Sense of Soul - Inspiring Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Today on Sense of Soul podcast we have Mary Hillebrand, she has studied and practiced in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh since 2001, participating in sanghas in Washington, DC, and Madison, Wisconsin. Formerly a magazine editor and writer, Mary is now a teacher and enjoys teaching mindfulness to her high school and adult students and sharing her practice with other educators.  In this episode Mary tell us about her book, Tears Become Rain, Stories of Transformation and Healing Inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh. In Tears Become Rain, Mary along with Jeanine Cogan share a collection of 32 mindfulness practitioners around the world reflect on encountering the extraordinary teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away in January 2002. The stories encapsulate the benefits of mindfulness practice through the experiences of ordinary people from 16 countries around the world. Some of the contributors were direct students of Thich Nhat Hanh for decades and are meditation teachers in their own right, while others are relatively new on the path. https://www.parallax.org/product/tears-become-rain/ @tears-become-rain  

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, I have with me Mary Hillebrand. She is a co-author of the book, Tears Become Rain, stories of transformation and healing, inspired by one of my favorite people,

Thich Nhat Hanh. In her book, 32 mindfulness practitioners around the world reflect on encountering the extraordinary teachings of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thai as they call him, who passed away in January 2022. These stories explore themes of coming home to ourselves, healing from grief and loss, facing fear, and building community and belonging. Thich Nhat Hanh, to me, is one of the most beautiful souls to have ever walked this earth. And so it is my honor to have this conversation with one of his students. So please welcome Mary. Excited to talk to you. And I appreciate you spending some time with me to talk about Thich Nhat Hanh.

Our stories actually are very similar. I grew up Catholic and I was diagnosed with ADHD and I was going to therapy and someone suggested mindfulness. I didn't even know what it was. So the internet was just coming about. There wasn't a lot of information, but I started to try to incorporate that into my daily life. I was a busy mom of four and found Thich Nhat Hanh, his videos, and I would send them to everyone I knew. He was really my first teacher. And being Catholic though, I was hearing all this stuff in my in my head all of these old conditioned you know ways of being and I bought the book Living Buddha Living Christ that's the first one I read I know I was like wow yeah but I I would love to know more about your journey and how you got here and how you found Thich Nhat Hanh, who I believe was the most important person alive in my lifetime.

And I feel very honored to have been on the planet when his soul was there physically. Yeah. So like you said, real similar journeys. I first learned about mindfulness back in 2001. And apart from, you know, family and really positively influential friends, I would say Thich Nhat Hanh is the most important person who has existed while I've been here too. And I think the big reason for me is, is that he has been able to put into such simple words and such relatable stories, a practice that is simple, but not easy. I mean, if you look at the Buddhist teachings, you know, there are endless lists. There are 14 this and eight that, and for this, you know, there are lots and lots of numbered

lists, but it all really boils down to some core concepts that you don't have to be that scholar and try to, you know, memorize the lists or practice the certain lists or whatever. You can follow the core concepts. And Thich Nhat Hanh kind of took that complexity and makes it something that we can not only relate to, but that we can apply. I think the applied Buddhism part of it was really appealing to me too. And I think that does come from my Catholic roots. I have a fairly lengthy list of things that don't work for me in Catholicism, and that made it a pretty decisive move when I decided that that would not be the way that I practice. But I also, and partly thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, I can look back and appreciate and

recognize the things that I did get from Catholicism. And one of them was being engaged in the world and trying to help other people, not keeping my spiritual practice, something that I just do on a comfy cushion in a space in my house, but living the practice. Yeah. Another part in that book that really always stuck with me was how he said he felt it would be a travesty for one to lose their religion. And that was never his intention. That book really helped me not be so angry in many ways, because I feel like there was a lot of anger and a lot of grief I was going through as I became more mindful. Does that make any sense?

Absolutely, because we can't get to compassion until we uncover those things that are making us heat up. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you said that. And there really was a grieving process for me through that. And still sometimes, just like grief does, it creeps back up sometimes as I become just more open to all things and all places and people and beliefs. And I'm a seeker, you know, and I really became a seeker at the beginning of my journey because I had only been told one thing. And when I started to open up, it was like, you know, that lettuce flower opening. And I just wanted to know, right? There is just this

hunger. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, bridging our religious traditions and the practice that we choose to put our most effort into, that was something that I guess maybe it was Catholicism. Maybe there, I think there are other religious traditions too, who teach that you need to join one and stick with it and that's your one. And so that was where my barrier was initially. When I first learned about Buddhism, it connected so directly with my heart that I knew that that was where I needed to be going for myself. And I think with Tai's book, we often call Thich Nhat Hanh Tai. It's a lot shorter. It just means beloved teacher.

