USA and other tours

Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh and the other monastics travel quite a lot to offer retreats in the United States and in many other countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Macau, Norway, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. We frequently offer retreats lasting five to seven days, which are commonly attended by 400 to 1200 people, as well public talks attended by 1,000 to as many as 10,000. At the end of a retreat, there is always a ceremony to transmit the Five Mindfulness Trainings, and as in the summer retreat, a majority of new retreatants, i.e. several hundred people in each retreat, formally receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings and join a sangha or start a new one to continue their practice when they return home.  

Special retreats

The first retreat Thay offered especially for a particular interest group was in 1985, for environmentalists. Thay taught from the Diamond Sutra, which says there are four notions that must be released: the notion of self; the notion that humans are higher than other living beings; the notion of living beings; and the notion of a lifespan. He taught that we humans are not higher than trees, plants and minerals, and we have to live in harmony with them. He declared the Diamond Sutra the earliest text advocating environmental protection.

The second special retreat was for artists, in 1987. There were musicians, sculptors, painters, writers, and others. Thay believes that the arts can be a much deeper and more powerful means of communication than normal human discourse. He taught that artists have to practice stopping, relaxing, and looking deeply in order to create responsible art. Art can be very destructive, or it can be very constructive; a terrible scene can be depicted in a way that helps people be more responsible and work for change. Thay discussed the Sutra on  the  Son’s  Flesh (Samyukta Agama 373) as a very important teaching for the 21^st century. He also discussed these themes in a special retreat for members of the film-making industry in Hollywood, in 2003.

Also around 1987, Thay offered a retreat for children. There were 100 people there and we invited a lot of “seed” children who already knew the practice, to help the other children want to practice. We paid 20 plane tickets for seed children to attend. Of course, we accepted the children’s  parents in the retreat as well, so they could learn how to practice with their children. The retreat ended with hugging meditation, and the children were asking their parents why they had to leave.

Next came a retreat for peace activists, in 1989. Thay taught that we have to know how to write “love letters” to our lawmakers and president, instead of shouting at them. We can demonstrate in a way that is powerful, while still embodying peace and compassion in our own heart, and touching the same in others instead of their anger.

All of Thay’s life work is for peace and for human rights. We always try to bring justice to the world. Thay teaches that we only can change people if we are their friend. If you are their enemy, then even if you are powerful, they may obey while they have to; but they’ll find a way to get around you.  There is a great deal that we can share about our work for peace and human rights -- too much for us to share in detail for this paper; we hope you can have an opportunity to read one or more of our books on this subject, such as Love in Action by Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh and Learning True Love by Sister Chan Khong.

An inter-religious retreat was offered the following year, with participation from Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, and Buddhist practitioners. We celebrated Passover and Easter, enjoying Easter eggs and practicing the Eucharist and the washing of feet from the Christian tradition. We emphasized that we should not be telling each other how wonderful this or that tradition is, but tasting it through practice. Grape juice was used in place of wine for Catholic and Jewish rituals.  

Thay and the sangha offered a retreat for psychotherapists in which the first 4 days were entirely silent. Some of the psychotherapists attending had been expecting something more like a professional conference, and were unhappy with the silent time at first. The purpose of the silence was to help them calm their thinking and restore their stillness and clear mind, so they could be empty enough to listen to their clients, understand their suffering, and then offer them a truly insightful prescription for healing. Thay encouraged them to use whatever instrument is appropriate, and not to be caught in the doctrines of this school or that school of psychology. By the end of the retreat, the psychotherapists had experienced deep transformation enabling them to see that the “buddha” in each of them could help them to help their patients.  Thay also spoke against the practice of pillow beating as a means of “venting” anger, and now it seems more psychologists agree that “venting” just waters the seeds of violence, rehearses negative mental formations and actually makes it more likely that someone will act violently.

Thay has offered several retreats in the USA for veterans of the war in Vietnam. The first such retreat was very challenging to offer. Thay explained to the veterans that they are at the white-hot tip of the burning candle, but the whole collective consciousness had given rise to the war and is responsible for what happened, not only these veterans. He asked everyone to find a tree, sit by it, write down their own experience and shine light on their compassion or their anger, and give the writing to Thay so his talks would be relevant for them. When Thay and Sr. Chan Khong read the letters, they suffered a lot, because there were a number of descriptions of cruel acts against Vietnamese people including children. One man described how, after shooting for three days from a helicopter, he saw all the human bodies strewn about like logs. He was so shocked because while in the helicopter, he never imagined it was like that. At the retreat he saw a very young Vietnamese woman who, he said, looked like the people he had killed. Another revealed that he had not been able to practice walking meditation with the sangha because, when he looked at the Vietnamese monastics, he was afraid of being ambushed by them.  

