immanence

Readers of Shadowing the Anthropocene will know that Buddhist thought has influenced my own thinking in profound ways. To be more precise, Buddhist thought, feeling, and practice has influenced my own thought, feeling, and practice. But there are many forms of Buddhism; like all philosophical and religious systems, it is a long and complex historical tradition, whose “essence” is debated among its representatives, and some of whose forms may be less adequate for contemporary needs. The form I have found most fruitful is connected to the more life-affirming variations of Mahayana (including Varjayana) Buddhism, particularly in their East Asian (Chinese and Sino-derived) forms such as Chan and Zen. (I should add that the duality “life-affirming” and its opposite, “life-denying”, like any conceptual duality, is ultimately meant to be overcome through the liberating insight of Prajnaparamita.)

Of latter-day representatives of this tradition, Thich Nhat Hanh, known to his followers as Thay, was perhaps the best known and most celebrated and beloved. He passed away this week at the age of 95.

To be consistent with his own teaching, Thay’s passing should be considered not as a death, since there is no death that is not non-death. It was not a loss, and not a cause for sadness. Rather, it is an opportunity to recognize and realize reality as it is. It, like everything, is a wake-up call. “A bell,” Thay wrote (this can be kept in mind as you watch the video below), “is a bodhisattva. It helps us to wake up.” Anything, as Peter Levitt writes in the foreword to Thay’s final re-translation of the Heart Sutra, “can help us to awaken to the present moment and all that it contains” — which, as I described it in Shadowing the Anthropocene, is also the core practical goal of process-relational philosophy. 

Here is a ceremony performed by the monks and nuns of Deer Park Monastery in Thay’s honor. The Heart Sutra chant, beginning around 28-29 minutes in (the link should open to it), is quite beautiful:

Here is Thay’s revised translation of the Sutra, one of the shortest yet most beloved teachings of East Asian Buddhism. And an excerpt from his commentary on it, published in 2017 as The Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries:

Avalokiteśvara’s mantra is: Gate, gate, pāragate, pārasaṃgate, bodhi svāhā. Gate means gone: gone from suffering to the liberation from suffering. Gone from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality to nonduality. Gate, gate means gone, gone. Pāragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In Pārasaṃgate, saṃ means everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings. Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. You see, and the vision of reality liberates you. Svāhā is a cry of joy and triumph, like “Eureka!” or “Hallelujah!” “Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svāhā!

That is what the bodhisattva uttered. When we listen to this mantra, we should bring ourselves into that state of attention and concentration, so that we can receive the strength emanated by Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva. We don’t recite the Heart Sutra as though we’re singing a song; we don’t recite it with our intellect alone. If you practice the meditation on emptiness, if you penetrate the nature of interbeing with all your body, mind, and heart, you will realize a state that is quite concentrated. If you say the mantra then, with all your being, the mantra will have power and you will be able to have real communication, real communion with Avalokiteśvara, and you will be able to transform yourself in the direction of enlightenment. This text is not just for chanting mechanically, or to be put on an altar for worship. It is given to us as a tool to help us work for our liberation, for the liberation of all beings. It is like an agricultural implement, given to us so that we may farm. This is the gift Avalokiteśvara offers us to help us cultivate the garden of our mind.

And for a contemporary reference point, here is Akron/Family’s version of the same mantra:

As Basho wrote, “The temple bell stops, but the sound keeps coming out of the flowers.” May Thay’s gentle voice continue resounding in humanity’s spirit world, where it will continue to be needed for some time to come.