In this book you will discover how far this simple act of mindfulness can take you. Guided by the great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, you will learn how Buddhist meditation will help you to harness your natural insight, wisdom, and compassion, and so transform your life and benefit those around you.

It is astounding—although Buddhist practitioners have been discovering and rediscovering this for 2,500 years—how far the journey goes that starts with a single breath. In this book, Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how the path of mindfulness and insight can wake us from the corpse-like state of self-absorption, heal our emotional wounds and improve our relationships with others, connect us with love and wonder to this beautiful universe in which we live, and, finally, help us escape the bonds of birth and death altogether. This is the journey that Thich Nhat Hanh will lay before you in this book. Taking it, of course, is up to you.

This is not a book of philosophy. It is not about Buddhism. This book is Buddhism, because Buddhism is a living lineage of transmission from teacher to student. Through this book you have the privilege of receiving direct teachings from one of the most important Buddhist masters of our time. I think of it as an extended guided meditation, a traditional form of teaching in which the master guides the students in real time along the path of wisdom. So I recommend you don’t read this book so much as listen to it. You might even visualize yourself sitting in the audience as this great Zen teacher delivers his talks. As I read this book, I find myself very much in his presence.

Partway through the book there is instruction on how to listen to Buddhist teachings, but it might be helpful to summarize that now, before you start. As you read this book, keep an open, relaxed mind, alert but nonjudgmental, and follow Thich Nhat Hanh’s instructions and contemplations as he offers them. Reading this book is not about following a logical argument (although the logic is impeccable); it is about experiencing a spiritual journey on the spot. If you take this approach, I guarantee you experiences of insight, wonder, and joy.

Thich Nhat Hanh is, after His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the best-known Buddhist teacher in the West. Although he is often seen as beyond such categories, he is undoubtedly the most widely known Zen teacher in the world. With the Dalai Lama and Pema Chödrön, he forms a troika of Buddhist teachers whose image and writings attract—and benefit—thousands if not millions of people. Like theirs, his fame is richly deserved.

Deeply trained in Buddhist philosophy and practice from a young age, Thich Nhat Hanh exhibits the mind of realization, the heart of love, and the skillful means of a great Buddhist teacher. Yet he is much more: a courageous warrior for peace, a statesman, a poet, a healer of wounds, a builder of communities, a scholar, a political theorist, and a prolific author. Among living Buddhist teachers, he is unparalleled in his varied interests, skills, and output.

There was a time when this versatility and engagement with the world was seen as a disadvantage. Early in his career in the West, he was seen by some traditionalists as watering down Buddhist teachings by adopting trendy Western political postures and New Age interpersonal techniques. This was before people saw that his community’s principles were founded on the original rules of the Buddha’s own Sangha (community), before they understood that political engagement is an inescapable reflection of Buddhist vows, before they read the many books that demonstrate the depth of both his scholarship and realization. This was before they realized that Thich Nhat Hanh’s contributions to modern Buddhism were rooted not in the West but in his native Vietnam, where his principles were forged in the fire of war and shaped by the struggle for peace over a long and extraordinary lifetime.

Thich Nhat Hanh was born in central Vietnam in 1926 and became a Zen monk at the age of sixteen. In the early 1960s, Thich Nhat Hahn became an important figure in the Engaged Buddhist movement for peace and social justice in Vietnam. His vehicle was the School of Youth for Social Service (SYSS), a grass-roots relief organization he founded that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, resettled homeless families, and organized agricultural cooperatives. Rallying some ten thousand student volunteers, the SYSS based its work on Buddhist principles of nonviolence and compassionate action. Despite government denunciation of his activity, he also founded a Buddhist university, a publishing house, and an influential peace activist magazine in Vietnam.

In 1966, Thich Nhat Hanh founded the Order of Interbeing, whose members were guided by what Thich Nhat Hanh called the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. These apply basic Buddhist vows to social and political life and today guide the Engaged Buddhism movement that Thich Nhat Hanh founded in the West. One of the first six members of the Order of Interbeing was a young biology graduate who took the name Sister Chan Khong, who to this day is Thich Nhat Hanh’s invaluable lieutenant. If you would like to know more about that period, I recommend Sister Chan Khong’s autobiography Learning True Love: Practicing Buddhism in a Time of War. You will be filled with admiration for the courage, compassion, and dedication of Thich Nhat Hanh and his young followers.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s work for peace and social justice earned the enmity of both sides in the Vietnamese conflict. He had studied at Princeton and Columbia in the early 1960s, and in 1966 he returned to the U.S. to lead a symposium at Cornell and continue his campaign for peace. The South Vietnamese government would not allow him to return home, and he remained an exile for the next thirty-nine years. In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize, saying, “I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of [this prize] than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”

Today, Thich Nhat Hanh resides at Plum Village, the Buddhist center he established in France, and teaches worldwide. The years since his exile have been marked by continued work for social justice, a prodigious output of writings, the establishment of major practice centers and lay communities around the world, and teachings that have benefited millions. He dedicated himself to the plight of the Vietnamese refugees known as boat people, and he has worked with American veterans to heal the wounds of the Vietnam War. He has brought Israelis and Palestinians together to meditate and work for peace. In 2005, he returned to Vietnam for the first time since his exile and immediately began working to revive and modernize Buddhism in Vietnam, with special emphasis on the role of women.

Through his unique life experience, a combination of deep spiritual practice and frontline political activism, Thich Nhat Hanh has produced a body of written work that ranges from Buddhist scholarship to realistic, Buddhist-inspired commentary on the important issues of our time. It includes books of poetry; guided meditations; Zen teachings; addresses to police, prisoners, and congressmen; Buddhist philosophy; children’s books; contemplations on love; and inspiring teachings for general readers.

As editor in chief of the Shambhala Sun, I had the honor of interviewing Thich Nhat Hanh several years ago. As I often do when I interview a Buddhist teacher, I asked him questions that were important to me personally, with the hope that they would also be important to readers. We talked about love and emptiness and life and death, the kinds of deep personal and philosophical issues he addresses in this book. This was not Thich Nhat Hanh the social and political theorist, nor Thich Nhat Hanh the scholar. This was Thich Nhat Hanh the deeply realized Buddhist teacher, speaking with compassion to a student who needed help. This is the Thich Nhat Hanh you will meet in this book, the Thich Nhat Hanh who may change the way you see your life. The wisdom in this book is simple, deep, and life-changing. This wisdom begins so simply: Breathing in, I know I am breathing in.

Melvin McLeod

Editor in chief

The Shambhala Sun

Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly