Parallax Press

  2236B Sixth Street

  Berkeley, California 94710

  parallax.org

  Parallax Press is the publishing division of Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism

  © 2023 Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by Debbie Berne, ebook design adapted from print design by Debbie Berne

  Illustrations by Jason DeAntonis

  The material in this book comes from previously published books and unpublished Dharma talks by Thich Nhat Hanh.

  ISBN 9781952692437

  Ebook ISBN 9781952692444

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2023945490

  a_prh_6.1_145540459_c0_r0

  CONTENTS

  Notes on Smiling

  Practices for Smiling

  We have a lamp inside us,

  the lamp of mindfulness,

  which we can light any time.

  The oil of that lamp is our breathing,

  our steps, and our peaceful smile.

  NOTES ON SMILING

  If in our daily life we can smile, if we

  can be peaceful and happy, not only we

  but everyone will profit from it. This is

  the most basic kind of peace work.

  A smile can relax hundreds of muscles in

  your face and relax your nervous system.

  A smile makes you master of yourself.

  The essence of our practice can be described

  as turning suffering into happiness. The basic

  method is to be mindful of refreshing and

  beautiful things in the present moment.

  Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled

  with many wonders, such as the blue sky, the

  sunshine, and the eyes of a baby. To suffer is

  not enough. We must also be in touch with

  the wonders of life. They are within us and

  all around us, everywhere, anytime.

  RECOGNIZING AND ACCEPTING

  If we can recognize and accept our pain without running away from it, we will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time.

  REGAINING OUR SOVEREIGNTY

  During walking meditation, sitting meditation, kitchen and garden work, all day long, we can practice smiling. At first you may find it difficult to smile, and we have to think about why.

  Events carry us away and we lose ourselves. A smile can help us regain our sovereignty, our liberty as a human being. Smiling means that we are ourselves, that we are not drowned in forgetfulness.

  THE ART OF HAPPINESS AND SUFFERING

  Being able to enjoy happiness doesn’t require that we have no suffering. In fact, the art of happiness is also the art of suffering well. When we learn to acknowledge, embrace, and understand our suffering, we suffer much less. We can learn from our suffering, and we can transform it into understanding, compassion, and joy for ourselves and for others.

  OUR SUFFERING IS THE COMPOST

  A human being should have the capacity to deal with both suffering and happiness. Both are organic, transitory, always changing. A flower, when it wilts, becomes the compost. Our suffering is the compost that enables the flowers of happiness to grow again. We have to learn how to handle our suffering, just as the organic gardener handles the compost.

  THE PRACTICE OF SMILING

  There are hundreds of muscles in your face, and every time you breathe in and out and smile, tension is released. There’s relaxation. You may ask why you should smile when you have no joy. You don’t need joy in order to smile; you can practice mouth yoga, and you’ll feel relief right away. Sometimes joy is the cause of your smile; sometimes your smile is the cause of your joy. Why discriminate? Wherever you are, practice breathing in and out. In time, you will calm yourself and your smile will become real. When we practice peace and are able to smile, our peace can influence the whole universe.

  MOUNTAIN PINE

  There are pine trees that grow in poor soil on the mountainside, where there is very little nutrition for a seed to sprout and grow. But because of that difficulty, the pine tree has the chance to go deep into the soil and become very strong, so the wind can’t blow it down. If the pine tree encounters only easy conditions along the way, its roots may not go as deeply and firmly into the earth, and when the strong winds come, it may be blown over. Sometimes obstacles and difficulties can help us to succeed.

  BLOOMING LIKE A FLOWER

  When we notice the presence of anger, fear, or agitation in us, we don’t need to throw them away. We only have to breathe in and out with awareness and embrace the emotion with mindfulness. This alone is enough to calm the storm. Mindfulness is like the morning sunshine on a flower that has closed overnight. The sunshine embraces and permeates the flower, and the flower begins to open. There’s no effort. We don’t need to wait for a storm before we begin to practice. When we’re not suffering, conscious breathing will make us feel wonderful, and it is the best way to prepare ourselves to deal with troubles when they come.

  PREVENTING THE SECOND ARROW

  If an arrow were to strike you, you would feel pain. If a second arrow struck you in the same place, the pain would be many times greater. The unwelcome things that happen in life are the first arrow; they cause some pain. The second arrow is our reaction, which magnifies the suffering. We can prevent the firing of the second arrow by simply being present with the real suffering. This allows us to see there are still things to be grateful for, still things that are not going wrong. Happiness is possible immediately, even if everything is not perfect.

