In 1968 the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, then a young Buddhist monk, visited the United States. Meeting with church groups, students, and others, he sought to promote peace and reconciliation. Throughout his tour, the gentle monk was well-received, but when he spoke one evening at a wealthy church in St. Louis, he found himself confronted by an angry detractor, who stood up to challenge him. “If you care so much about your people,” demanded the man, “why are you here? If you care so much for the people who are wounded, why don’t you spend your time with them?” Taken by surprise, Thich Nhat Hanh had no choice but to respond. But what could he say? What might be an appropriate response?
That question resounds throughout the Zen tradition. As the Zen priest Norman Fischer observes, Zen is less about “solitary visionary experience than the saving possibility of human relationship. . . . Enlightenment is the fruit not of isolation but of connection. Zen is the practice of compassionate and warmhearted relationship.”* And as the Chan master Yunmen Wenyan (862-949 CE) observed, eleven centuries earlier, Zen practice is chiefly concerned with cultivating an “appropriate response” to the circumstances of our lives. Unless we are hermits, those circumstances will include our fellow human beings, especially those in closest proximity. When conflict arises, how can Zen training help us to respond, compassionately and wisely? What are the components of an appropriate response?
To begin with, Zen teachings advise us to respond in ways appropriate to the occasion. When the American poet Elizabeth Bishop was asked a series of questions about the art of poetry, she replied that “it all depends. It all depends on the particular poem one happens to be trying to write.”** And from the vantage point of Zen teachings, the same holds true for the trying situations in our lives, whether the “other” be someone blasting rock music into our backyard, or a telemarketer interrupting our dinner, or a resident woodchuck eating the flowers in our garden. Our response may be brisk or deliberate, gentle or forceful, reasoned or instinctive. But whatever it is, it will honor the conditions peculiar to the immediate situation.
At the same time, that response will also be consistent with our deepest values. It will express our deepest, best intentions. In his essay “The Heart’s Intention,” the meditation teacher Phillip Moffitt explains the practice of “right intention,” in which we seek to align our actions with our values, specifically the value known as ahimsa, or non-harming:
Imagine that you will have a difficult interaction later today. If you are not mindful of your intention, you might respond to the situation with a harmful physical action—maybe because you got caught in your fear, panic, greed, or ill will. But with awareness of your intention, you would refrain from responding physically. Instead, you might only say something unskillful, causing much less harm. Or, if you have a habit of speaking harshly, with right intention you might only have a negative thought but find the ability to refrain from uttering words you would later regret. When you’re grounded in your intention, you are never helpless in how you react to any event in your life.***
As Moffitt acknowledges, the practice of aligning our actions with our values is not primarily rational. “Life is so confusing,” he notes, “and emotionally confounding that the rational mind is unable to provide an absolutely clear intention.” Instead we must rely on our “intuitive knowing,” our “felt wisdom,” which we cultivate through the practice of meditation. By learning to reconnect with our best intentions while practicing meditation, we develop the ability to do the same when responding to difficult, everyday situations.
If we are practicing Zen meditation in particular, we may also learn to view our reactions and responses in a broader, less personal perspective. When we practice zazen, or seated meditation, we settle into an awareness of interdependent reality. Although we are sitting as still as we can manage, we are aware of fluctuating conditions, within and around us. Those conditions may include bodily tensions and external sounds, the flow of our breath or the roar of an accelerating car. Grounded in that awareness and guided by that perspective, we can learn to view our rising thoughts, feelings, and reactions, however pleasing or troubling, habitual or fresh, as no more important than the other phenomena we are encountering. And as we carry that awareness into everyday life, we can learn to respond to difficult situations with egoless compassion rather than react out of fear and anger.
So it was with Thich Nhat Hanh, who responded to his challenger in a way that reflected his rigorous monastic training. Although he was inwardly upset and wanted to react with anger, he practiced conscious breathing until he found a better way. “If you want the tree to grow,” he said, “it won’t help to water the leaves. You have to water the roots. Many of the roots of the war are here, in your country. To help the people who are to be bombed, to try to protect them from this suffering, I have to come here.”**** By speaking those words, quietly and calmly, Thich Nhat Hanh pacified his adversary, and he transformed the tense atmosphere of the room. In the midst of potential harm, he offered an appropriate response.
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*Norman Fischer, Taking our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up (HarperCollins, 2003), 9-10.
**Elizabeth Bishop, “It All Depends,” Mid-Century American Poets, ed. John Ciardi (Twayne, 1950), 267.
***Phillip Moffitt, “The Heart’s Intention,” The Best Buddhist Writing 2004, ed. Melvin McLeod (Shambhala, 2004), 136-37.
****James Forest, “Nhat Hanh: Seeing with the Eyes of Compassion,” in Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness (Beacon, 1976), 103.
Photo of Thich Nhat Hanh (2006) by Duc (pixiduc), Paris, France.
One Time, One Meeting 
Excellent, Ben. You really should post more often. It’s funny, 30 years ago I would have welcomed someone blasting rock music into my backyard . . .
Ben, this reminds me so much of Zen Master Seung Sahn’s teaching. He emphasized the importance of enlightenment, but then he always added a “catch.” He would say, “You must perceive how enlightenment functions!”
This “function” was the hallmark of his teaching. He encouraged his students over and over to perceive “correct function” and he used kong-ans as ways of developing that perception.
Thank you.
David and Barry –
Thanks for your comments.
David, my posts are the online versions of the bi-weekly columns I write for our community newspaper, The Alfred Sun. The two-week interval is about right for me–and perhaps for my readers as well. But thanks for your suggestion.
Barry, I hope that in one of your future Ox Herding posts you will say more about Zen Master Seung Sahn’s use of “function.” I haven’t encountered the concept in my reading, and I’d like to learn more about it.