With Tai's book, what I realized was I don't have to join Buddhism. I need to just choose how I want to live. And I'm not necessarily letting go of, you know, the good things that I learned growing up. In fact, you know, I'm honoring them by finding the most authentic way that I can use those teachings in my adult life. That's what I'm realizing. And this is, you know, still, like you said, you know, I think we're similar in that way. It's still a journey. It's still a process for me, which especially became kind of front and center for me in this last year, once our book was finished and then became public. That was when I finally started having heartfelt conversations with my mom about Buddhism.

And mom is very Catholic. And I think there was part of me that was just afraid to hurt feelings, recognizing that one version of Catholic teachings is that, you know, you pick one and you join it and that is the one and that's what you follow and you listen to. And so by that definition, that means the other ones are intruders or I don't know, you know, how you would put that necessarily, but I was worried that I would really offend my mom, but my mom raised me too. You know, my mom and dad raised me. I am a product of them and I love who I am. And so I'm truly grateful for what my mom and dad

both gave me. And part of that was a real deep sense of spirituality and a deep sense of caring about other people in the world besides myself and a genuine curiosity, right? So, you know, me finding a different way to express and practice my spirituality is rather than being like, you know, me choosing to branch off, it's me celebrating what they gave me and using it to the best of my ability. It's taken a long time, and I really only just realized that recently. And it's because my mom has been courageous and asking me deep questions and being ready and open and okay with hearing my honest answers. It's brought us so much closer together and that's a byproduct I did not expect. You know what? I'd have to say that's similar in my situation with my mom. Because I've been studying the Gnostic Gospels with talking to her about that of course

you know how they say don't thump the baby with the bath water which is like should be like the meme of the decade for sure and I think this is just part of my journey just finding peace with that and making that connection finding that bridge and being okay with it. Sharing stories and sharing experiences like we are right now, it makes you feel a little less alone in the world. And that's what Ty did for many. Oftentimes, the video that I would send to somebody was just the wisdom that he shared with a child. And as simple as it may have seemed, it was like the deepest wisdom that would come through. And how he did that, I don't know, is something I wish and I even admire to do in my life. Yeah, I think one of the things that both awes me and inspires me about Ty's way is how dedicated, how consistent he was with his practice. But not only his practice, but also his deep looking and listening and studying

I feel like that's probably one of the reasons he's so effective is because he really I mean this this kind of sounds like obvious but he really lived what he said, right? So when he said, slow down, stop, look, breathe, it's because he does that, right? And it's only when I do that, that I actually see things. When I'm racing all the time, I'm not getting what's in front of me. And if I don't get what's in front of me, it's very hard to connect with people. Back to your point about stories and sharing these stories, I think often what I observe in our society, and certainly it's been true in my own life from time to time, is there's so much rushing to get the checklist done or to respond to

whatever is coming at us faster and faster that we don't stop and just tell stories to each other, whether it's about our day. Recently, when my mom was visiting with me and my family, and something reminded my mom of something from her childhood, and she started sharing about that. And boy, you should have seen my two teenagers. They were riveted. We all were just like, this is great. I want to make more space for that, you know, and that's kind of what Ty teaches is like, slow down, make space for the things that are important to reveal themselves, rather than us seeking all the time. Exactly, or having to fill in space with just words. He was so good at that. And I have, bad at that. I was feeling we have to fill in stuff.

And he would just pause and what would come out of his mouth, even though it was so simple, like you said, is really hard for our monkey minds to do in this crazy, I got to do more, got to be more world. Yeah, one of the things that really kept coming through in our book, when we asked people to share stories about their encounters with Ty, the stories that were selected and the stories that weren't selected, what kept coming through over and over again was people trying to describe his presence. And you said at the beginning that you would look at videos, and so you can get a better sense from a video than an audio, for example, or from being with someone in person.