  WE CAN CHOOSE THE CHANNEL

  A friend once asked me, “How can I force myself to smile when I’m filled with sorrow? It isn’t natural.” I told her she must be able to smile to her sorrow, because we are more than our sorrow. A human being is like a television set with millions of channels. If we turn awareness on, we are awareness. If we turn sorrow on, we are sorrow. If we turn a smile on, we really are the smile. We can’t let just one channel dominate us. We have the seeds of everything inside.

  THE SEED OF AWAKENING

  Children can see that in each person is the capacity of waking up, understanding, and loving. Waking up means being aware of what is going on in your body, feelings, perceptions, and in the world. Our awakened nature is our capacity of understanding and loving. Since the seed of awakening is there inside us, we should give it a chance. Smiling is very important. If we’re not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not just by going out for a demonstration that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

  THE BUDDHA’S SMILE

  When I was a young novice, I couldn’t understand why, if the world is filled with suffering, the Buddha has such a beautiful smile. Why wasn’t he disturbed by all the suffering? Later I saw that the Buddha has enough understanding, calm, and strength that suffering doesn’t overwhelm him. He’s able to smile to suffering because he knows how to take care of it and help transform it. We need to be aware of the suffering but to retain our clarity, calm, and strength so we can help transform the situation. The ocean of tears cannot drown us if compassion is there. This is how the Buddha’s smile is possible.

  MEDITATION IS AWARENESS

  Meditation is to be aware of what is going on—in our body, our feelings, our mind, and in the world. Each day thousands of children die of hunger; plant and animal species go extinct; and the nuclear powers have enough weapons to destroy us many times over. Yet the sunrise is beautiful, and the rose that bloomed this morning along the wall is a miracle. Life is both dreadful and wonderful. To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. Please do not think we must be solemn in order to meditate. In fact, to meditate well, we have to smile a lot.

  CALMING OUR THINKING

  While we practice awareness of our breathing, our thinking slows down, and we give ourselves a real rest. Most of the time, we think too much. Mindful breathing helps us to be calm, relaxed, and peaceful. It helps us to stop being possessed by sorrows of the past and worries about the future. It enables us to be in touch with life and to realize that we have far more conditions for our happiness than we realize.

  TOUCHING PEACE

  When we sit down peacefully, breathing and smiling, with awareness, we are our true selves, we have sovereignty over ourselves. Practicing meditation is to be aware, to smile, to breathe. The joy of beginning to meditate is like leaving the busy city and going to the countryside to sit under a tree. We feel ourselves filled with peace and joy. What a relief! We can meditate in the sitting position, which offers the most stability, but we can also meditate while we’re walking, lying down, standing, or doing things. Meditation can be very informal.

  THE JOY OF MEDITATION

  In each session of sitting or walking meditation, we can nourish ourself with the joy of meditative concentration by being aware of our breathing, calming and relaxing our body, and touching the conditions that bring us joy and happiness in the present moment. Meditation helps us restore peace, solidity, and harmony in our body so we can suffer less and make progress on our spiritual path. The joy and bliss of meditation sustains us on our path of practice and gives us strength to look more deeply into difficult feelings and situations.
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  A HALF SMILE

  A tiny bud of a smile on our lips nourishes awareness and calms us miraculously. It returns to us the peace we thought we had lost. Our smile will bring happiness to us and to those around us. Even if we spend a lot of money on gifts for everyone in our family, nothing we buy could give them as much happiness as the gift of our awareness, our smile. And this precious gift costs nothing.

  When I see someone smile, I know immediately that he or she is dwelling in awareness. This half-smile, how many artists have labored to bring it to the lips of countless statues and paintings? I am sure the same smile must have been on the faces of the sculptors and the painters as they worked. Can you imagine an angry sculptor giving birth to such a smile? Mona Lisa’s smile is light, just a hint of a smile. Yet even a smile like that is enough to relax all the muscles in our face, to banish all worries and fatigue.

  BITTER MELON

  There’s a vegetable in Vietnam called bitter melon. The Chinese word for bitter also means suffering. If you’re not used to eating bitter melon, you may suffer. But according to traditional medicine, bitterness is good for your health. Some people call it “refreshing melon,” because eating it makes you feel fresh and cool—and it’s delicious, even the bitterness.

  Suffering is bitter, and our natural tendency is to run away from it. Our store consciousness, our unconscious mind, can set up a program of behaviors to help us run away from suffering and approach only what’s pleasant. This prevents us from knowing the goodness of suffering, the healing it can bring. But our conscious mind knows that suffering has things to teach us, and that we shouldn’t be afraid of it. We are ready to suffer a little bit in order to learn, grow, and heal. We have to use our intelligence. We use our concentration to get insight, to transform the suffering and become an enlightened one, a free person.