Thay taught the veterans that when they take the Five Mindfulness Trainings and make the vow not to kill, they are transformed. He said, “You may have killed a child before; but you can save five children from death every day, now, in the present moment. Do the opposite of what you did before.” Thay asked them to write down their painful experiences and then burn these papers to represent their new freedom, that they were new persons. He used a flower to sprinkle water on everyone, to wash them clean. Then they practiced hugging meditation with Vietnamese. All the Vietnamese Americans who lived nearby were invited to come and participate, and the veterans practiced hugging them to feel that the Vietnamese could forgive them and now they were friends. Three retreats just for veterans were held; now the program for veterans is offered as one part of our larger, general interest retreats.

A retreat was offered in Plum Village especially for business leaders. Thay told a very powerful and true story about a businessman who was always asking his wife and family to wait a little longer for him to be there for them, because his enterprise was in a certain stage where it could not be managed without him. He said that maybe after two or three years, he would be able to spend more time with them. The man ended up dying young, before that stage ever arrived – and the company replaced him within hours. This story was shared to wake up the retreatants and bring home the importance of living the reality of impermanence.  

Thay taught the retreatants that we have to live in harmony with those few people who are closest to us, then widen our circle of concern out to our five, or twenty, or even one thousand employees. He said that business leaders should give their employees more time to eat their lunch, and they should eat with them, and even consider offering them total relaxation practice at the workplace. Employees should be treated like one’s own partners, and business leaders should show care and concern  about their employees’ lives and families.  Recently Thay met a Chinese doctor who  had been too indifferent to his employees, and one of them became disgruntled and poisoned the doctor and his family. Only the doctor himself survived. Three months after the retreat for business leaders ended, many reported that it continued to have positive effects on their way of relating with their employees and others.  Thay’s talks  at this retreat were made into a book, Power, which has already sold 200,000 copies in Korea.  

Several years ago, Thay went to offer a day of mindfulness practice to prisoners at a maximum-security prison in Maryland, USA. We had to go through sixteen doors, each one locking heavily behind us as soon as we had passed through it. The inmates listened to Thay describe the practice of eating mindfully, after which the food was served. They gulped it down very fast; then they looked at the monastics still eating, mindfully; perhaps that may have made more of an impression on them than the teaching in words. Many of the men appeared to be transformed.  They asked, “Can I  really change my life?” and they sought to start doing good things already from right  there in prison.  

Many things were not permitted to be brought into the prison with us, including recording  devices  such  as  the  video  camera  we  normally  use  to  record  Thay’s  teachings. So we asked the officials to record the teachings with their own equipment. We asked permission for Thay to bring in his own tiny mini-disc recorder, which we normally use as a backup. At first they refused, but then they allowed it. This was a good thing, because their equipment didn’t work, and from our  recording came the small book Be Free Where You Are which has been translated into several languages already.

During his tour offering retreats around the USA in 2003, Thay offered a retreat that was initially intended specifically for police officers, prison officials, and others working in law enforcement. The target audience then was broadened to include others in public service, particularly school teachers. In his talks, Thay emphasized that law enforcement workers need to practice peace, to practice walking mindfully and relaxingly to calm themselves, and to take care of their family and not treat them like underlings. The officers disagreed with Thay about walking relaxingly, saying they could get shot at from any side in dangerous areas of a city. Thay then recommended that when they go home to their own neighborhood, they practice walking meditation before going in to see their family, their foundation of peace.  

We learned the shocking statistic that many more police officers are shot by their own hand than in service. The stress of their jobs also pushes many of them to drink heavily. We proposed that they create a kind of spiritual family at their workplace, and that they read and discuss the Five Mindfulness Trainings, to make life more centered and meaningful. This way, they could have greater freshness, friendship and connection with their co-workers, like a family supporting each other. To help these public employees to do all of this in an absolutely non-sectarian way (so as to preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the U.S. Constitution), we performed a ceremony to transmit the Five Mindfulness Trainings with all “Buddhist”  language removed from the precepts and the ceremony.