That's why we try to go be with people in person rather than just be on the phone all the time. His presence just exuded that, what you're talking about, you know, to just move slowly and be okay with quiet and be fully present, fully open to what's right in front of him. He was just masterful at that. And it was not an act. It was him all the time. If you ask the monastics who lived with him and traveled with him, he could be that way in a busy airport. And he could be that way sitting in a forest. It didn't matter. And the times that I was fortunate enough to be with him on retreat, I could see it. And you can also, in those moments, or now, it doesn't have to just be on like a Thich Nhat Hanh, you know, Plum of the way that he carried himself because he lived it. And he showed us that we can. Every day I don't, and sometimes I do. And so he's the reminder that

we can. Oh my gosh. I have interviewed a few people too who are coming to mind who had been in his presence. One of them was Neil Donald Walsh, who he told me a story that he had been with Thich Nhat Hanh a few times in doing talks. You know, Shanna, I have come to a place where I admire beyond description those souls among us who have achieved not only an awareness and understanding, a consciousness, if you please, of who they are, but who have actually stepped into the living of it on a day-to-day basis. I knew such a man in my life. His name was Thich Nhat Hanh. He has since celebrated his continuation day. But I met Thich Nhat Hanh a number of times

when we spoke at the same conference together. He was one of the speakers. I was one of the speakers. So we got to become acquainted. But I knew as soon as he walked into the room, oh my gosh, something extraordinary has just happened. Just with his entry into the room, because of the energy that he brought with him. And I made a declaration that maybe, maybe I could one day get close to bringing that kind of energy into the room. When I move into such a space, you know, there's a wonderful statement in a book called A Course in Miracles. And the statement is, you have come to the room to heal the room.

You have come to this space to heal this space. There's no other reason for you to be here. Thich Nhat Hanh lived that message. And so he's one of two or three people, not 12 or 15 or 20, but one of two or three that I have met in my life that have actually exemplified their true identity as singularizations of the singularity. He said he had to follow Thich Nhat Hanh. He's like, can you imagine having to follow Thich Nhat Hanh? That is tough. Everybody's going to notice the difference, no matter who you are. Right. His energy was just amazing. It was felt. When he was telling me this, I was imagining

like this aura, and which that aura touched me across the world. And so you say that ripple effect, I've said this many times that, you know, to be even just on this earth with him was an honor. I wish I would have, you know, had the pleasure of meeting him or, you know, at least being in Plum Village, which I love, like the bell, right? And I have even suggested that to some of my students to put this in their phone, just to remind yourself to breathe and just to be. Yeah, we have to remember to remind ourselves even, right? So it's nice to have devices like the bell that'll just automatically go off for us. Another really neat teaching that I remember from way back when I first started studying was that we also have bells of mindfulness

all around us in different forms. And he talked about, for example, stoplight meditation. I don't do it as often as I can. I'm not 100% stoplight meditator. But when it does occur to me, and I sit there and I just breathe for the red light, it changes everything. Even if I've got people in the car, you know, and we're in mid conversation or something, if I just stop and I just focus on that stoplight, generally, what it reminds me is, okay, now be that attentive to your guest, you know, your neighbor in the car with you just brings us back to the present moment. And everybody, depending on what they're doing in their lives, what their most common job or activity is, everybody can identify bells of mindfulness that don't have to be bells necessarily. Right. But that thing that happens a lot in your own job, let that be a reminder to come back to the present moment,

you know, find your breath and reset. I remember when I first started doing mindfulness, I couldn't even brush my teeth without thinking about, where's this water going? Or my family and I started to do mindful eating. My little girl, I think she was around like five or six, she's never been able to really eat meat that much since. Because when she realized that a chicken nugget was actually a chicken, she was like, you know, yeah. Yeah. It's pretty intense.

And she's like, wait a minute, this is an actual animal I'm eating? Yeah. And then she had a hard time eating meat for a very long time. She still doesn't really care for it. Yeah. And in our family, we're all vegetarian. Our kids have been vegetarian since birth. And yeah, occasionally when we talk about which animal there is, like, they don't even necessarily know the names of the meats, you know, they're like, again, you know, or whatever, because it's just not. But know, they're like, again, you know, whatever, because it's just not but yeah, they're like, God, it's so weird to eat a pig. Or like, because we're just we're a bunch of animal lovers. But it's neat, because back to what you were saying, you know, when you first started learning about mindfulness, then you're like noticing everything about brushing your teeth

