Thich Nhat Hanh – waving goodbye — Maryanne Teng Hogarth Portrait Photographer

Breathing in, I wave goodbye to Thay

Breathing out, I meet Thay in every moment of daily life.

The monks and nuns at Plum Village have some beautiful guided meditations at their website for us to generate the energy of mindfulness and peace to offer our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who transitioned on January 22, 2022.

In 1993 my twin sister and I visited Plum Village in France for a week during the summer retreat. We were invited to attend a small gathering in Thay’s hut, where we took turns sharing our stories of healing with each other. I spoke of our mother’s depression and it was a powerful feeling to have Thay (teacher) and the group listen so deeply.

That winter I returned for another visit (I had been living in France at the time) and was invited to stay for the winter retreat. This experience changed me profoundly.

One day in the zendo (meditation room) as I was copying calligraphy of the heart sutra, Thay came up to me and sat down. It was just the two of us, and he asked if I would like to help organize a visit to China. While others did most of the organizing, I did get to be part of the small group who accompanied Thich Nhat on his first trip back to Asia since his exile in the 1960’s. This visit was of the most memorable times of my life.

Me and my parents with Thich Nhat Hanh, Hanzhou China, 1995

While in Hangzhou, Thay asked me to invite my relatives to a dharma talk. We fit many people into a hotel suite, perhaps 50-75, and Thay gave a talk on No Birth No Death, which moved us all. Coincidentally my parents were in China at the same time. My mother had dismissed my lifestyle (unmarried at 34) as off track, and wondered why I was traveling around China with a group of monks and nuns. After she met Thay and heard his talk, she hugged me and told me she understood. We bridged a divide that day.

These are some of the teachings I wrote down in 1993 from the scrolls hanging in the zendo at Plum Village. I do not read or write Chinese characters, it was more of a meditation to copy the heart sutra with my ink pen. If someone can translate the four characters top center, please put it in the comments, I’d love to know what they say. The translation of the long text is The Heart of the Prajnaparamita. If you have heard the monks and nuns chanting in Vietnamese before a dharma talk, it was likely this sutra.