Quotes from Darrell J. Fasching

Every act, says Thich Nhat Hanh, should be a ritual of mindfulness awakening us to our true identity of interbeing. "True mind is our real self, is the Buddha: the pure one-ness which cannot be cut up by the illusory divisions of separate selves, created by concepts and language" (Naht Hanh, 1975, p. 42).

at mid-life the process Jung called "individuation" begins in earnest. It is the process of making those choices that will express one's own unique answer to the problem of death. "If I must die someday, and I cannot do everything, then I must choose what I will do, what matters most, who I will be in the time allotted to me." Figure

when, for example, he met Martin Luther King, Jr., he was startled to discover a very different kind of Christianity. "I knew," he says, "I was in the presence of a holy person. Not just his good work but his very being was a source of great inspiration for me. And others, less well known, have made me feel that Lord Jesus is still here with us" (Nhat Hanh, 1995, pp. 5, 6). Through

Buddhism is made only of non-Buddhist elements, including Christian ones, and Christianity is made of non-Christian elements, including Buddhist ones" (Nhat Hanh, 1995, p. 11).

as a Buddhist he insists that sharing one's tradition with another "does not mean wanting others to abandon their own spiritual roots and embrace your faith. . . .We must help them return to their tradition," whether it be Christian, Jewish, etc. (Nhat Hanh, 1995, p. 196). Thich

Thich Nhat Hanh says that he was inspired to write the poem in 1976 when he first heard about the rape and suicide of the twelve-year-old girl spoken of in the poem. "I learned," he says, "after meditating for several hours that I could not just take sides against the pirate. I saw that if I had been born in his village and brought up under the same conditions, I would be exactly like him. Taking sides is too easy" (Nhat Hanh, 1993, p. 107).