and things like that. I've often heard it said among people who are practicing mindfulness that like, once you wake up, it's really hard to, to not be awake. Once you start learning, you know, these ideas. Yeah. Like it's really hard. I mean, you have to try hard to, to like check out and say to heck with all this, you know, I don't care again, you know't care again. And I'm really, really grateful for that because it took me some years in my 20s of being that other person that I gradually was growing to not like very much. And I'm pretty sure other people arrived at that before me disliking me. I managed to be kind of a jerk in my 20s at times. And it was because I was just rolling along, not really caring, not really awake. I really like the way that Ty uses that language that when we slow down and we

stop and we look, we wake up. Because it's not judgmental and it's not condemning or accusing the person. Myself, for example, my 20-year-old self, it's not saying how that person, you know, myself, for example, my 20 year old self, it's not saying how that person, you know, it's more that person was asleep. Yeah. And, you know, now I have the gift of my breath, I realized that I have the gift of my breath and the gift of 24 brand new hours each day when I wake up, maybe I'll get all 24, maybe I won't. But what am I going to do right now? And that was one of the things that most appealed to me compared to my religious upbringing was that a lot of the messaging when I was growing up, you know, my interpretation of it, and that's all that really mattered was, it was fairly focused on what's to come, you know, trying to get to heaven, trying to not go to hell,

you know, trying to be on Jesus's right side or whatever. And that's the reason to do good now. And, you know, that just, it didn't really sit that well with me, this thing that's dangled so far out in the future. Whereas the way I see things now, I know that I only have this moment. As we go through life, if we're lucky enough to live as long as I have, we've experienced really painful, tough stuff that remind us that we don't have time necessarily, you know, that we don't have the people around us forever. And so I know that I have this moment. I don't care if there's a heaven or a hell. And I don't mean that in an offensive way to anyone. It's just similarly, I don't care whether Jesus is the son of a God or not. What I got from Jesus

was some tremendously powerful teachings and examples of how to live in a kind way in the moment that we're in. That's all that matters to me. If when I die there's not a heaven or is a heaven, that should not for me or it does not for me determine how I'm going to act right now. What that is about is there's a line in the, I believe it's the refuge chant, which is something like, I vow to bring joy to one person in the morning and relieve the suffering of one person in the afternoon. That line by itself could be all I need. Because from that is, okay, how can I do that? I have to slow down.

I have to take care of myself. I have to stop and look and listen and be strong enough to be able to do that? I have to slow down. I have to take care of myself. I have to stop and look and listen and be strong enough to be able to do that, right? And I have to slash get to celebrate the beauty in the world and the joy in the world so that I can share that with other people too. That's amazing and wonderful. Recognizing what's going on in the world and the suffering in the world is the only way I'm going to be able to help other people and help myself work through it. But that here and now, you said that so beautifully. And there's also, which you and I both know, that seeking outside of yourself. The journey within coming home to yourself is really what I think I learned most from Thay was that I could just close my eyes and be home, no matter where I was.

If mind and body are not together, you are not in the present moment, in the here and the now.คุณไม่อยู่ในสมัครในตอนนี้และตอนนี้และชีวิต ชีวิตจริง มีความสามารถอยู่แค่ในสมัคร เพราะว่าทางกลายไม่มีทางแล้ว และความสามารถไม่มีทางแล้ว ชีวิต และทุกสัญลักษณะชีวิต ได้เจอแค่ในสมัคร เพราะฉะนั้น ความสามารถในสำนัก in the present moment. So one mindful in-breath may be enough

to pull you out of the prison of the past, to bring your mind back to your body so that you can come home to the here and the now. That non-attachment part. Oh, that's the hard part. Yeah, impermanence was really hard, but once I got it was the most freedom i had ever experienced yeah i'm so glad you used the word freedom attachment is really hard right

because we're conditioned whether it's our spiritual tradition or just the society we live in at least the society i've grown up in conditions conditions us to really strive, right? I'm an American, and there's this idea of like, Americans are always striving and trying to be better and stay better than everyone else. And all these, you know, messages that we get that sort of create this sort of separation between us and any other group that we want to pick at the moment. But it's like you said, it's that attachment to accomplishing these things or having things or even holding on to our people, right, our families and stuff like that, that for me, it does limit us because we can get so caught up in how badly we want it that we don't see that

