Day 752 - My teacher - https://golifelog.com/posts/my-teacher-1674344314111
It's been [one year](https://youtu.be/mkJLqq6j0Ic) since my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh passed. Has it been a year already?
That gaping hole in the world when he left is no smaller.
Yet it holds us all—his students—in mindful embrace.
I first knew about my teacher through his books. I was living in London back then, on a working holidaymaker visa, working and living a new life in a different world. I was in my mid 20s. On weekends I would spend hours in Borders, and I think that's where I first chanced on his book. And I was riveted. His words are simple, basic, sometimes even child-like, but his storytelling and insight were mindblowing. And at the end of his books, I'll read that he lives in a monastery in Bordeaux, France called Plum Village.
I was intrigued.
A few more books, and with my time in London reaching an end, I decided to head to France to travel for a few months, and end that trip with a meditation retreat at his monastery before I headed home. I felt that was a good way to round up my time overseas, to reflect and regroup.
Except that destiny had other plans.
My stay at Plum Village turned out to be one of the best transformative experiences I ever had in my entire life. Learning about mindfulness and mindful living, practising with the monks and nuns for 3 months through the cold winter in the French countryside, was just the reset I needed to start a new season of life back home. It gave me the right tools and mindsets to better deal with the modern world. I gave me higher values and aspirations I looked up to, that I could work towards. I've never lived in a community where I felt so embraced and safe in everyone's loving kindness. I never saw someone walk so mindfully, with so much presense – can you imagine being transfixed by how someone walks? It's crazy. I never knew that walking can be a superpower. In the end, I felt saner, clearer, happier after Plum Village. I felt ready for the world, for a different life.
Everything changed.
He changed my life. For the better.
He had since gone, but like how he likes to tell us, he's never really gone *gone*. He continues in us all when we walk, eat, sit and rest in mindfulness as he had taught. He continues. We're his continuation.
With every mindful step and breath, we have arrived, we are home.
That gaping hole in the world when he left is no smaller.
Yet it holds us all—his students—in mindful embrace.
I first knew about my teacher through his books. I was living in London back then, on a working holidaymaker visa, working and living a new life in a different world. I was in my mid 20s. On weekends I would spend hours in Borders, and I think that's where I first chanced on his book. And I was riveted. His words are simple, basic, sometimes even child-like, but his storytelling and insight were mindblowing. And at the end of his books, I'll read that he lives in a monastery in Bordeaux, France called Plum Village.
I was intrigued.
A few more books, and with my time in London reaching an end, I decided to head to France to travel for a few months, and end that trip with a meditation retreat at his monastery before I headed home. I felt that was a good way to round up my time overseas, to reflect and regroup.
Except that destiny had other plans.
My stay at Plum Village turned out to be one of the best transformative experiences I ever had in my entire life. Learning about mindfulness and mindful living, practising with the monks and nuns for 3 months through the cold winter in the French countryside, was just the reset I needed to start a new season of life back home. It gave me the right tools and mindsets to better deal with the modern world. I gave me higher values and aspirations I looked up to, that I could work towards. I've never lived in a community where I felt so embraced and safe in everyone's loving kindness. I never saw someone walk so mindfully, with so much presense – can you imagine being transfixed by how someone walks? It's crazy. I never knew that walking can be a superpower. In the end, I felt saner, clearer, happier after Plum Village. I felt ready for the world, for a different life.
Everything changed.
He changed my life. For the better.
He had since gone, but like how he likes to tell us, he's never really gone *gone*. He continues in us all when we walk, eat, sit and rest in mindfulness as he had taught. He continues. We're his continuation.
With every mindful step and breath, we have arrived, we are home.