece of carrot or a string bean. We
identify it with our mindfulness: "I know this is a piece of carrot. This
is a piece of string bean." It only takes a fraction of a second. When we
are mindful, we recognize what we are picking up. When we put it into our mouth,
we know what we are putting into our mouth. When we chew it, we know what we are
chewing. It's very simple.
Some of us, while looking at a piece of carrot, can see the whole cosmos in
it, can see the sunshine in it, can see the earth in it. It has come from the
whole cosmos for our nourishment. You may like to smile to it before you put it
in your mouth. When you chew it, you are aware that you are chewing a piece of
carrot. Don't put anything else into your mouth, like your projects, your
worries, your fear, just put the carrot in. And when you chew, chew only the
carrot, not your projects or your ideas. You are capable of living in the
present moment, in the here and the now. It is simple, but you need some
training to just enjoy the piece of carrot. This is a miracle.
I often teach "orange meditation" to my students. We spend time
sitting together, each enjoying an orange. Placing the orange on the palm of our
hand, we look at it while breathing in and out, so that the orange becomes a
reality. If we are not here, totally present, the orange isn't here either.
There are some people who eat an orange but don't really eat it. They eat their
sorrow, fear, anger, past, and future. They are not really present, with body
and mind united.
When you practice mindful breathing, you become truly present. If you are
here, life is also here. The orange is the ambassador of life. When you look at
the orange, you discover that it is nothing less than a miracle. Visualize the
orange as a blossom, the sunshine and rain passing through it, then the tiny
green fruit growing, turning yellow, becoming orange, the acid becoming sugar.
The orange tree took time to create this masterpiece. When you are truly here,
contemplating the orange, breathing and smiling, the orange becomes a miracle.
It is enough to bring you a lot of happiness. You peel the orange, smell it,
take a section, and put it in your mouth mindfully, fully aware of the juice on
your tongue. This is eating an orange in mindfulness. It makes the miracle of
life possible. It makes joy possible.
The other miracle is the Sangha, the community in which everyone is
practicing in the same way. The woman sitting next to me is also practicing
mindfulness while eating her breakfast. How wonderful! She is touching the food
with mindfulness. She is enjoying every morsel of her breakfast, like me. We are
brother and sister on the path of practice. From time to time we look at each
other and smile. It is the smile of awareness. It proves that we are happy, that
we are alive. It is not a diplomatic smile. It is a smile born from the ground
of enlightenment, of happiness. That smile has the power to heal. It can heal
you and your friend. When you smile like that, the woman next to you will smile
back. Before that, maybe her smile was not completely ripe. It was ninety
percent ripe. If you offer her your mindful smile, you will give her the energy
to smile one hundred percent. When she is smiling, healing begins to take place
in her. You are very important for her transformation and healing. That is why
the presence of brothers and sisters in the practice is so important.
This is also why we don't talk during breakfast. If we talk about the weather
or the political situation in the Middle East, we can never say enough. We need
the silence to enjoy our own presence and the presence of our Dharma brothers
and sisters. This kind of silence is very alive, powerful, nourishing, and
transforming. It is not oppressive or sad. Together we can create this kind of
noble silence. Sometimes it is described as "thundering silence"
because it is so powerful.
Mindful Walking
I would like to speak a little now about walking. When you move from one
place to another, please practice mindful walking, no matter how short the
distance.
Perhaps you have used a seal before. When you stamp a seal onto a piece of
paper, you make sure that the whole seal prints on the paper, so that when you
remove the seal, the image is perfect. When we practice walking, we do the same
thing. Every step we take is like placing a seal on the ground. Mindfulness is
the ink. We print our solidity and peace on the ground. In our daily lives, we
don't usually walk like that. We print our hurry, worry, depression, and anger
on the ground. But here, together, we print our solidity, peace, and freedom on
the ground. You know whether you succeed or not with each step. Bring all of
your mindfulness to the soles of your feet and walk. Enjoy every step you take.
Allow plenty of time to walk. Every step can be healing and transforming. Every
step can help you cultivate more solidity, joy, and freedom.
We have only one style of walking in Plum Village: mindful walking. Whether
we are having a retreat or not, everyone always walks the same way. That is why
when our friends come to Plum Village, they naturally join in the practice and
are supported by everyone else in their walking meditation. Walking meditation
is a wonderful way to learn how to live deeply each moment of our daily life.
You will be surprised to find out that, when you return home, it is possible to
implement this practice in the busy city. There are ways to put into practice
what we learn during a retreat. When we leave Plum Village and go to the airport
or the train station, we practice the same way. Everywhere is Plum Village. When
I board an airplane, I walk in exactly the same way, printing peace and joy with
every step.
Fifteen years ago, I led a mindfulness retreat in a center called Cosmos
House in Amsterdam, where people practiced Tai Chi, Yoga, Zen, and so on. Our
meditation room was on the top floor, and the staircase was quite narrow,
especially up to the third and fourth floors. But I have only one style of
walking. I cannot walk otherwise. My students and I blocked the stairs for
hundreds of people behind us. On the third day of the retreat, everyone in
Cosmos House had learned to walk like us.
I also remember when I marched for nuclear disarmament in New York City in
1982. There were a million Americans walking together that day. We were a group
of thirty people. A Zen teacher, Richard Baker-roshi, asked me to join the
march, and I said, "Will I be allowed to walk peacefully in the peace
walk?" He said, "Yes, of course." So I joined, and our group
walked mindfully, and we blocked more than two hundred thousand people behind
us. Strangely enough, people accepted that, and they slowed down. Then the peace
walk became more peaceful.
Please enjoy every step you take. Every mindful step is not only for your
sake, but for the sake of the whole world. When you take a peaceful step, all of
your ancestors in you take that step at the same time. You also walk for your
children, whether they are born or unborn. Do not underestimate the strength,
the value, of one step taken in mindfulness. One mindful step can produce
healing and transformation for many generations. I promise to do my best. Peace
is every step. All of us can do it. By the third or fourth day, you will have
seen the difference.
 This
article is excerpted from:
The Path of Emancipation: Talks from a 21-Day
Mindfulness Retreat
by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Reprinted with permission
of the publisher, Parallax Press, Berkeley, California. ©2000. http://www.parallax.org
Info/Order
this book.
About the Author
Thich
Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, poet, and tireless worker for peace.
Since the early 1980s, he has come to North America regularly to lecture and
give retreats on the art of mindful living. He leads a meditation community, Plum
Village, in southwestern France. He is author of
more than forty
books in English.
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