it's right in front of us at that moment right this idea of like I've got to use this time with my family really well and make a whole bunch of memories for later and that can cause so much stress right I've made it so important that, boy, now my memories are going to be how stressed out I was at that time. It's tricky because I think that that wanting comes from, you know, a positive place, you know, which is like, I recognize how beautiful this moment is, you know, having the family or being out in the woods or whatever it is like I recognize how beautiful it is why wouldn't I want to hold on to that right but it's in the grasping and the clutching that we lose it and it's so simple and so hard but right now when I think about times recently when I've been so happy,

you know, I use the two examples of family and nature because those tend to be sort of my refuges in different ways besides my own, you know, just my own practice. But when I think about the times when I've been so happy, it's because I've been able to let go of caring how it comes out. How do we get there? You know, that's, that's the question that I often hear from people is, or it'll come forth more as a statement of, you know, if we strip it down to the basics, people will say, I can't meditate, there's too much. You know, I can't, I can't make my brain

stop. There's too much in there. I can't meditate. I can't sit still. There's like a brief kind of sadness for me that they're feeling that it's not for them, that they can't access it. But I do have, you know, responses to that, which is for one thing, you don't need to clear your mind. I'm not sure it's possible to clear our minds, you know, like that's not how the mind works. And so, you know, holding us to this impossible standard when we meditate is going to make us all feel like failures and never want to sit down again. Right. You know, everyone can take little moments and just stop and notice their breath and

then notice what's around them. And even in this world's most boring room that I'm sitting in right now, there's something beautiful, right? It's up to me. It's up to me to decide. Right. You have to surrender all of your expectations. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, the other day we were in a group, a friend of mine had said, who I know I've sent her TikTok con stuff years ago. But she said, I had a hard time shutting off my mind. But you know, for myself, it was what came through during those times that was important to listen to. I remember in those first mindfulness classes, when I was criticizing myself, the entire class, saying, oh, you can't even breathe, right? You should not be here. You could be doing the dishes at home or something for the kids. I thought it was a failure at first until I awakened and realized, wow, I was talking so badly to myself.

It was the first time I heard that. It was the first time I heard this ego talking total crap. And none of it was true. Also, listening to what I was saying, not just in the quality of how I was saying it, but what I was saying was important because it was like, you don't matter. You should be doing all of these things for everyone else. It was important that those things came through in my mind because it was the first time I witnessed that. And so I always say, don't even try to reject that. Like, listen, it's important. Everything is so important in the moment. Yeah, we all experience the mind activity in a lot of different ways, depending on what's going on in our lives. So if there's a moment where I sit, and there's all these different thoughts coming through, and they're going all different places, not only not trying to clear them out and clear blue sky or whatever, but recognizing that, okay, what does that mean, right? That there's this much going on in my brain right now.

When I notice it, I don't have to solve it. I don't have to sort it out. I have a chance to just breathe, right? Go to my breath. The breath like this this interrupter and then my mind's gonna go whirring all along again when I was doing sitting meditation on Sunday evening I was like that was something you know at the end of the 25 minutes it's just like I didn't know where half of it came from I couldn't believe the sheer volume of stuff that went through my brain I didn't know where half of it came from. I couldn't believe the sheer volume of stuff that went through my brain. I didn't count how many times I brought myself back to my breath, you know, but I knew I did. And yeah, 20 years ago, I would have been like, wow, you suck at this. Right. Like, yeah, you know, I would and then I would have been like making plans. I would have

been like, okay, so you need to make sure you're sitting every day. You know, you got to get better. You're not doing it right. Yeah. But, you know, on Sunday, I was just like, wow, that means I got some stuff. You know, I got a lot going on. Maybe it's a message to me that I need to, you know, get out and walk or I need more sleep or, you know, I need to remove, you know, one thing from my pile. But there's still a message. Yeah.