For the school teachers at this and other retreats, Thay has said that the school is like a second chance for children who come from broken families to receive the nurturing they need. Teachers must practice listening to their children, offering them not only knowledge, but also compassion and the appropriate teaching that each individual child needs. Thay encouraged teachers to use skillful means to introduce mindfulness practice in the classroom, like designating one child each day to clap her hands every fifteen minutes, for everyone to stop what they are doing and just breathe.

On the same 2003 tour, Thay also held a very special retreat for members of the U.S. Congress. Thay spoke to them about the circles of concern, starting with one’s own nuclear family and then making the staff like another family, and so on. The members of Congress are so busy, flying back and forth between their home districts and Washington D.C. When they get to their office, there are so many things they must quickly read and resolve. Many of the members who participated in this retreat said that practicing walking meditation from their office to the voting place was the most helpful tool for them.

In various retreats, Thay has spoken to the concerns of parents. He has said that many single mothers may think they have to find a man to help support them and their child; but often, searching for this can make things even more complicated than one’s  own task of having to be both father and mother. Thay taught these single mothers to focus more on their own practice and on making themselves strong, solid, happy and peaceful; then, if the partnership comes by itself, that is good. To all parents, Thay has said that children are the parents’ continuation into the future, and parents are the children’s continuation back into times past. In reality we do not have a separate self. The input coming into this generation of children from society is so different from the input into their parents’ generation; so even when a parent’s weakness manifests in the child, it may not be recognized because it looks different, it manifests in a different way. When you look deeply, you can only say, “You look like me.”

At a retreat held in Oldenburg, Germany, a few years ago, Thay spoke about the importance of reconciling with family members from whom we’ve  grown  apart,  before it is too late. It was the fifth day of the retreat, and he encouraged people to reconcile with family members by midnight that night. For those who had family members there at the retreat with them, it could be done in person. For those whose family members were far away (the majority), Thay authorized them to use their cell phones to call and heal their relationships. The following day, four men came and reported to Thay that, thanks to the teachings on deep listening and the practices at the retreat, they had been able to use their cell phones the previous night and reconcile with their fathers – something they had not believed possible before attending the retreat. We are sure there were many others who also reconciled, but were too shy to come and report it to Thay. This is something that occurs, in one way or another, with every retreat we offer.

From January to April, 2005, Thay was able to make an historic return trip to his homeland of Vietnam, from which he had been exiled for 40 years. There were many people in the Vietnamese government who were extremely fearful that Thay, and the 100 monastics and 100 lay friends in his delegation, would make demonstrations and disturbances. At Thay’s first public lecture, in Hanoi, when our senior monk Thay Phap An arrived one hour before the lecture was to begin, he saw security everywhere, apparently due to fear of a riot breaking out. To the great surprise of Thay and the delegation, only eighteen people were allowed to enter the hall to hear Thay’s talk; but Thay spoke just as if there were 300 or 3,000 people in attendance.

After the delegation had conducted a number of visits and talks in various locations, and due to the very patient and compassionate attitude of the delegation in dealing with authorities, the level of the authorities’ fear decreased significantly. Thay was permitted to offer a second public lecture, in Saigon, and this time 600 people including government and police officers were invited. At our request, loudspeakers were placed outside the building, and so close to 1,000 people got to listen. Then in Hue, another public talk was organized, with 600 people inside, and speakers outside with thousands of people listening. When the delegation returned to Hanoi, Thay spoke at the political institute, and then one more lecture was organized in a big hotel with 600 invited people in the main room and an overflow area with 200 people.

While in Vietnam, Thay offered the government seven points of recommendation (see Appendix 9) to allow the Buddhist church in Vietnam to heal itself and help reduce the suffering of Vietnamese people due to social ills such as the drug trade. He proposed mutual acceptance and reconciliation between the two opposing camps of the divided Buddhist church, saying we should discuss as brothers, not shout as enemies. A high monk who used to speak angrily on this subject now speaks kindly. The attitude of the Vietnamese government has changed; it is giving sincere respect and attention to Thay’s proposals, and showing much more respect for Buddhism and what it can do to help Vietnamese society. The government has allowed the formation of many local groups of the Buddhist organization that previously did not have government approval.

Just as those men at the retreat in Oldenburg, and so many other retreats, have found that deep listening works on the family level, in Vietnam we found that deep listening is also highly effective at the broader level of society.