Originally published in the Herald-Zeitung, June 9, 2023
In a culture which often leans towards consuming, possessing and accumulating, many feel overwhelmed. The amount of information consumed is compounded by whether it is even true, valid, or certain: Advertising to persuade us to purchase even more than we have or need has the capacity to numb us with their siren calls to accumulate more. The myth of capitalism and the myth of consumption are constant in their relentless presence.
The idea of letting go is, in the above frame, not very popular as a regular feature of our lives. Twelve-step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon and others offer alternatives to the addictions that can consume one’s entire life. In AA one of the most popular slogans is “Let Go and Let God.” Letting go of baked-in habits of negative thinking and behaving that are often forms of self-abuse is both courageous and difficult when practiced daily in a mindful way.
Letting go as a creative act, one that is spiritually oriented, is one major strategy towards a deep and lasting sense of freedom. Giving oneself over to “a Higher Power” can be a creative moment of renewal.
Today the thoughts of Buddhist psychology continue to enhance the above programs towards self-retrieval of one’s deeper identity. One of its most popular conveyors of Buddhist thought is the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, affectionately referred to as Thay. He died in January 2022 after pursuing a life of serving others by helping millions achieve a deep sense of peace in their lives through meditation practices that are laid out in two of my favorite books of his: The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation (1987) and Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life (1992).
A third book that helped me bridge the space between Christian thought and Buddhist practices is perhaps my favorite: Living Buddha, Living Christ (199), in which Thay reveals that to live the life and practice of Buddhism is to live the faith of a Christian.
His gift, one of many, was to help dissolve the divides between religious traditions that pushed individuals to choose one of the other, when in fact they shared so many of the same beliefs, and more importantly, attitudes towards living a free, peaceful, and mindful existence.
By mindfulness, he suggests, is to live in the present moment, when we are persuaded so often in our thinking to be often anxiously anticipating the future or recollecting the past, at times in regret or in recalling a pleasant experience. Neither of these is wrong, but in Thay’s rendering of mindfulness, they both keep us orphaned from the present moment, lived fully. He goes deeply into this dilemma in Mindfulness to suggest that “the problem of life and death itself is the problem of mindfulness.”
Mindfulness training pays attention to the simple things in our life: breathing in full awareness of our breath, breathing in with full awareness of our action, and breathing out as a form of letting go. At the same time, we focus on what is before us at this moment in our simple acts of vacuuming the floor, cleaning out a cupboard, or taking care of our pets.
What is crucial is the quality of mindfulness one brings to the ordinary, and therein lies a path to peace and self-reconciliation that extends out to others. It is to be creatively present to the ordinary, to see the gifts within it and to feel gratitude for this life that we have been given to cultivate creatively in service to others.
For a series of meditations by Thay, visit Youtube and type in Thich na Hanh Meditation to find many instructions by him on this miracle of becoming more mindful.