Be peace before you try to make peace

Tend to your own anger first, so the action you take carries peace rather than more of the conflict.

Perché funziona

Being Peace, one of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s first books published in the United States, was written for peace activists, and its publisher sums up its message as being peace in order to make more peace. The Sixth Mindfulness Training, Taking Care of Anger, asks that when anger manifests one not do or say anything, but breathe or walk mindfully and look into its roots, which it places in wrong perceptions rather than outside. The reasoning is that action carries the state it comes from: anger expressed as protest tends to produce more anger, while action taken from a steadier mind can be heard. The biography records how he taught this in war, as walking meditation where people were still running from the bombs.

Come farlo

1. When news, a meeting or a conversation sets off anger, make a rule for the next few minutes: say nothing, send nothing, decide nothing.
2. Breathe with the anger as if holding it, or walk slowly with your feet on the ground, letting it be there without feeding it.
3. When it has eased a little, ask what you are perceiving that makes it so strong — and whether you are sure that perception is complete.
4. Then decide what, if anything, to do; write it down before you act on it.
5. Afterward, notice whether the action you took from a calmer state landed differently from the ones you take while still angry.

Prove scientifiche

The description of Being Peace and its audience is from Parallax Press; the wording of the Sixth Mindfulness Training is on the Plum Village page; the biography quotes his account of engaged Buddhism being born in war, maintaining practice while responding to suffering. Mavis Fenn’s review of Queen and King’s volume notes Sallie King’s emphasis on leaders like Thích Nhất Hạnh who point to the value of remaining calm and mindful in a crisis. Support is textual and practitioner-based. (anecdotal)

Not studied as an exercise. “Be peace first” can be misused to tell people harmed by injustice to calm down before they may speak; in the tradition it is a discipline one takes on for oneself, not a condition imposed on others.

Fonti

• Thich Nhat Hanh. Being Peace. Berkeley: Parallax Press (publisher’s edition page).
• Plum Village. The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Order of Interbeing (revised version presented by Thich Nhat Hanh, February 2012). plumvillage.org.
• Plum Village. Thich Nhat Hanh: Full Biography. plumvillage.org.
• Fenn, M. L. (1998). Review of Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, ed. C. S. Queen & S. B. King. Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 5.

Errore comune

Waiting to feel perfectly peaceful before doing anything — the training asks you not to act from the peak of anger, not to postpone action until anger is gone forever.