by thich nhat hanh
Please Note: Each book review is intended to provide an overview of the content and it’s main benefit to the reader. Though I recommend reading a book alongside following The Roadmap, I am in no way connected to the author or publisher or them to me or this website.
key elements
– All fear originates at our birth and is ultimately fear of death.
– Accepting death and your emotions is the key to living happily.
– Death as a concept can be redefined. Death, as most of us understand it, is a misconception.
– You can live a fulfilled life without being shackled to your fears and desires and without becoming a monk or a nun!
why this book is worth reading
This book, for me, is full of practical wisdom and insight into what, for most of us, probably seems like the biggest obstacle in our lives – death and the fear of death. If you have ever struggled with fear this text has answers to why that is and how to accept and move through and beyond those fears.
Thich Nhat Hanh was a Zen Buddhist monk who wrote a great many books on applying Buddhism and mindfulness in our everyday lives. He lived a long life, teaching and guiding others in the wisdom of Zen Buddhism and though this book is firmly rooted in that tradition, you don’t have to subscribe to Buddhism to benefit from the clarity of message within these pages.
original fear & original Desire
Thich Nhat Hanh begins by turning our attention to our beginnings, both in the womb and at our births. Our birth he sees as the moment of our “original fear” of death and our “original desire” to live. Whether this is true or not (given how much research now shows the role stress plays on the unborn child) it focuses our thinking on the effect our childhoods have on laying down the foundations of fear and desire. Everyone has felt the abject terror of a powerless child and the equally vibrant pure joy of childhood desires.
All subsequent desires and fears in life Thich Nhat Hanh sees as connected to the original fears and desires of childhood.”As adults, we’re often afraid to remember or be in touch with that original fear and desire, because the helpless child in us is still alive. We haven’t had a chance to talk to him or her. We haven’t taken the time to care for the wounded child, the helpless child within.”
In this caring for the wounded child the parallels with some modern psycho-therapeutic practices, Internal Family Systems (IFS) being one, are not hard to detect. Some of Thich Nhat Hanh’s methods for caring for your wounded child are even similar to IFS’s methods of making contact and talking with your inner parts. “You have to teach the child in you. You have to invite him to come with you and live life with you in the present moment. Of course, we can mindfully reflect upon and learn from the past, but when we do this we stay grounded in the present moment.”
The Present & Mindfulness
From the introduction Thich Nhat Hanh refers to the power of mindfulness. The following passage sums this up, “We all experience fear, but if we can look deeply into our fear, we will be able to free ourselves from its grip and touch joy. Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive”. This is the essence of mindfulness, to not get attached/blended/fused with emotions about the past and future.
Instead see where you are right now and the wonderfulness of that. Later in the book Thich Nhat Hanh illustrates this by asking us to imagine being an astronaut stranded in space with only enough oxygen for two more days of life. What that astronaut would want more than anything would be to have what you have now – life on earth.
Throughout the book Thich Nhat Hanh returns us to the present moment through mindfulness. This mirrors the truth of living in that even the most devoted sage/zen monk doesn’t live all their lives in the present moment, but, it is always here when we need it, a place to return to that asks nothing of us.
Past & Future
The past and future are the spaces all our fears and desires inhabit. The past is full of what can feel like wounds not reconciled and regrets for actions endured or not taken. Thich Nhat Hanh also spends a lot of time showing us that we are our past, we are products of our ancestors, carrying their devils and angels along with our own. This is being born out more and more by the science of epigenetics, which shows the effect of environment on shaping genes – both ours genes and our ancestors’ genes. For those of us who look back with hatred at our ancestors this can be a difficult step to realise.
Worry and anxiety is most attached to the future, the fear of what may be and what may not be. Thich Nhat Hanh spends a chapter on this and Buddhism’s Five Remembrances as a way to accept fear.
1. I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape having ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death.
4. All that is dear to me, and everyone I love, are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
5. I inherit the results of my acts of body, speech, and mind. My actions are my continuation.
By looking deeply at fear using the five remembrances, Thich Nhat Hanh also advises we make contact directly with our fear – “My dear fear, come up here so I can embrace you for a while. It is my nature to die; I cannot escape death.” We can stay with our fear for five, ten, twenty, or thirty minutes, depending on our needs, and use the energy of mindfulness to embrace our fear. Being embraced like that every day, our fear will lose its strength.”
