Awareness with Thich Nhat Hanh

Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh* was first published in 1993. The book and I have since parted, but I kept two poems of awareness that prompted a special response. From reading each of the complete poems, "In the Forest" and "Twenty-Four Brand-New Hours," presented below in excerpts, I became one with the leaf, one with the living forest—I became the sunshine.

In the Forest
The sunshine is the leaves.
The leaves are the sunshine.
The sunshine is no different from the leaves.
The leaves are no different from the sunshine.*

Twenty-Four Brand-New Hours
Waking up this morning, I see the blue sky.
I join my hands in thanks
for the many wonders of life; ...
The forest becomes my awareness
bathed in sunshine.*

By 2012, I wanted to know more about Buddhist teachings. I purchased The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh,* which is now held together with a rubber band. I circled full paragraphs, or their parts, that drew my eyes to what I could understand, or visualize. These were the jumping-off points to new understanding. I remembered the comment of a friend, a poet as I was, who had once said, "You write at the level of the insects," and I felt the "rightness" of her perception.

From The Pocket Thich Naht Hanh:

          A Life of Miracles
          Around us life bursts forth with miracles—a glass of
          water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower,
          laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy
          to see miracles everywhere. *

          Thich Nhat Hanh

From A Flower for God: A Memoir

          When We Met
          A beech tree was my mother.
          I knew a man raised by a birch.
          The locust has thorns and a bridal veil of blossoms.
          Put a rope swing on the maple. It's your red umbrella.*

          PJC 1985

My realization is, "Awareness may be compared to a single door that when opened reveals one hundred open doors.”

* “Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is a global spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist, renowned for his powerful teachings and bestselling writings on mindfulness and peace.” https://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/biography.

* Thich Nhat Hanh, Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1993).

* Ibid., stanza 1.

* Thich Nhat Hanh, "Twenty-Four Brand-New Hours," in Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1993), stanza 1.

* Thich Nhat Hanh, The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh (Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2012).

* Ibid., 4.

* Prema Jasmine Camp, A Flower for God: A Memoir (Seattle WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021), 78.