Today’s episode brings us into the heart and philosophy of Zen Buddhism, as practiced by the Plum Village monastic community that was founded in 1982 by the Vietnamese peace activist, monk, poet, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Today it has grown into Europe’s largest Buddhist monastery, with over 200 resident monks and nuns, and known as one of the most actively engaged Buddhist communities offering insight on the modern world, and on the climate and ecological crises.

We’ve spoken on the show about fragmented consciousness, a mind that sees parts and not the whole. Meditation and other Buddhist practices are one of the core ways of how we can heal minds and views. And so we will hear from two Plum Village monks: Sister True Dedication and Brother Spirit. Before entering the monastery, Sister True Dedication studied History & Political Thought at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist for BBC News. In the early years of her monastic training, she assisted Thich Nhat Hanh in their engaged Buddhist actions for human rights, religious freedom, applied ethics, and ecology. Brother Spirit began his monastic training in Plum Village in 2008, and before ordaining he studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked professionally as a composer, and as such has since composed many of the community’s beloved chants. They both helped to found the international Wake Up Movement, a community of young meditators finding new ways to combine mindfulness and engaged Buddhism.

We talk about:

• the fragmentation of consciousness
• how to hold the perspective of non duality and interbeing within unlikely contexts, and how doing so grants us agency and transformation
• dehumanization, de animation, and what Buddhism teaches about our relationship to other life and other intelligences
• the Mayahana Diamond Sutra (the world’s earliest printed text) and its invitation for us to reconsider four key notions of existance
• how to find and make peace with one’s activism
• the seeds of wisdom that lie dormant in 4000-year-old magnolia trees
• how to hold the suffering of the world and call upon our ancestors for support
• spiritual bypassing, instrumentalising, and get out of jail free cards

Episode Website Link

Show Links:

• Plum Village
• About Thich Nhat Hanh
• Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
• Thay's Poetry / Please Call Me by My True Names (song & poem)
• Lifeworlds Meditation on Food inspired by Plum Village
• Mahamudra: Dr Dan Brown
• Hope in the Dark: Rebecca Solnit
• Global Optimism

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

Photo credit: Plum Village website

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