A Lotus for your Mind — Experiences and Thoughts on Applied Buddhism from the Mindfulness Practice Center Plum Village
I am back to urban life, work and studies after living a few months in the Buddhist Monastery and Mindfulness Practice Center Plum Village in South of France. I’ll try to recount a bit about the experiences I have made in this substantially different environment with its distinct philosophy and way of life, language and discourse. It has been interesting, it hast been inspiring.
5:15h wake up; half snoozing monks and nuns wrapped in their brown robes and curious visitors find their way to the big meditation hall; it’s time for morning sitting. “Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out” is the first mantra to start the meditation with. Calm and quiet fills the early morning air of the hall. A few moments later the monk whispers in the microphone: “Breathing in, I feel my body. Breathing out, I release all the tensions of my body”. Especially this mantra started to have an impact on me. I learn to let waves of relaxation permeate through my body; with ease, light, smooth. After connecting to the breath and releasing tensions of the body, the meditation invites to observe ones emotional landscape and calm any feelings. Subsequently, the inner realm of thoughts, perceptions and judgements would be looked at. One is invited to look at patterns of thinking, stories one tells oneself and smile to them with every in- and out-breath. During this part of the meditation, I started to enter a kind of birds eye perspective on my life. I began to be able to see various kinds of thoughts and feelings, which I am currently dealing with, for example: “oh, I am thinking a lot about my future studies, I feel pity for my friend or excited for my sister” and so on. Looking at my inner life in such a way, provided me with much material to reflect on. Starting to explicitly take every day time to observe my thinking, feeling and acting changed my relationship with myself. In the Plum Village tradition of applied buddhism they assume “most people live their lives in auto pilot mode; caught in strong habits.” Meditation in turn is described as a means to expand ones freedom and autonomy: one can observe understand feelings, thoughts and mental activities and decide whether to act upon them or seek other ways. This is at least the theory. Understanding ones mind is a central aspect of what the buddhists call enlightenment. However, to attain freedom and pure happiness is a very bold promise — I am not sure whether a philosophy of life can make more extensive promises. To me calming my body and my feelings, as well as starting to look at how I think, certainly brought a new quality in my life, and I am motivated to try out more. However, to think one can really understand ones mind seems to me unrealistic endeavor.
The rest of a day the monastery is, unlike many other Zen traditions, not filled with formal meditations and sitting in solitude. Mindfulness is trained in ordinary activities — one practices to eat mindfully, cook, work, walk, listen, speak and so on, all in mindfulness. So, how do I understand the trendy concept of mindfulness after experiencing applied buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh? It certainly has nothing to do with wellness, mere relaxation and smoothies after yoga class. It is rather a philosophy of living. To me mindfulness very generally means to direct ones attention to the activity one is currently doing. The philosophy of Plum Village would postulate “dwelling in the present moment” and “neither getting lost in regrets about the past, nor dragged away by anxieties about the future”. However, entering and keeping a mindful state of mind is challenging. Our consciousness has the tendency to seek occupation and distraction, tells stories, travels to other places, and thereby flees the presents moment and what is happening right now. Plum Village philosophy postulates that only in the present moment you are fully alive — only “now” we can live and many people run through their lives literally missing it. A central exercise in order to practice mindfulness is called “stopping”. This means to find moments of stillness, of reconnection with body and mind in the present moment. All over the place in Plum Village you find sounds of bells which invite you to stop. “Breathing in I feel my in-breath, breathing out I enjoy my out-breath” — would be one of the mantras one would use when hearing a bell. These moments of stopping also allow to get into the described birds eye perspective — recognizing what I am currently doing and potentially changing how I do it, becomes possible. Do I rush? Am I am stressed? How does my body feel? Stopping for me is a kind of “check-in” with myself. A check whether what I do is aligned with what I want to do. A third element of the concept of mindfulness for me has to do with inner attitude while becoming aware of the present moment; the attitude of gentleness. When I stop and observe what I do and realize I am rushing, while for example writing this text or feel a little bit dehydrated, I do this with compassion and gentleness towards myself. The practices of mindfulness, I feel, cannot be detached from the practice of compassion and kindness towards oneself and others.
