thich nhat hanh is in thailand now along with 90 monastics from his temple in france. he lead a day of mindfulness in lumpini park yesterday, is leading a retreat in chiang mai soon and will have three more talks in bkk towards the end of the month. all of the talks are build around the theme “peace in ones self, peace in the world”

i can’t get up to chiang mai, but did attend the program yesterday … the program was billed as running from 2-8, with a talk at 2:30 and walking meditation at 6. we got there around 2 and the hall was filling up pretty fast, at 2:30 they locked the doors so we could meditation for 30 min and then the doors were opened again at 3 to let in the rest of the people. he taught in english, but paused after each sentence to allow it to be translated into thai. this turned out to be a really nice way to hear the talk as there was room for it to settle in.

this is the third opportunity i’ve had to be with him, the first was in berkley years ago, then 7 days in france last year and now this time … i’ve also read many of his books. he has this way of explaining the dharma by breaking it down into very simple steps. mostly he teaches to be present with our breath, to realize that non-peaceful states are caused by non-peaceful emotions and that if we realize this emotions are impermanent that we can allow them to pass and not impact our judgement. sometimes he gets a little headier than that, but the core of the teaching is always about the present moment and using the breath as a tool to come into the present. this teachings have often had me thinking about the western approach of analyzing everything, often over and over. there is a point where thinking about past mistakes and problems can be beneficial, especially if they are problems that repeat …. BUT when we are constantly analyzing the past, it means we are dwelling in the past and not in the present. we can often create anxieties for ours selves this way ….

after his talk, we had a short break and snack and then walking meditation. when i was in france, there were 1000 of us that peacefully walked together after the dharma talk each day. we still peacefully walked together here in bkk, but it was interesting to see how much people really wanted to be near thich nhat hanh and every more interesting to see the way that the paparazzi swarmed near him. thich nhat hanh may very well be enlightened already (although he doesn’t claim this one way or another) and people really wanted to be close to him. running in front of the walking meditation was a group of photographers from various publications, constantly shooting photographs of the scene. in some ways it’s kinda cool that enlightened monks are treated like rock stars in thailand, and thich nhat hanh’s mindfull presence through this could probably be a lesson to so many hollywood types that bitch about too much media coverage. he left in a van escorted by police and surrounded by people respectfully bowing.

when i got back from france i wrote an article about the trip for the thai version of yoga journal (well i wrote it in english, they translated and i double-checked their translation … i still can’t write well in thai) … the article was postponed for months and finally came out this month, timed perfectly with his trip. scans from the article are below … it’s all in thai, and the scans aren’t the best quality. if you want to read it, you probably should buy it … but if you just want to see the pics, click the thumbnails below.

after the talk, pank and i had dinner at siam paragon and took these pics at this killer orchid show they have on now