Gratitude for Thich Nhat Hanh

In 2002 I was newly married, doing Mennonite Voluntary Service in St. Louis with Abbie, and in the middle stages of theological deconstruction.  The collection of beliefs that had guided my youth and early young adulthood no longer made sense.  There was no clear indication much of anything made sense. 

It was during this time I discovered, read, and re-read a little book by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh called Living Buddha, Living Christ. 

I hadn’t encountered anything quite like it before – a Buddhist retelling his experience of coming to claim Jesus as a spiritual ancestor, coming to “touch the depth of Christianity” (p. 5)  through his encounters with those who embodied the spirit of Jesus: well-know people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Thomas Merton, and lesser known people like a Dutch woman named Hebe Kohlbrugge who protected Jews during World War II and Vietnamese children orphaned during the war in his own country. 

Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings were the first place I heard of “mindfulness,” “engaged Buddhism,” and the wonderful concept of “interbeing.”  His familiar language of peacemaking was mixed with a then-unfamiliar ease of connecting the outer and inner worlds: “Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves…the most basic work for peace is to return to ourselves and create harmony among the elements within us” (p. 10).

Thich Nhat Hanh managed to introduce me to key concepts in Buddhism while helping me more deeply love the treasures of my own tradition.  It was a marvelous gift to a 25-year-old seeker who wasn’t sure there was much treasure to be found.  He was the right teacher at the right time in my life.

In reading some tributes to Thich Nhat Hanh this week (The Guardian summarizes his life well)  it is evident many, many lives were impacted by this humble, wise, and bold peacemaker.  May his memory be a blessing.

If you have a Thich Nhat Hanh story I’d love to hear it.   

Joel

Altruistic coping

A recent essay in The Atlantic by Stanford professor of psychology Jamil Zaki highlights my growing unease with the cultural direction self-care has taken.  It’s titled “’Self-care’ Isn’t the Fix for Late-Pandemic Malaise.”

Zaki upholds the importance of self-care which he defines as “anything pursued for the sake of one’s own wellness.”  Self-care is vital, but limited in its efficacy.  It is “especially good at softening intense stress and anxiety,” but, as it has come to be practiced and marketed, not so good at addressing the deeper human need for connection.

Alongside self-care Zaki suggests reclaiming the importance of “other-care.” 

For people engaged in caring for others all day – professionally, within one’s family – this may sound like another shove toward exhaustion.  But Zaki pushes back with research showing that when we’re able to experience a sense of autonomy in other-care – something we choose to do as a gift to others rather than a grudging demand – it contributes toward flourishing.

One example he gives is the origins of the Black Panthers in the 60s.  Faced with a lack of access to quality health care and education, the Panthers approached self-care as a revolutionary act expressed through mutual aid, preventive medicine, and exercise for the betterment of poor Blacks.  Activists like Angela Davis and Ericka Huggins expanded this to include mindfulness and yoga practices.

Zaki ends with this critique and suggestion:

As with so many revolutionary ideas, the narrative around self-care has now been wrapped in marketing; the industry has soared past $10 billion a year in the United States alone. The millions of people who Googled self-care as the pandemic began likely didn’t find information on its community-based roots. They found instead an atomized, hyperpersonal world of tips, products, and services—calming, sometimes expensive tools for being alone in nicer ways—that can help sometimes, and that might strand us at other times.  By integrating other-care into our plans, we can go back to self-care’s broader, more connected origins and rebuild meaning at a time when so many of us desperately need it.

Another essay I recently came across written by Luis Cruz-Villalobos makes a similar argument for what he calls “altruistic coping.”  It’s one of 11 coping keys he observes in 2 Corinthians 12 regarding the apostle Paul’s responses to trauma.

Joel