Art by Magda Cabrero
Monday, June 24 we will meet online.
Dear friends,
This week: we will meet Monday from 7-8:30PM EDT online, Wednesday morning from 7-8AM EDT in person at our meditation space (3812 Northampton Street NW), and Friday 12-1PM EDT online.
Magda will facilitate Monday night.
This year we will carry on our summer book club tradition, using a section of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Fragrant Palm Leaves as the meditation and dharma sharing topic on Monday nights, starting the book on June 24 and completing it on August 19.
Please note there is no need to own the book or read the section in advance to enjoy the practice with us. Nor is there a need to attend every practice to benefit from the readings, as each Monday practice will continue to be a stand alone and complete practice. More details below.
This Monday, Magda will facilitate and offer an introduction to the book. We will be discussing pages 1-20.
Fragrant Palm Leaves comprises two journals that Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) kept when he was in his 30s. He wrote the first between 1962 and 1963 when he was a student and research assistant at Princeton and Columbia Universities. The second journal starts in 1964, when Thay returned to Vietnam and ends in 1966, one day before the beginning of his exile.
These journals cover a number of themes: the interdependence of suffering, healing and compassion; the function of literature; emptiness; non-attachment; nonduality; impermanence; continuation; the nature of time and space; non-violence; the transformation of anger into courage and love; interbeing. Thay’s treatment of these varied themes ultimately expresses his conviction that only through Buddhist thought and practice will society be healed.
These journals help us identify more intimately with the human in Thay. We learn of the feelings of loneliness that persisted. We gain a fuller appreciation of his compassion and respect for children, the humble and the destitute. We get a sense of the faith he places in the young people of Vietnam. We feel his yearning for the past. Thay comes across as a deeply sensitive man who linked his personal trials to the broader suffering that he saw and who chose to feel that suffering as his own.
Fragrant Palm Leaves is suffused with poetry, all the way to the description of the last sunset Thay saw before his exile. “My confidence intact,” the poem reads, “I bid farewell with a peaceful heart.”
LONGER TEXT CONTINUES:
Fragrant Palm Leaves comprises two journals that Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) kept when he was in his 30s. He wrote the first between 1962 and 1963 when he was a student and research assistant at Princeton and Columbia universities. The second journal starts in 1964, when Thay returns to Vietnam, and ends in 1966, one day before the beginning of his exile.
Thay wrote these journals in the midst of deeply traumatic circumstances: enmity between Buddhists and Catholics; a disengaged and inflexible Buddhist hierarchy; religious and ideological persecution; multiple coups d’etat; a gradually escalating American intervention. While every so often Thay mentions how these events affect him, describing “the constant screaming of jet planes”that “leave me breathless, like a heavy weight against my lungs” (p. 167), he mostly focuses on how to help those suffering the most, like the peasants.
These journals cover a number of themes: the interdependence of suffering, healing and compassion; the function of literature; emptiness; non-attachment; nonduality; impermanence; continuation; the nature of time and space; non-violence; the transformation of anger into courage and love; showing the many ways opposites can intertwine: present and past; north and south; east and west; Catholic and Buddhist; wealth and misery; loneliness and community; anger and compassion. Thay’s treatment of these varied themes ultimately expresses his conviction that only through Buddhist thought and practice will society be healed.
These journals help us identify more intimately with the human in Thay. We learn of the feelings of loneliness that persisted despite the friends he had made in the west and east. We gain a fuller appreciation of his compassion and respect for the humble and destitute and his ability to see the beauty in children no matter how impacted by hunger, war or fear. We get a sense of the faith he places in the young people of Vietnam, like those who serve in the School of Youth for Social Service that he founded. We feel his yearning for a past that in the end we suspect is forever lost, and we come to appreciate the patriotic love he feels for his homeland. Ultimately, the reader is likely to perceive Thay as an exceptional individual: a deeply sensitive man who linked his personal trials to the broader suffering that he saw and who chose to feel that suffering as his own.
During my recent visit to Vietnam to commemorate the second anniversary of Thay’s passing, I could tell that many of the pilgrims had read Fragrant Palm Leaves. In fact, many of us were drawn to Vietnam by Phuong Boi and the opportunity to experience the sacred land Thay had so movingly written about.
Thay ends his second journal with a discussion of impermanence, a theme that would become sadly relevant with his imminent expulsion from South Vietnam and 39-year exile. On the day he departed, Thay left his journal with one of his friends. He did not expect it to pass the censors. One of its last lines reads: “I’ll leave Vietnam tomorrow but I already miss home.”
Fragrant Palm Leaves is suffused with poetry, all the way to the description of the last sunset Thay saw before his exile. His words inspire us to share his reverence for nature and the cosmos. They also celebrate the oases of beauty to be found even in the midst of violent upheaval, as when he writes that “flowers don’t know how to hate.”
In a way the pilgrims’ experience at Phuong Boi is a form of poetry. With our dharma eyes we experience this precursor of Plum Village, joined by Thay’s dharma body. Brother Phuong Luu reads us a farewell poem that Thay wrote for Thay Thanh Tu, a hermit Thay and his brothers built a hut for. This hermit went on to become one of the most important Zen masters in Vietnam. “My confidence intact,” the poem reads, “I bid farewell with a peaceful heart.” My illustration depicts what I saw at Phuong Boi with my dharma and physical eyes, with Fragrant Palm Leaves ever in mind.
Poem Thay wrote for Thay Thanh Tu
Clouds softly pillow the mountain peak.
The breeze is fragrant with tea
blossoms. The joy of meditation remains
unshakable. The forest offers floral
perfumes.
One morning we awaken,
fog wrapped around the roof.
With fresh laughter, we bid farewell.
The musical clamor of birds
sends us back on the ten thousand
paths, to watch a dream as generous
as the sea. A flicker of fire from the
familiar stove warms the evening
shadows as they fall. Impermanent,
self-emptied life,
filled with impostors whose sweet speech
hides a wicked heart.
My confidence intact,
I bid farewell with a peaceful heart.
The affairs of this world are merely a dream.
Don’t forget that days and months race
by as quickly as a young horse.
The stream of birth and death
dissolves, but our friendship never disappears.
Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh, p. 186