  HANDLING AN UNPLEASANT FEELING

  Our feelings play an important part in how we perceive, think, and act. Buried inside are painful feelings we may be afraid to bring into our conscious mind because they’ll make us suffer. Practicing breathing and smiling, we can be in contact with our feelings and accept them. If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, and mindfully observe them, our unpleasant feelings can illuminate much for us, offering us insight and understanding into ourselves and society.

  When we embrace and calm an unpleasant feeling, we do this for all our ancestors and for future generations. Our suffering is not only an individual manifestation, but a collective manifestation from many generations and from society. We are not the only one responsible.

  TAKING CARE OF ANGER

  Anger is not an enemy. Both mindfulness and anger are ourselves. Our practice is based on the insight of nonduality. Mindfulness is there not to suppress or fight against anger, but to recognize and take care, like an older sibling helping a younger one. The energy of anger is recognized and embraced tenderly by the energy of mindfulness. Every time we need the energy of mindfulness, we just touch that seed by means of our mindful breathing, mindful walking, and smiling, and then we have the energy ready to do the work of recognizing, embracing, looking deeply, and transforming. Within the seed of mindfulness is the seed of concentration. With these two energies, we can liberate ourselves from afflictions.

  HOUSE ON FIRE

  If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you suspect has set fire to your house, the house will burn down while you’re chasing them. The wise thing to do is to go back and put out the fire. When you’re angry, if you continue to interact or argue with the other person or if you try to punish them, you are acting exactly like someone who runs after the arsonist while everything goes up in flames.

  WHAT PART DO WE CONTRIBUTE?

  Pain may be unavoidable. But whether we suffer or not is up to us. Birth, old age, and sickness are natural. It is possible not to suffer because of them when you have chosen to accept them as part of life. You may choose not to suffer, even if pain or sickness is there. How you see life and your particular situation depends on your way of looking. If we look deeply into our suffering, we can ask ourselves how we contribute to it. That doesn’t mean that our suffering isn’t real, just that we can lessen it instead of adding to it, and we can even transform it.

  WATERING GOOD SEEDS

  One way of taking care of our suffering is to invite a positive seed of the opposite nature to come up. For example, if the seed of arrogance comes up, you can practice mindfulness of compassion. If you practice this every day, the seed of compassion in you will become strong and will come up as a powerful zone of energy. We can selectively water the good seeds and refrain from watering the negative seeds. This doesn’t mean we ignore our suffering; it just means we allow the positive seeds that are naturally there to get attention and nourishment. If there are difficulties in our relationships, we practice watering the flowers in ourself and in our loved ones, and we can very well restore communication and revive the happiness we had before.

  IN TOUCH WITH MOTHER EARTH

  Touching the earth, letting your fingers feel the soil, and gardening are wonderful, restorative activities. If you live in a city, you may not have many opportunities to hoe the earth, plant vegetables, or take care of flowers. But you can still find and appreciate a small patch of grass or earth and care for it. Being in touch with Mother Earth is a wonderful way to preserve your mental health.

  With awareness of the Earth’s generosity and support, and of our deep connection with her, we can generate a pleasant feeling. Knowing how to create moments of joy and happiness is crucial for our healing. It is important to be able to see the wonders of life around us, to recognize the conditions of happiness that already exist.

  NEUTRAL FEELINGS

  Neutral feelings are those which are neither pleasant nor unpleasant. With mindfulness, a so-called neutral feeling can become a pleasant or unpleasant feeling; it depends on our way of handling it. For example, when we have a toothache, we know that it would be wonderful not to have a toothache. Yet when we don’t have a toothache, we’re still not happy. A non-toothache is something very pleasant. But if we’re not aware of our non-toothache, we have a neutral feeling. When we practice mindfulness and become aware of our non-toothache, the neutral feeling becomes a positive feeling, a feeling of well-being.

  TURNING NEUTRAL FEELINGS INTO PLEASANT FEELINGS

  The term “neutral feeling” doesn’t seem quite accurate, because with full awareness, neutral feelings can become the kind of pleasant feelings that can be more sound and longer lasting than other kinds of pleasant feelings. Eating good food or hearing words of praise usually gives rise to a pleasant feeling; flying into a rage or having a toothache is an unpleasant feeling. These kinds of feelings usually push us around, and we become like clouds blown in the wind.

  Our feelings of peace and joy will be more stable and long-lasting if we know the source of our neutral feelings. The essence of happiness is a body that is not in pain and a heart and mind that are not oppressed by anxiety, fear, or hatred. Sitting in meditation, we can arrive at a stable feeling of joy, realizing the stillness of body and the clarity of mind. We are no longer pushed around by the highs and lows and we enjoy our feeling of well-being.

 

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