Cultivating the Mind of Love: The Practice of Looking Deeply in
the Mahayana Buddhist Tradition, by Thich Nhat Hanh
Reviewed by Janice D. Willis
Parabola
Vol.21 No.2
Summer 1996
pp.90-92
COPYRIGHT @ Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition
By Thich Nhat Hanh. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1996
THICH NHAT HANH, the respected Vietnamese Zen monk, poet, and peace
activist, has authored more than seventy books, many of which have
been translated into English. As a teacher and as an author, he is a
master of speaking with poetic clarity and childlike simplicity. In
Cultivating the Mind of Love, Nhat Hanh challenges us to "look
deeply" as he tells us about the first time he fell in love. As he
notes early on, "When the subject is interesting you don't need to
work hard to listen. Concentration is there without effort. and
understanding is born from concentration." This sensitive narrative
about Hanh's own "first love" is recounted throughout the book,
alternating between chapters that offer almost deceptively simple
exegeses of some of the most important Mahayana sutras: the
Ugradatta, Vimalakirti, Diamond, Avatamsaka, and Lotus sutras. At
the book's conclusion, however, one feels as if one has not only
come to glimpse those Buddhist texts with more understanding and
appreciation, but that Nhat Hanh's "first love" has, mysteriously,
become our own experience; for we are allowed to share and to
appreciate what is human and wonderful in us all. We are given the
path of practice in a single image when Hanh writes:
In Buddhist texts, consciousness is said to be a field., a plot of
land in which every kind of seed is planted--seeds of suffering,
happiness, joy, sorrow, fear., anger, and hope. The quality of our
life depends on which of these seeds we water. The practice of
mindfulness is to recognize each seed as it sprouts and to water the
most wholesome seeds whenever possible.
With Zen precision we are told,
If you look deeply, you will be able to see your true original face,
and your true first love. Your first love is still present, always
here, continuing to shape your life. This is a subject for
meditation . . .
and
My "first" love has always been there. She has no beginning. The
moment I understood that, she became transformed into something much
more powerful. That seed of deep-love is in every one of us.
Thich Nhat Hanh's narrative and meditation on love and compassion is
so skillfully presented that before one knows it, the gap between
master and student. between Asian and American, and between East and
West has seamlessly melted away. His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the
fourteenth Dalai Lama, is considered by all Tibetan Buddhists to be
the highest embodiment of the Buddha's Compassion. In this new work,
Violence and Compassion'
His Holiness and his animated interlocutor, French film writer
JeanClaude Carriere, engage in an intensely serious and dynamic
dialogue. Rather than focus on what is good or best in all of us.
Carriere asks the Dalai Lama to comment upon the many ills of the
modern age, pressing him on issues such as the seemming
preponderance of violence, on environmental dangers, the population
explosion, terrorism, women's, rights, and other global concerns.
The Dalai Lama's gift is to be able, in each case. to cut through to
the heart of the matter and to offer sound and even courageous
advice. A few excerpts will have to suffice to give the flavor of
this extraordinary conversation:
Carriere: We have never manufactured so many goods, and yet
destitution is at our gates. Never have we so widely flaunted our
bodies and our sexuality and never has death been so close to sex.
Never have we invented such prodigious techniques for making contact
with one another, and yet solitude has never had more bitter
accents. The list goes on.
His Holiness: All that is true. But nothing can be settled in a
hurry, as if by magic. You need time, there his to be slow progress
in people's minds . . . In the first part of this century the
inhabitants of the earth had no sense of responsibility toward their
planet. . . . But at least today we've gotten some awareness of this
danger . . .
Carriere: Isn't it too late?
His Holiness: I hope not. And in any case, it's better than nothing.
We always run a Teater risk of losing touch with the rest of the
universe. We must do everything to maintain those ties. . . .
Nothing exists separately. On the contrary, everything is connected
to everything else. . . . I believe deeply that we must find, all of
us together, a new spirituality.
Carriere: Which wouldn't be `religious'
His Holiness: Certainly not. This new concept ought to be elaborated
alongside the religions, in such a way that all people of good will
could adhere to it. . . . We need a new concept, a lay spirituality.
