Thich Nhat Hanh, the Avatamsaka Sutra, and Lady Mahamaya

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-80
Author(s):  
Pamela Ayo Yetunde
Keyword(s):  
Thich Nhat Hanh

Backpacking with the Saints

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belden C. Lane
Keyword(s):  
American Southwest ◽  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Human Response ◽  
John Muir ◽  
Hildegard Of Bingen ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Thich Nhat Hanh ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
John Of The Cross

Carrying only basic camping equipment and a collection of the world's great spiritual writings, Belden C. Lane embarks on solitary spiritual treks through the Ozarks and across the American Southwest. For companions, he has only such teachers as Rumi, John of the Cross, Hildegard of Bingen, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Thomas Merton, and as he walks, he engages their writings with the natural wonders he encounters--Bell Mountain Wilderness with Søren Kierkegaard, Moonshine Hollow with Thich Nhat Hanh--demonstrating how being alone in the wild opens a rare view onto one's interior landscape, and how the saints' writings reveal the divine in nature. The discipline of backpacking, Lane shows, is a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Just as the wilderness offered revelations to the early Desert Christians, backpacking hones crucial spiritual skills: paying attention, traveling light, practicing silence, and exercising wonder. Lane engages the practice not only with a wide range of spiritual writings--Celtic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi Muslim--but with the fascination of other lovers of the backcountry, from John Muir and Ed Abbey to Bill Plotkin and Cheryl Strayed. In this intimate and down-to-earth narrative, backpacking is shown to be a spiritual practice that allows the discovery of God amidst the beauty and unexpected terrors of nature. Adoration, Lane suggests, is the most appropriate human response to what we cannot explain, but have nonetheless learned to love. An enchanting narrative for Christians of all denominations, Backpacking with the Saints is an inspiring exploration of how solitude, simplicity, and mindfulness are illuminated and encouraged by the discipline of backcountry wandering, and of how the wilderness itself becomes a way of knowing-an ecology of the soul.

scholarly journals Touching the compassionate heart: the ground of healing

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaveh Monshat
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Applications ◽  
Molecular Medicine ◽  
Thich Nhat Hanh

I am a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, secular mindfulness teacher and former university lecturer. Having conducted research in fields varying from laboratory molecular medicine to clinical applications of mindfulness, I took a two year sabbatical to focus on an inner search and healing. It was spent mostly spent in Plum Village: a Buddhist monastery in France in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. I have recently returned to clinical work.I found that it was not until I took a compassionate view of myself that I truly began to heal; and that following my heart was the only way I could negotiate the uncertainties of the path.

Mindfulness: Moonshine Hollow and Thich Nhat Hanh

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belden C. Lane
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Place ◽  
Cold Water ◽  
Water Flows ◽  
Southeast Missouri ◽  
Thich Nhat Hanh ◽  
Copper Coil

The locals call it Moonshine Hollow, or Mooner’s Hollow, partly because of the haunting character of the moonlight in this small, isolated valley. It forces you to pay attention to the thousand shades of shadow and light you’d never thought to distinguish before. The phenomenon has something to do with the curvature of the ravine here, as light reflects off stone cliffs above and the lithe, white limbs of sycamore trees below. Whatever accounts for it, Moonshine Hollow is well named. Up from Coonville Creek in St. Francois State Park in southeast Missouri, it lies along the eleven-mile Pike Run backpacking trail. A small trickle of water flows year-round from the base of the cliff where I usually camp. During Prohibition it’s said that bootleggers operated a still in this remote hollow, making hooch, white lightning, or panther’s breath (as it was variously called). Hidden deep in the Ozarks, with cornfields nearby, a steady supply of cold water, and sufficient wood to keep a fire going, it was an ideal site for producing “mountain dew.” In fact, Missouri law still allows its citizens to distill up to two hundred gallons of whiskey a year for personal and family use. All of this lends Moonshine Hollow its unique appeal. What creates the ambience or “sense of place” that we associate with a singular locale? For Moonshine Hollow, it’s a combination of sheltered seclusion, the distinctive play of shadows on a moonlit night, even an edge of lawlessness. It’s a place where time has stopped. It invites you to linger. The moonshiner’s art is a slow and demanding one. The corn has to soak in a wet burlap sack for ten days. The mash has to be fermented with water, yeast, and malt for another ten days or more. Then, in being gently heated over a low fire, the alcohol has to evaporate, passing through a copper coil inside a barrel of cold branch water, dripping leisurely into a stoneware jug. The process can’t be hurried. Nothing should be rushed in Moonshine Hollow.

Taixu

Buddhism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles B. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Buddhist Tradition ◽  
Thich Nhat Hanh ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Times ◽  
Material Studies ◽  
Humanistic Buddhism

During the revolutionary period in which China moved from imperial rule to republicanism, many new political leaders deprecated all religion as superstition and urged the government to confiscate religious property for new secular use. While many traditionalist religious leaders simply sought to counter such moves, some, such as Taixu (b. 1890–d. 1947), were more progressive. Agreeing that Buddhism in China had fallen behind the times, Taixu worked and wrote to help Buddhists create new organizations and bring their teachings and practices more into line with the needs of the modern world. Perhaps more than anything else, he is known as the founder of a form of Buddhism called “Buddhism for Human Life” (rensheng fojiao) and “Buddhism for the Human Realm” (renjian fojiao), terms often rendered into English both as “Engaged Buddhism” and “Humanistic Buddhism.” Only recently have scholars begun to acknowledge that Taixu kept much of the Buddhist tradition intact even as he tried to reorient it toward engagement with contemporary social and political problems. However, his successors (Such as Sheng Yen and Thich Nhat Hanh) have moved even further away from premodern concepts and “escapist” goals in order to focus Buddhist attention on this-worldly issues such as environmental degradation, women’s issues, and human rights. Because of the increased recent attention to the more traditional elements of Taixu’s Buddhist belief and practice, those who use the items in the following bibliography for research should pay attention to the date of the material. Studies published prior to 1990 will invariably present Taixu strictly as a modernizer and declare wrongly that he opposed such things as ritualism and Pure Land devotions, and place him in opposition to another Buddhist faction labeled “traditionalist” or “conservative.” More recent studies will note his own devotion to Maitreya and aspiration for rebirth in that future buddha’s abode, his rich ritual life, and his friendly relations with many of those deemed “conservative.” To date, not many studies on Taixu have appeared, and so the following bibliography is not extensive.

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