Thích Nhất Hạnh: Nourishing Awareness

Thích Nhất Hạnh has long been among my treasured teachers. May each of us seek and connect with those who nourish and awaken our minds, hearts, and souls and support us on our ongoing journeys into greater wholeness, compassion, wisdom, and love. It is vital, I believe, to peel back the layers of our ignorance, apathy, and unconsciousness and grow our hearts big enough to embrace the suffering within ourselves and others. In allowing our hearts to break open, we grow in caring and the ways in which we act compassionately. In looking at this piece by Thích Nhất Hạnh and nourishing our conscious awareness about the great tragedy of this preventable hunger and poverty, it also needs to be acknowledged that one in four American children live in poverty. It isn't just those "others out there" who suffer. By nourishing this ever deepening awareness within ourselves, we are empowered to increasingly open to what our part is in the healing and awakening of our world. — Molly

When people sit down to dinner and look at our plate filled with fragrant and appetizing food, we can nourish our awareness of the bitter pain of people who suffer from hunger. Every day, 40,000 children die as a result of hunger and malnutrition. Every day! Such a figure shocks us every time we hear it. Looking deeply at our plate, we can "see" Mother Earth, the farm workers, and the tragedy of hunger and malnutrition.

We who live in North America and Europe are accustomed to eating grains and other foods imported from the Third World, such as coffee from Columbia, chocolate from Ghana, or fragrant rice from Thailand. We must be aware that children in these countries, except those from rich families, never see such fine products. They eat inferior foods, while the finer products are put aside for export in order to bring in foreign exchange. There are even some parents who, because they do not have the means to feed their children, resort to selling their children to be servants to families who have enough to eat. 

Before each meal, we can join our palms in mindfulness and think about the children who do not have enough to eat. Doing so will help us maintain mindfulness of our good fortune, and perhaps one day we will find ways to do something to help change the system of injustice that exists in the world. In many refugee families, before each meal, a child holds up his bowl of rice and says something like this: "Today, on the table, there are many delicious foods. I am grateful to be here with my family enjoying these wonderful dishes. I know there are many children less fortunate , who are very hungry." Being a refugee he knows, for example, that most Thai children never see the kind of fine rice grown in Thailand that he is about to eat. It is difficult to explain to children in the "overdeveloped" nations that not all children in the world have such beautiful and nourishing food. Awareness of this fact alone can help us overcome many of our own psychological pains. Eventually our contemplations can help us to see how to assist those who need our help so much.

  —Thích Nhất Hạnh

From Peace Is Every Step: The Path of

Mindfulness in Everyday Life