It's still important. Thank you for saying that because I think a lot of people think like I did that first time. Like this was a total failure. I can't do it. But even after many years. Yeah, there's going to be a lot that goes through our minds a lot of times because we're lucky. We have complex brains that experience a lot and can process a lot of times because we're lucky. We have complex brains that experience a lot and can process a lot. And so sure, it shows up when we stop and take a look. I think one of

the things that does come through over time with practice is we've become more skillful at recognizing when we should, or when it would be, not a big fan of the word should, but when it would be beneficial for us to pursue one of those things while we're meditating, right? Something like you said, you know, you noticed that you were real heavy critic of yourself, you know, many, many messages of criticism to you. Sometimes if we feel really grounded, we feel safe on that cushion. We can take a look at that and go deeper right there while we're meditating. Sometimes people call it like peeling back the layers of the onion, right? Like when you peel an onion, it's going to make you cry often, you know, becoming skillful at

recognizing when it's a good idea to do that, it may benefit you. And when it's a good idea to let that go and see what comes next and trust that you're going to know when is the time to go deeper into it. I can say that one of my deepest gratitudes to Thich Nhat Hanh and this practice is that I've had some really, really important and valuable discoveries when I've been meditating. I don't sit on a cushion. I kneel. I use like a kneeling bench. It's better for my knees. But like, so when I've been on my bench, there have been some moments over the years that I can think back to right now. Like I can think of things like, you know, changing jobs and relationships, all kinds of things. It's because I've had this opportunity

and this training and, and willingness to persist in sitting and looking and waiting to see what shows up. So much gratitude for that. Yes. It's just this space that we're not used to being in. And in that space, there's so many things that can happen. There's another thing that I found kind of similar in my journey. And actually, I just went to a funeral last week. And it was a funeral for one of my best friend's fathers. Her and I were friends since we were like 12, but she died a decade ago. And she was such a big part of my life. At least she didn't get to see Sense of Soul developer happen after that. But I know the beginning of your book, you and your co-author, editor, Janine.

Yes, you both had a friend who had passed that was also a big part of your journey and even this book. Susan Johnson Hadler is in some ways throughout the book, it feels like. And so she and I basically started practicing in Thai's tradition within about two weeks of each other in Washington at the Washington Mindfulness Community. And there was just something special about that connection for her and for me. You know, there are some kind of phases that we go through that, you know, we're just kind of wide-eyed, amazed at some of the, you know, the stuff that comes up and the things that we're discovering, you know, the amazing way that the people around us were behaving and things like that. We just we were continuously connecting over that.

And it was like, you know, like we talked about before, experiencing the power of Thai without Thai being right next to us. Right. And. She was all in for the sangha. So the word sangha just means community of, you know, spiritual practice, you know, with the Washington mindfulness community. And also in the DC area, there are several other Plum Village tradition sanghas. And so, you know, some of us kind of visited other ones too. And you always knew that Susan was showing up for everybody, even as she was working through a lot of deep stuff herself. You could see it in the way that she listened. She was such a kind of a mirror of like my best self, so to speak.

I could see the way she would listen so intently and model admitting when we don't know. That was great for me because when I came to this practice, I was kind of in transition from thinking I knew everything to realizing the reality of it all. And yeah, I feel like she's part of this book because as Janine and I worked on it, this is a side thing for us. We both have jobs and families and things that we do with our lives, but we'd work on it together on the weekends. And a lot of times in our conversations, we would maybe remember something Susan said or did, you know, retell those stories, right? Keep those stories alive and stuff like that.

And going through losing her at the time that we did, it just happened to coincide with the launch of the whole project. It just felt like even though her physical presence for me during that summer was laying in a bed in a coma most of the time, she did come out of the coma for a while before she died, but her presence was very different from what I was used to. But it presented such a powerful opportunity for me to just deepen my practice for her, for me, for the Sangha back in Washington, because we were both here in Madison. So I felt like I was practicing for them. I felt like I was kind of a connection between Susan and the folks back in DC in some ways. And so as we started talking about this book, it was just like, yeah, this is what I need to do next. I feel like if Susan hadn't been sick,

probably would have been her and Janine doing the book. I mean, that would have ultimately been up to Janine. But Janine and I both, you know, were kind of of like mind that this was right up Susan's alley, too. You know, like the three of us had that same kind of thinking about how we would want to continue sharing Ty's wisdom and stuff like that with the world. There's so many things that make us one, but grief is one of those. It's something that we all can relate to each other. And I think there's many of these stories also in your book. Also, the love for Thich Nhat Hanh as he passed. I mean, I'll tell

you what, I definitely mourned for days along with everyone else around the world that could feel it, that everyone's love was going into the same space, this energetic space together. And grief is one thing that we can all relate to. It brings us together. A lot of time in my early life, you know, and Janine writes about this too, like, you know, we tend to try to steer away from things that will cause us grief, right? You know, we run away from it. We're not even sure how to think about it, right? Think about the prospect. I used to really shiver and want to just shrug off any possibility of thinking about, for example, losing my partner or something like that, right? Don't want to deal with it. Don't want to think about grief. And then, yeah, you experience something like Thich Nhat Hanh passing on and you see the joy of all these people who are connected

