By Alan Cutter I am now at a place where I can begin to talk about what the war has meant to me. I am facing the hurt and regret, and learning to understand how they have affected my family and my relationships with other people. Through owning up to the bad choices I…
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Sangha Building in Southern California
Thich Nhat Hanh has said that the Buddha of the twenty-first century may manifest as Sangha. The simplest definition of Sangha is a community of friends practicing mindfulness together and offering spiritual support to one another. I practiced on my own in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh for ten…
The Sound of the Bell
By Susan Hadler It’s Sunday afternoon in mid-August and still hot when I arrive at Carolyn’s for the bell training. Eric is standing at the end of the upstairs hallway, smiling and bowing, showing the way to Carolyn’s door. The first thing I see is the big bell sitting on…
Bringing Music to Your Local Community
By Charlie Shuttler Friends and monastics at Wake Up retreat, Blue Cliff Monastery, June 2018; photo by Rob Walsh In a simple, but beautiful way, music has the power to make us happy and smile. Expressing ourselves through song, sound and movement can give voice, understanding and healing to the…
Dharma Talk: Sangha
We all need love. Without enough love, we may not be able to survive, as individuals and as a planet. It is said that the next Buddha will be named "Maitreya," the Buddha of Love. I believe that Maitreya might not take the form of an individual, but as a…
On the Way Home
By Eileen Kiera In the early years of Plum Village there were only two hamlets—Upper Hamlet at Thenac and Lower Hamlet at Meyrac. The hamlets were open for visitors one month each summer from mid-July to mid-August. A few dozen Westerners from all over Europe and North America stayed in…
Caring for Mother Earth
Happy Farm Lower Hamlet By Denisse Aguilar (L-R) Margret de Backere, Steffi Höltje, Tabea Halfmann, and Andrea Schlüter at Happy Farm Lower Hamlet Twenty years ago, the idea of purchasing ecologically harvested food to feed the Sangha seemed far away. Twenty years later, in Plum Village’s Lower Hamlet, organic vegetables…
Happy Farm: Rewilding
Healing, Regeneration, and Transformation for the Land: During the COP26 global climate negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland, we shared one way that our community in Plum Village Monastery, France is taking action to contribute to the solutions in this time of climate and ecological emergencies. We offer an update from Mick McEvoy, who manages the regenerative agricultural Happy Farm project.
From Sister Chan Khong
Editor's Note: In the following two letters, Sister Chan Khong shares some ideas about implementing Thay's vision of a unified Sangha and invites the input of the larger Sangha to help determine how this vision might be realized. Some of the advisory boards have already begun their work, but many other ideas-such…
Drawing from the Well
By Nancy Hawley My brother, sister, and I decided to meet with my aging parents to discuss this stage of our life as a family. As we sat together discussing health proxies, wills, and funeral arrangements, I was filled with a sense of interconnection with them, how deeply the roots go. I was also…