Thich Nhat Hanh - The Blooming of a Lotus Revised & Expanded: Essential Guided Meditations for Mindfulness, Healing, and Transformation

In the Buddhist tradition, meditation transforms and heals. It helps us focus our attention so we become whole again, refreshed and stable. We learn to look deeply into ourselves and around us in order to realize what is really there. This insight helps us overcome our suffering and attachments. As we become more peaceful, happy, and free, we will no longer make ourselves or others suffer by the way we behave and speak. We will begin to transform our surroundings and to help others become more at ease, peaceful, and happy.

In order to be able to look and listen deeply, we need to restore our wholeness, to refresh, stabilize, and focus ourselves. To do this, we use the energy of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the state of being aware of what is happening in us and around us. Mindfulness shines light on the object of our meditation. That object could be a perception, an emotion, an action, or a reaction. It could be a physiological or a psychological phenomenon. Mindfulness helps us to look at and understand more deeply the nature and the origin of the object of our meditation.

While meditating, we constantly give rise to, nourish, and develop mindfulness. Mindfulness puts us in touch with life and everything that is happening in the present moment. Thus we live, look, and listen much more deeply. The result of looking and listening deeply is insight, awakening, and liberation.

As we meditate, we untie knots we have created in ourselves; knots of fear, hatred, anger, suspicion, despair, and attachment. A transformation takes place, gradually removing divisions and making our relationships with humans and nature much easier. We feel at ease and touch the joy of being alive, like a flower that is slowly opening. The human being is a species of flower that can bloom as freshly and beautifully as any other flower. The Buddha was a fully opened human flower, infinitely fresh and beautiful.

All of us are buddhas to be. That is why when people meet each other in a practice center, they form a lotus with their palms and greet each other, bowing and saying: A lotus for you, a buddha to be. Breathing in, saying a lotus for you, and breathing out, smiling, saying a buddha to be, they embody the freshness of a blooming flower.

In the Buddhist tradition, the sangha is seen as a precious jewel. There are three precious jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and sangha. These three jewels are already in your heart. They will guide you to the sangha that is somewhere near you.

If you have not yet found a good teacher or a sangha, you can still practice alone. A good teacher is someone who has experienced and realized the fruits of practice. A sangha is a community where everyone follows more or less the same kind of practice. Since everyone is doing the same practice, it becomes easier for you to practice, too, because the group energy emitted by the sangha is strong and supportive. You can also learn a great deal from individual members of the sangha, especially those who have realized some degree of peace and transformation. There are many things you may find difficult to do when alone, but in the presence of the sangha, you can do them easily. Those of us who have practiced with a sangha can testify to this fact.

If you have not yet had the chance to encounter a teacher and a sangha, this book can help you in the beginning. All the guided meditations in this book have been taken from the basic dhyana sutras of Source Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. They have been taught by the Buddha and enlightened teachers and sanghas throughout the history of Buddhism. Before being published in this book, these meditations have been regularly practiced at the Plum Village Monastery in France, and during the many retreats led by Thich Nhat Hanh over the years, often being adapted to respond to the prevailing needs of the world. Therefore, the book you hold is the fruit of the experience and practice of the teacher and also of the students.

As you practice the exercises, you will feel the support of good teachers and the sangha.

When you have practiced some of these guided meditations for a while, you will generate for yourself the energy of mindfulness. You will feel refreshed, more focused, and happier. There may be that sangha is very close to where you live, but you have not been in touch with them yet. Please have trust and start to practice the meditations right away.

Everything depends on your practice of mindfulness. You are a flower that could bloom at any time, a future buddha. We wish you good luck.

. We have used the term Source Buddhism to describe the earliest phase of Buddhism, belonging to the lifetime of Buddha Shakyamuni.

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Meditation can be practiced almost anywherewhile sitting, walking, lying down, standing; even while working, eating, and using the toilet. The exercises in this book are principally used to guide and strengthen ones practice of sitting meditation.

For more than thirty years, many thousands of people have come to Plum Village to practice meditation. Many of them find sitting meditation most effective. Others have more success with walking meditation, tea meditation, or mindful service. Ultimately, everyone who has attended retreats in Plum Village has benefited from these exercises.

At first, those who are used to sitting silently to meditate do not feel at ease during the guided meditation; they may even feel irritated. But with practice, they are able to experience its many benefits and consequently experience transformation at a very fundamental level. Over the years, meditation students from many parts of the world have asked me to make these exercises more widely available.

The guided meditations in this book have different purposes. Some exercises are done simply to nourish the joy of being alive. Others help us be in touch with life, help us heal, look deeply, or let go. Some exercises combine two or three of these functions at the same time. Usually, the exercises that nourish our body and mind are used to guide us at the beginning of a retreat. These exercises can be called the food of joy. In the Dhyana School, there is the expression meditation as the food of joy, which means that the feeling of joy arising from the practice of meditation nourishes and sustains us. During the ceremony for offering rice at midday, we say, Receiving this food, we pray that everyone will be nourished by the enjoyment of the meditation practice and the enjoyment of the Dharma that will bring them to the realization of the full truth.

The first part of this book contains this kind of meditation. The exercises connect us to elements that are refreshing and healthy, both in ourselves and in the world around us. They help us put an end to distracted thoughts and bring us back to the present moment, where we can recognize the oneness of body and mind. Although they are called nourishment exercises, they also restore internal balance, allowing the body as well as the mind to begin the work of healing. Some of these meditations help us renew contact not only with our self, our body, and our mind, but also with the world at large, with family, and with society. We thus learn to overcome blockages, loneliness, and isolation, and a way of transformation and healing opens up before us.