Healing Oneself Healing the World – