In honor of Thich Nhat Hanh, Hakushō shares about his learnings with him, and how we can all continue to further his legacy through our individual practice.

Hakushō Johan Ostlund lived and practiced at San Francisco Zen Center from 2006 to 2020. He was ordained as a Soto Zen priest by Green Gulch Abbess Furyu Nancy Schroeder in 2012 and began teaching as Shuso (Head Student), under her guidance, in 2016. During his time in residence at SFZC, Hakushō served in several leadership positions, including as Tanto (Head of Practice) at Tassajara and as Ino (Head of Meditation Hall) at Green Gulch Farm. He now lives with his wife in Southeastern Vermont where he is the resident teacher and founder of the Brattleboro Zen Center. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Divinity degree at the Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley, with a focus on Chaplaincy and Pastoral Care.

Full Transcript

Thank you, Pamela, for the introduction. As she mentioned, I was initially going to talk about our practice of Zazen. When I speak with a group I don't know before, I try to take a topic that we, for sure, have some relevance for all of us. However, coming back home last night and hearing about the passing of Thich Nhat Hanh, I felt quite moved and it was clear immediately as I read that message that this was what I needed to talk about today.

It's impossible to try to capture, within a limited timeline, any of his achievements and contribution to Buddhism in the 21st century and its development in the West. So my talk will focus on just some of the ways in which his teachings have touched my life and influenced my practice, perhaps processing some of my gratitude and sadness as I do so. And also to say that as my initial topic was around the practice of Zazen as an embodied practice, the topic of embodiment is still very much in there because it was in Thay's teachings.

I wanted to share a little bit of my own path and how the influence of Thich Nhat Hanh. During the summer when I turned 25, my interest in Buddhism grew enough that I started to read about it. That led me to try meditation. I found it promising. It was also incredibly hard for me and too challenging to really persist with on my own. I went back to college for my last semester there at the end of the summer, and I found myself experiencing unprecedented levels of fear and anxiety that I hadn't encountered before in my life.

Part of what was going on, I think, was that I realized I was 25. I'd taken three years off between high school and college to be a little clearer on my life aspects, and now I was about to graduate college but I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It seemed like my life was requiring answers of me and requiring plans as well that I either felt I didn't have nor felt I had any actual capacity to conjure up. One of those plans I was incapable of coming up with was that I had to present the topic for a thesis for my BA in human ecology that I was finishing in Sweden where I grew up. It's quite common to write a thesis for your undergraduate degree, which is what I was requested to do. So I found myself with this fear and anxiety and unable to regulate it in any way.

I did, however, join a meditation group. I met a few other students who were interested in meditation and only one of us had any experience. He would kind of hold the space and lead us in guided meditations, and he was the one who suggested the readings of Thich Nhat Hanh to me. I just can't overestimate the impact that those readings had on me at that time. I remember reading "The Miracle of Mindfulness" and "Present Moment Wonderful Moment" in particular. Finding that reading Thich Nhat Hanh's words was like breathing this breath of fresh air that I'd been incapable of drawing myself. All of a sudden I could access it. The simplicity of his writing was astonishing to me. They didn't require me to try to grasp the teachings intellectually. They just flowed like poetry and soothed me.

It helped me establish a meditation practice on my own, which further helped me deal with my anxiety. I found that I had up until then been such a young skeptic and a bit of a nihilist, always finding reasons not to engage fully with anything. There was something in engaging with Thay's teachings and trying to employ his meditation instructions and Gathas, these little short verses for specific activities during the day. There was a clear sense in my practice very early on that this is it. Actually, I need to go for this. I need to really not hold back as I always do in my life. And that this is something that's meaningful and that I really want to do. I didn't know what that looked like, but it was a clear sense. I want to give myself to these teachings and this practice.

And also, what Julie just said as a further illustration of how Thay's readings helped bring me out of the hole that I found myself in. Out of my engagement with them grew the topic for my undergrad thesis actually, which ended up being about socially engaged Buddhism and the environment. Turned out my life didn't fall apart as I imagined at my most fearful times. I found some newfound ease and out of that place still kept this call to Buddhist practice was clear. And so eventually it landed me at San Francisco Zen Center as a farming garden apprentice.

Three years after having lived at San Francisco Zen Center, I had the opportunity, as I was back in Europe, to participate in a three-week retreat at Plum Village. I was so excited about the prospect of hearing Thich Nhat Hanh teach in person. With that in mind, I must admit that initially I was slightly underwhelmed by his presence. I had, and imagine some others might have had, the opportunity to see the Dalai Lama teach at some point. He's got this, for me, kind of electric charisma that just radiates. And in comparison to that, this little Vietnamese monk didn't look so special at first. Actually, he looked pretty subdued and like an ordinary monk.