The most inspiring meditation format in Plum Village for me is “sharing” or “mindful listening/speech”. The big part of the year the monastics offer visitors to join the practice community for week long retreats. Thousands interested people from all over the world thereby find their way to this peculiar tradition of applied buddhism. During the retreats monastics and visitors practice together in so called families — groups of 20 to 30 people. A central mindfulness practice in these families is mindful listening and mindful speech. Sitting in a circle a safe place is offered and facilitated by the monastics where people can share practically everything about their life and life’s path. During a sharing only one person speaks at the time and the others listen carefully. That creates ways of communication we are not used to. We usually tend to be in quick back and forth conversations, quickly interpreting what is said, impulsively responding, giving advice most of the time without even being asked to and so on. Mindful listening in this context means to listen attentively to the one person speaking while trying to avoid inner judgements about what is said. Our mind tends to comment things; to find it good, bad, stupid, interesting, wrong, superficial and so on. While one listens mindfully the monastics advise to observe these inner judging voices and thereby learn about one’s own mind and habits of thinking. The buddhist concept of “non-discrimination” is at the core of the practice of mindful listening/speech; one tries to just listen, not react to what others say, but just to be gently present. From my experience in numerous different families in the past months, this practice creates a secure and healing space for participants, where they can share personal stories without the fear of being openly judged, discriminated, or disagreed with. I experienced this as transformative and precious. I have the feeling, although we describe our western societies as free, democratic, emancipated, and many more, people tend mask themselves and need to do so in order to function. Non-reactive and non-discriminatory listening, offers humans to be more the way they naturally are; that is liberating.
The philosophy of applied buddhism assumes that being gently listened to — may it be in love relationships, friendships, families, teams, organizations or even between nations — brings peace. At this point mindfulness becomes political. The founder and zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is a peace activist, led back in the days during the Vietnam war a massive non-violent peace movement and was nominated by Martin Luther King for the Nobel Peace Price. Mindfulness, stopping and listening deeply with the intention to calm inner judgements are used as tools to resolve conflict. Imagine you are angry and the mindfulness practice helps you to stop, to distance yourself a little bit from the object of your emotion, to ask whether it is really helpful to “punch back”, or you understand a little bit better in what kind of potentially difficult situation the conflict partner might be in. The Plum Village approach of peacemaking puts “compassion” and “understanding” for the context and history of the conflict partner at the centre. It is proposed that a deeper understanding for the reasons of behavior of the other as well as the reflection about action and reaction in conflict which mostly ends in a vicious cycle of violence creates the perspective that acting non-violently, from a place of compassion, is helpful. This concept of peace making inspires me, while leaving central questions open and unanswered. However, I was inspired to see monastics helping to reconcile conflicts between couples and families and see their work for example in reconciliation retreats between Israelis and Palestinians using the means of mindfulness, stopping, deep listening and deep understanding.
At this point, I would like to continue to write about the environmental activism of Plum Village. I also would enjoy to feature more about what the Dalai Lama calls “Secular Ethics” and the tradition of Applied Buddhism frames as “Mindfulness Trainings”. I would like to reflect on what Plum Village has to say about how to true love in relationships looks like, would enjoy to discuss aspects of their critique on consumerism, which has not only to do with material products but also other kinds of consumption like media or even will power. I have to keep this for a next time.
Being back in western life with the intention to test how aspects of mindfulness can be integrated in my daily life, appears to be complex. It is still difficult for me to regularly „stop“, calm my body, my feelings, my thoughts, as I learned and practiced in Plum Village. There is much to inquire, much to learn. Thich Nhat Hanh postulates “peace is every step” and summarizes with that phrase the potential of a thorough mindfulness practice; generating peace in yourself and thereby for others. However, its easier said then done.
