Being Peace

Every day we do things we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our lifestyle our way of consuming our way of looking at things we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive. ""If we are peaceful if we are happy we can smile and everyone in our family our entire society will benefit from our peace."" Review At sixty-two poet author and Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh is the perfect embodiment of his teachings of sociallyengaged Buddhism. For the past two decades exemplifying the Buddhist principles of compassion and reconciliation he has lived and taught primarily in France and America. two wealthy powerful countries that did their best to destroy his homeland Vietnam. Being Peace is a jewel of love and wisdom a mirror reflecting our own happy Buddhahood as Hanh always points out and it is a recognition that will inspire everyone regardless of previous religious persuasion with the unexpected joy of smiling. Hanh reminds us of the fundamental importance for the world of just one person smiling breathing and being peaceand this is empowering. Yet with that distinct Buddhist love for paradox in the next breath Hanh dissolves our sense of privileged separateness. Engaged Buddhism means we recognize the inextricable interconnectedness of everyone or in Buddhist parlance the endless chain of codependent origination. Clouds water sunlight trees the logger's labor his breakfast bread""everything is in this sheet of paper."" This is the context for meditation says Hanh such that when an individual enters the meditation hall she brings all of society. We meditate the world and we breathe smile and be peace for the enlightenment of everyone for the clarity of everybody's thoughts feelings and attitudes. The apparent membrane separating us is very permeable and the responsibility significant because the Buddha takes refuge in us. Without us the Buddha isn't real at all says Hank and Buddhanature goes disembodied. The embodied Buddha is the quintessence of the practice and we can all be Buddhas because in mundane acts we engage the Buddha in daily life and from this simple rooting of clarity and mindfulness in the quotidian we begin to transform the world. With this synoptic almost holographic frarnework~ says Hanh we next understand the Dharma or basic teaching is ubiquitous spoken in manifold tongues. For more than twenty years Hanh has engaged his Buddha nature in the world for our edificaion. He breathed and smiled during wartime Vietnam when he was chairman of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation. when he founded the Tiep Hien (Interbeing) Order of Buddhism and when he wrote his sixty-six books in Vietnamese French and English. His gentle profound and persuasively true example is flawlessly transmitted in this indefatigably optimistic book enhanced by the line drawings of Mayumi Oda. --From exec/obidos/subst/partners/marketing/independent-pub.html/Independent Publisher About the Author Thich Nhat Hanh poet Zen Master and chairman of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation during the war was nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize. Thomas Merton described him as ""more my brother than many who are nearer to me in race and nationality because he and I see things in exactly the same way."" The author of Peace Is Every step The Miracle of Mindfulness Present Moment Wonderful Moment and many other works Nhat Hanh lives in exile in France where he teaches writes gardens and helps refugees worldwide. In this book of talks to American peace activists and students of meditation Thich Nhat Hanh thoroughly discusses the importance of being peace in order to make peace.