I received the news today, January 22, of the great bodhisattva Thich Nhat Hahn’s passing with tremendous emotion. I am overcome with gratitude for the ways in which his teachings and his life have nurtured my own life. There is a sense of relief that his luminous self is no longer constrained within his frail body.
My prayers go out first for Sister Chan Khong and the nuns, monks, and lay people in his communities in Vietnam, France, and around the world. Many of you reading this may join me in feeling a sense of loss and grief at the news of Thay’s death. Let us take comfort and be encouraged by his own teachings – Thich Nhat Hahn did not believe life ends when the breath stops. Christians too affirm, as in the Episcopal burial liturgy, that with death, life is changed, not ended, and we can trust that the most compassionate, loving people continue their work of healing and liberation. The resurrection of Jesus announces with certainty the triumph of life over death and love eternal.
We may find, just as Thay said in 2014 about his friend Martin Luther King Jr., that we can continue to feel Thay’s support and experience his help, even though he has passed out of this mortal life. May his teachings continue to inspire you, and may he and all the holy ones in light lend you their aid, and may we all experience the overflowing love of God that creates and sustains the Beloved Community.
Faithfully,
+Marc Andrus
Photo: This photo was taken in 2019, during my visit to Thich Nhat Hahn’s monastic community in Vietnam.
I want u to read BroThay’s comments on our
Virtual Days of Prayer for LIFE.
World Suicide Prevention Month
September 10, 2022
We Gather to Pray
Saturday September 10, 2022
We Will Pray the poem
Please Call Me by My True Names
Thich Nhat Hanh
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.
My joy is like Spring, so warm
mit makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.
READER: joi miner (www.joiminer.com)
Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story of the poem:
After the Vietnam War, many people wrote to us in Plum Village. We received hundreds of letters each week from the srefugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, hundreds each week. It was very painful to read them, but we had to be in contact. We tried our best to help, but the suffering was enormous, and sometimes we were discouraged. It is said that half the boat people fleeing Vietnam died in the ocean; only half arrived at the shores of Southeast Asia.
There are many young girls, boat people, who were raped by sea pirates. Even though the United Nations and many countries tried to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates continued to inflict much suffering on the refugees. One day, we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who was raped by a Thai pirate.oii
cShe was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.
When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we can’t do that. In my meditation, I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I would now be the pirate. There is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I can’t condemn myself so easily. In my meditation, I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we educators, social workers, politicians, and others do not do something about the situation, in twenty-five years a number of them will become sea pirates. That is certain. If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we might become sea pirates in twenty-five years. If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, you shoot all of us, because all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs.
After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people: the twelve-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The title of the poem is “Please Call Me by My True Names,” because I have so many names. When I hear one of the of these names, I have to say, “Yes.”
https://plum-village.org/articles/please-call-me-by-my-true-names-song-poem/