in the world. You see them just flowing all over the place. And that's beautiful. And that, like you said, that's unique to our need to process grief in community, right? So these transitions that we make in our lives into body, out of body, those are gifts that we're giving other people too. Gifts of bringing people together to celebrate what we were able to accomplish when we had these bodies for however long we had them. When my dad died suddenly two years ago, that was pretty much mostly how I felt. Sure, it hit me hard, but I just thought, man, he was so done with that body. Well, we have that in common as well, because I thought the same when my dad passed. Yeah. Yeah. And so it wasn't that hard to directly to look what he did with it while he was here.

You know, look what joy he brought to us and to so many other people in life. Grief is not a horrible thing. It's a process again of like allowing ourselves to be awake to what we had in one form and now we have in a different form. There's a poem that Ty wrote called Call Me By My True Names. And in it, he talks about how birth and death are just doors that we're passing through, right? So in that sense, nothing is final. There's no coming and no going. There's what is right now and all things change. And that has brought me a whole lot of peace. Please call me by my true name so I can hear all my cries and louder at once so I can see that my joy and my pain are one. Please call me by my two

names so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion. Going back to what you and I were talking about before with being attached, one of the hardest things about that grieving process is that we were very attached to the form that we had the person in, or the thing, whatever it is that we've lost. Sometimes we lose things that are not people. We were attached to what we thought was going to go on and on. And so recognizing impermanence brings us back to the present moment. If I remember that nothing

lasts, then boy, right here, right now, I am so glad to see your face on this screen. You are everything right now to me, because this is where I am and this is who I'm with. And how joyful is that? You know, that was one of the really cool things about Ty's teachings and the way that he did it and the way that he lived his life and the way he encouraged the people around him at Plum Village and wherever he went was, be silly, be happy, be joyful, play soccer in brown robes, who cares? Life is hard and there's a lot of tough stuff we have to work on, but we always have the power to find the joy and the beauty wherever it is. And one of the things Janine and I were real conscious of when we were working on the book was once we picked out the stories that belonged in it, one of the things we realized early on was, wow, there's a lot of really heavy stuff that people are going through. You know,

we don't want this to be a book of downers, but it wasn't about, oh, we need to bring some more light stories in. What we need to do is make sure that the voices of the contributors are coming through. The reason why they shared these stories was not, you know, to show everybody how hard life is. They responded to our request for stories of like, how do we get through or how do we deal with and hold the things that are hard in a way where we don't lose that lightness, you know, and, you know, don't lose our capacity for joy. And, you know, thank goodness, it's a bunch of people who get it, you know, these people who we got to put in the book, you know, they got it. And they, you know, they were willing to share some really hard stuff. But at the end, being, you know, the end of each story, being able to say,

this is the beauty of it. You know, if you didn't catch it in my story, here's what it is, right? Got to read it all the way through. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I share the book with other people, you know, when I give it to people who are unsuspecting souls, I'm like, I think you'll really like this book, and I'll hand it to them. I often say, this doesn't have, you know, solutions to what you're going through. Like, I can think of a friend who I

recently gave a copy to. She was dealing with a dissolution of a relationship. This isn't a book of answers for coping with relationship or whatever, but it shows us that we're all together in this and that we all can keep accessing the beauty of that community and also the beauty of just the simple things around us. So you might just enjoy reading these stories now and then just to see that we're not alone. I wanted to read something that Ty wrote that you have in your introduction that I love. It's from Oneness by Technicon. It says, if you want to cry, please cry and know that I will cry with you. The tears you shed will heal us both. Your tears are mine. The earth I tread this morning transcends history. Spring and winter are both present in the moment. The young leaf and the dead leaf are really one. I have goosebumps again. When I read that, I marked it because I thought it was so beautiful for now and also for always

in this present moment and also collectively throughout seasons, all one. and that's just really what came to me um not just for me not just for you but for all and we are all one there's just so much in that and he had such a great way of doing that i found that even after reading the bible awakened that there was so much wisdom. Or in the Gnostic Gospels, there's a lot of allegorical stories. And I think that any story can then be an allegorical story. And so that reminds me of what you told your friend, even though this isn't a book about relationships that's going to give you the answers, but the wisdom told through people's heartfelt, authentic vulnerability is probably the root of all Zen stories. so lucky that there are so many people around the world who and and from lots of different directions lots of different practices are trying to keep that either put that or keep that in front of us right that we are all connected and that we can all therefore learn from each other, you know, grow together. Yeah.