However, observing his presence over the course of three weeks, I deepened my appreciation of his embodied presence, really how he was carrying himself and totally living the teachings that he was teaching himself. There was not a gap between what he was saying and how he was acting. It was all one there, totally aligned, totally beautiful. And this is from a man who had been through the trauma of seeing his brothers and sisters being killed in Vietnam. He had been shut out of his own country for speaking out against the war that was killing them. And yet he embodied such unshakeable belief in the Buddhist path of liberation, as well as how it could be accessed by any of us really at any moment.

I wanted to touch on a couple of particularly profound teachings of Thay's, as his students know him, that I experienced and felt nourished by during that retreat. One was this thing where, during the talks that he would give in a packed big hall with hundreds of people, he would be standing up, using a whiteboard and putting down the key concepts as he was teaching. When the whiteboard started to become filled, he would turn around and just erase what he had written on there. You could see that when he was erasing this whiteboard, it was the most beautiful thing. There was nothing else going on in this person's mind than just erasing the text that was on there. This was not a means to try to clear the board so he could keep teaching. This in itself was the total activity of the moment.

As minuscule an act as erasing what had been written, this was an opportunity to practice. This was a way in which he was teaching, not an action that needed to get done to get somewhere else again. Through the performance of this simple act, it seemed like the whole room would just sort of settle another notch. Maybe we all could take a breath of fresh air there, just come back into our bodies and the room and be aware of where we were. And how fortuitous we were to be spending some time with this living Buddha. It was as if we collectively for a moment entered the state of whiteboard samadhi. This was all there was, this whiteboard, nothing else going on. And that this little man could perform this seemingly mundane act in such a way, seemingly impacting the whole room of people. It was a miracle, actually. That's the word I would use and I think it's the word that Thich Nhat Hanh did use also.

I looked up one of the famous quotes from "The Miracle of Mindfulness," very much on this topic where he says, "People usually consider walking on water or in thin air as a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk on either water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we're engaged in a miracle, which we don't even recognize. A blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black curious eyes of a child, our own two eyes, all is a miracle." Yes, and can we see it? How do we get in touch with the miracle? It's right there and yet...

Another teaching during the retreat that had a big impact on me was again when he was teaching and using the whiteboard. He was very much in his teaching state with the basic Buddhist teachings. He didn't venture too far out into complicated philosophy. He would teach the core Buddhist teachings common to all Buddhist traditions in a non-sectarian way as well. It's hard to disagree with any of these teachings.

So he was teaching the Four Noble Truths. As he was framing the First Noble Truth, which we usually would translate as suffering, he was using the language of ill-being. He'd spoken a little bit about introducing it and then said, "Suppose that we ask our politicians to tend to the First Noble Truth of ill-being. What would we like them to focus on?" For the next several minutes, people were calling out: poverty. He would write it mindfully on the whiteboard. Income inequality, environmental destruction, racial injustice. This went on for several minutes. He was slow, intentional, deliberate in his actions.

Then he turned around and said, "As spiritual people, we need to go deeper. We need to pay attention to the tension we each hold in our own body and mind. This is the most important thing. We need to be aware of how we can make ethical choices in each moment. And that's why we need to begin to address ill-being as it manifests in our body and mind. If we don't, we just deal with the symptoms of ill-being, not with the causes."

This kind of hit me. This was not just anybody saying this, but Thich Nhat Hanh, the teacher who coined the term Engaged Buddhism, who has written love letters to the earth and spoken out about innumerable injustices in the world. Just as one example, I wanted to get this into this talk as well, because it's just one of many examples, but I remember reading it and being impacted by it.

In 2008, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote to the CEO of Kentucky Fried Chicken, encouraging him to do his best to implement more humane practices for raising and slaughtering chickens. He did so in the most loving voice, after raising the concerns that were reported about the cruelty of the practices connected to the chickens that Kentucky Fried Chicken were serving and selling. Also emphasizing the pressures that business leaders face in the push for profits, taking that into consideration too. He stated it this way: "I'm also certain that you have a heart of compassion. If these reports are true, please stop and reconsider. No feeling creature should be treated so cruelly. Treating chickens with brutality not only hurts every one of those birds, it hurts every one of us, including you yourself, and even your loved ones. If you look deeply, I'm sure you will see this clearly, and you will be determined to find another way. I believe you know already in your heart that our success in life cannot be measured in dollars and cents alone."

