As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 1964, I now have the pleasure of proposing to you the name of Thich Nhat Hanh for that award in 1967. I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam.
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Last fall I began brainstorming a class on the young Thich Nhat Hanh. After his passing in January and a recent Share the Wealth community expressing our gratitude for his teachings, I thought I’d go ahead with it!
So this class will focus on the first half of Thich Nhat Hanh’s long life–before Plum Village, Parallax Press, Oprah, and international celebrity. Recalling Walt Whitman claiming his multitudes, I have chosen a variety of his works for our enrichment—memoir, journals, poems, political critique, meditation manual, and inter-religious dialogue.
We begin on Monday 21 March and meet on third Mondays of each month. We Zoom at 7 p.m. Central Time and go for 90 minutes. Class sessions will include meditating, looking deeply, doing freewriting, and speaking mindfully. A class blog will be available for sharing writing practices, questions, reflections, resources, and announcements in between monthly sessions.
Tuition is $150 for those participating by Zoom, $60 for those wanting to work asynchronously, that is, involving yourself with us at the blog and by snail mail.
Here’s the schedule of meetings and readings—
March 21: Introductions
April 18: Thich Nhat Hanh, My Master’s Robe: Memories of a Novice Monk
May 6: Thich Nhat Hanh, Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals, 1962-1966
June 20: Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire [2022 edition] (and selected poems)
July 18: Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism
August 15: Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Being Awake [PDF online]
September 19: Thich Nhat Hanh and Daniel Berrigan, The Raft Is Not the Shore
October 17: Jim Forest, Eyes of Compassion: Learning from Thich Nhat Hanh
You can mail a check payable to me (4514 Chouteau Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110) or use the following email at Paypal: markjchmiel@gmail.com.
Let me know if and how you want to participate.
Palms together,
Mark