Yeah. I loved your book, Tears Become Rain. I'm so glad you read it. Oh, yeah. There's 32 or 30, so. Yeah, 32 stories. Stories in the Bible. 16 different countries.

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, it was it was such a cool experience, just kind of discovering what people out there thought would be helpful, you know, to share with the world and also just watching them courageously step farther than they thought they were going to have to, you know, what they sent to us, in a lot of cases was not ultimately what wound up in the book, you know, there were times where we would ask them to go, go deeper, you know, and I just, I'm in such awe of their willingness to go back and scratch at wounds that they had worked so hard to be okay with. You know, it's a real gift that these people contributed, you know, Janine and I put it together, but it was so much of a practice in itself. You know, it took us about three years to get it to the point where we could hand it to the publisher. It just deepened our practice so much and our relationship as friends so much that, you know, when people say thank you for this book, I feel like, you know, no, you don't have to thank me because I got so much out of it. You know, I'm glad it's going out into

the world and we're not taking a profit from it. All the profits go to the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation. But that only makes sense to me. I mean, it's 30, 34 different people put into this, you know, that's what we wanted was just to put it into the river and let it flow out to the oceans. That's beautiful. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate this book. I appreciate what you did, you and Janine and Susan. yeah and i feel like his teachings will live on you know through your book and through the many stories you know that he told that if you haven't listeners if you haven't listened to them you need to and they're not some of them are just you know 10 minutes. Most profound thing you might ever listen to in your life or also in your book, Tears Become Rain.

Same. Yeah. Thank you. And thanks for not only making this space to let people know about the book, but I'm just, I'm so excited personally to have met you today. Like, how cool is this? This is such an excellent hour that I just spent of my life. I really, really enjoy these kinds of connections. I mean, the work that you're doing, and specifically this, you know, conversation today that you created that you made happen, is what feeds me and fuels me to keep going and wanting to do more of this, you know, talk more about mindfulness and how I can help somebody somewhere. Maybe really I'm so grateful for what you did today. Thank you.

Thank you. And I felt the exact same. It is these conversations that light me up and give me so much energy to keep going and know that I'm doing my part, you know, to awaken those who were like me a little over a decade ago. So yeah, yeah, exactly. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure meeting you and tell everybody where they can find you and find Tears Become Rain. Sure.

Yeah. So Tears Become Rain is available at every bookstore, certainly the big booksellers as well, but it's published by Parallax Press and distributed by Penguin Random House. So even your favorite local store can get their hands on it really easily. We're also on Instagram, Tears Become Rain, with like a little underline in between each of the words. Love the title. Yeah mean, yeah, yeah, it really seems to fit. It absolutely does. And I was going to, I thought about asking you to explain it, but really I was going

to even say and suggest for someone just to sit with that, to sit with that. Thank you for the work you're doing in general too. I think it's really a huge contribution to the world. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks so much from one, from one lover of TikTok on to another. Yes, indeed. The rain can help the seed to sprout and bring forth the flowers,

the flowers of understanding, the flowers of peace, the flowers of joy. When there is rain, we allow the rain to penetrate into the soil and they have a chance to sprout. We don't need to do anything. Apabila ada hujan, kita membiarkan hujan untuk menginap ke dalam tanah. Dan mereka mempunyai peluang untuk mengembang. Kita tidak perlu buat apa-apa, kita tidak perlu cuba memahami. Anda hanya membiarkan diri anda untuk dibenarkan oleh hujan. Dan tiba-tiba anda menemui bahawa buah faham, kebijaksanaan dan cinta di dalam anda mengembang. understanding, wisdom and love in you sprout. And you have to believe that the seed of peace, the seed of joy, the seed of happiness are already in you. The seed of the kingdom of God

is in you. It's not outside of you. If you think that God is outside of you, and if you are looking for him or for her, you'll never encounter God. It's like a wave running to search for water. She never encounters water. She has to go home to herself. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast, and thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sense of Soul Podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.