We ought to promote this concept, with the help of scientists. It
could lead us to set up what we are all looking for., a secular
morality. I believe in it deeply. And I think we need it so the
world can have a better future. . .
If these well-known Buddhist teachers of Asia are speaking to us so
simply, directly, and clearly about matters that concern us all,
what, one might venture to ask, is being done on the other side of
the East-to-West migration of Buddhist thought? That is, what are
Westerners interested in Buddhism contributing to this process? One
answer can be seen in Robert Thurman's latest work, Essential
Tibetan Buddhism. This book is one of several planned for release by
HarperCollins and aimed at presenting in single volumes the "core
texts of major religious traditions"; others are Essential Zen, The
Essential Tao, The Essential Confucius, The Essential Koran, The
Essential Kabbalah, The Essential Rumi, and The Essential Jesus.
In Essential Tibetan Buddhism, after providing a sweeping and richly
layered history of Tibetan Buddhism in his introduction, Thurman
gives us translations of some of the key texts of the great Tibetan
and Indian masters. Thirty separate texts, written in verse as well
as prose, are included here, many of them for the first time ever in
English. The teacher-authors chosen for inclusion form a broad and
wondrous array in their own right. Here one finds treatises by
ancient and modern-day sages--from the First Panchen Lama, Losang
Chokyi Gyaltsen, to the great Tse Chokling Yongdzin Yeshe Gvaltsen;
from the founder of Tibet's Geluk tradition, Je Rinpoche Tsong
Khapa, to a key proponent of the Nyingma lineage, Longchen Rabjampa;
and from the ancient Indian sages, Asanga, Shantideva and Atisha, to
His Holiness the (present) Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Of particular noteworthiness is Thurman's inclusion here of actual
meditation texts of both the Creation and Completion Stages of
tantric practice even though, as we are cautioned in the
introduction, he has "left out enough detail so that a person who
wanted to go beyond reading to actual meditation . . . would have to
seek a teacher, accomplish the prerequisites, and receive initiation
to do so." Indeed, texts addressing the Esoteric Communion
(Guhyasamaja) Tantra, "its creation state as arranged for practice
by Tiong Khapa and its perfection state as received from the Indian
Adepts Shakvamitra and Nagarjuna . . . are usually not for
presentation to an uninitiated audience." Thus, this anthology
covers the broad expanse of Tibetan interpretation of and
contributions to the Buddhist path, from key devotional and
liturgical texts and laudatory songs to central philosophical
formulations of the Dharma and back again to the sublime esoteric
practices of the Buddhist Tantras.
Occasionally, one may disagree with certain of Thurman's
translations. I, for example, find the translation of mahayana as
"Messianic Buddhism," of mahasattva as "messiah," of siddha as
"psychonaut" and words such as "dakiniangels" to be overly-reaching
for common ground; and the use of "buddhaverse" to mean 'a universe
as seen . . . by enlightened beings" to be more misleading than
helpful. Moreover, to include "notes' at the book's conclusion
without numbering them seems unwarranted, even in a work intended
for "popular" audiences. Lastly, this particular collection of core
texts might well have been entitled "Essential Geluk Tibetan
Buddhism," for among its thirty texts, two-thirds are by authors of
the Geluk tradition. While I personally find this a welcome addition
to the growing collection of core texts in translation, those
scholars and students of other Tibetan traditions may wish to have
seen other texts included. Still, it seems to me that the impressive
array of texts that Thurman has assembled, translated, and presented
here should give cause for all of us interested in the teachings of
Tibetan Buddhism to celebrate.
Janice Willis is Professor of Religion and Walter A. Crowell
Professor of the Social Sciences at Wesleyan University in
Middletown, Conn. She is the author of Enlightened Beings: Life
Stories from the Ganden Oral Tradition (Wisdom Publications, 1995)
and editor of, and contributor to, Feminine Ground: Essays on Women
and Tibet (Snow Lion, Reprint, 1995).