There's such love and care and appealing to the humanity of the CEO, to his heart of compassion, and the knowledge that embedded deep within his heart is this knowledge that success in life cannot be measured in dollars and cents alone. Also, here in Thay's teachings of interbeing, how the liberation of one of us will affect the liberation of all and conversely how the suffering of one is intimately bound up with the suffering of all. I just feel like this way of speaking with such kindness and love and yet there's a push there. That moral voice is strong and can't be denied or neglected.

This letter was written in 2008, which was the year before my retreat at Plum Village, and I had read it at that time. It's just one example of the many ways in which he engaged and cared for the sufferings of the world and the need to engage and to manifest in a living example of ways of doing that. And I was sitting in our retreat and hearing that as spiritual people, while we need to address the sufferings of the world, our work doesn't actually stop there and suggesting we need to maybe start there for our politicians and leaders in society either. The most important thing that we're emphasizing was that the most important work we have to do is to pay attention to the tension we each hold in our own body and mind. This is the most important thing, and this connection to ethics there is significant that this is the most important thing because this is necessary in order to be aware of the ethical choices we have to make in each moment.

I find that, and I've said this already, but the beauty of these teachings and practices is that they are so simple. We've got the story coming from the Japanese Zen tradition of the burden of the Roshi who was sought out by a student and in response to the burning question that the student had come with, gave us the answer, "Avoid evil, do good, and save all beings." And the student was a little underwhelmed and said, "Even a child of three could say that." "Yes, that's true. Even a child of three could say that, but even a person of 80 will struggle to practice it."

So I feel like this, as Thich Nhat Hanh said, burden of Roshi, just as these simple teachings that we don't need to be smart to understand them, but how do we embody them? How do we practice them? What might prevent us from doing so? And what was so remarkable about him is just much of it is his capacity to keep living the way he was teaching for decades and decades, just unwavering faith in the practice as he was teaching it. Miracle of mindfulness and to ask in the case of this whiteboard somebody to treat even the smallest little act, not as a means to an end but as a gateway to liberation. Just right there.

So what might be the elements that sustained his practice and how can we keep his practice alive within our own practice? I just might name some overlapping elements in there that I see that I'm feeling inspired to renew in my practice too. There's really like an unwavering faith that this is the path, this is the way to practice, this awakening is available right here and right now. During my retreat, I did purchase one of his calligraphy pieces at the end and it says "Mindfulness is a source of happiness." So that sort of seemed to capture what I felt like he was teaching and what I would like to remember.

So there's clearly an unwavering faith of his and it comes with this discipline of just employing that, engaging that faith that's required to engage that faith in even the smallest little activities. And when I say discipline, in his case that is a discipline that's coupled with this radical kindness and gentleness, it's not a stick, it's a carrot. And I think that's kind of overlapping with this just total sincerity about the practice.

We live in a culture where we maybe don't value sincerity so much. There's a lot of emphasis on being authentic, like "my authentic self," and sincerity might be looked down upon in our dominant culture. I think we don't appreciate that element perhaps enough in our spiritual practice as well. So how do we, how can we stay sincere?

If we have some faith that these practices are helpful, as I found myself transformed by them when I initially encountered them, I was touched with a little bit of that freshness. Over years of practice, I want to renew that. I vow to sort of return to that and open up to the real possibility of just stopping, taking a few conscious breaths, just to be peripherally aware. You know, some body and breath awareness that goes through my day, but to sort of just give my full attention here and there and to mundane tasks and just to be open to that. Really feel into what that's like to be fully present right there.

I wanted to end with a poem I was sent. I woke up this morning and I thought they had no presentation of it, so I assumed this was his death poem. There's a common practice of writing a death poem. When you're passing away, and then in some cases, teachers or practitioners sort of work on their death poems particularly for decades, sort of tweaking words and so forth. So I thought this might be it, but it's actually, as I looked it up, a poem of his from 1993, called "One As." So it does seem like he's very much speaking about his own death. It might well have been. So I'll read it for you:

"The moment I die, I will try to come back to you as quickly as possible. I promise it will not take long. Isn't it true, I'm already with you in every moment? Just look, feel my presence. 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. My feet touch deathlessness, and my feet are yours. Walk with me now. Let us enter the dimension of oneness and see the cherry tree blossom in winter. Why should we talk about death? I don't need to die to be back with you."

So let me read it once more. And then I'll stop.

Thank you very much.