No coming no going
The chapter titled No Coming, No Going is a glorious read. here’s how it begins:
“Our greatest fear is that when we die, we will become nothing. Many of us believe our entire existence is limited to a particular period, our “lifespan.” We believe it begins when we are born—when, out of being nothing, we become something—and it ends when we die and become nothing again. So we are filled with a fear of annihilation. But if we look deeply, we can have a very different understanding of our existence. We can see that birth and death are just notions; they’re not real.”
Why they’re not real is what the chapter is all about and I recommend re-reading this chapter as many times as you might need to. Thich Nhat Hnah asks us to question the idea that we have a beginning or end, asking us to think of ourselves as enmeshed in reality, ever changing atoms and memories floating through various incarnations. This is Buddhism, but with Zen there is always I feel a dimension of flexibility and uncertainty.
And he draws us back to the present moment always as a way to enjoy this phase of our existence. He quotes the Buddha as saying, “It is possible to live happily in the present moment. It is the only moment we have.”
the wave and the water
The Wave and the Water is the metaphor Thich Nhat Hanh uses to show how death is an illusion, how there really is no coming and no going. This metaphor helps us understand that there are two dimensions of reality side by side, two truths of existence.
The Wave – this is everyday experience. This is your World Identity as I call it, with all your hopes and dreams and fears and terrors. This is the bit of you here and now that can experience both the present moment but also get stuck in the past or run into the future. like the wave in an ocean of water, it is temporary. The wave is temporary. You – your World Identity – is temporary.
The Water – this is the feeling of being more. This is your Universal Consciousness as I call it, that exists in all people and is unchangeable and everlasting. This is the bit of you that is always in the present moment, this is the water.
Thich Nhat Hanh says, “We can ask metaphorically, “Where does the wave come from, and where will it go?” And we can answer in the same manner, “The wave comes from water and will return to water.” In reality, there is no coming and going. The wave is always water; it doesn’t “come from” water, and it doesn’t go anywhere. It is always water; coming and going are just mental constructions. The wave has never left the water, so to say the wave “comes from” the water is not really correct. As it is always water, we cannot say it “returns to” water. Right at the moment when the wave is a wave, it is already water. Birth and death, coming and going, are just concepts. When we are in touch with our no-birth, no-death nature, we have no fear.”
When we feel ourselves as wave & water we really feel no fear. Okay, reality check – this takes practice. You may grasp this concept but find you only really feel it momentarily. Stick with it. The wave and the water describes life perfectly. And when you get distracted return to the present through mindfulness of both the Wave & the Water.
Here then as well are two dimensions of mindfulness. At one level of mindfulness (the observing mind) is aware of our day to day thoughts and feelings – the Wave. At another level we sense the Water – we feel (because it is wordless and unable to be truly described) our connection to all existence, to all people, to all things, usually with a sense of love and understanding.
the Sangha
The book’s penultimate chapter is titled The Opposite Of Fear and concentrates on the Buddhist concept of “Sangha.” For Thich Nhat Hanh the Sangha is the best way to practice a life of happiness, joy, support and safety. Sangha is a Sanskrit word roughly translated as community and this is the sense in which the author uses it. Thich Nhat Hanh created a Sangha in Plum Village in France which is still active today.
If living as a monk, nun or acolyte isn’t for you then Sangha can mean your family or a few friends. It’s about having a connection in this world, feeling the support of other waves in the water and makes me think of Gabor Mate’s sixth “A” of healing – Attachment – everyone needs someone.
where i see this book in the roadmap
This book crosses all stages of The Roadmap but particularly Stages Five, Six and Seven. As part of Stage Five leaning it brings into sharp relief the fact that our fears & desires as adults go right back to our births and to a fundamental fear of death and its counterpart, the desire to live.
As part of Stage Six learning, this book is all about learning to live with your fear, not deny or ignore the fact. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us how to embrace our fear as part of being a human in the world,. He also teaches how to change our views on death as some ultimate dead-end.
Though he doesn’t talk about Infinite Existences, or parallel universes the feeling is the same. We are part of something much bigger than our World Identity concerns and this gives us a renewed view of life as never-ending.
Finally, its usefulness in Stage Seven is as a text which guides us to live our lives with this knowledge. We can do this by finding peace in the present moment, through mindfulness of our surroundings and our feelings and thoughts, but also through a feeling of peace, a feeling of resting in a larger view of reality.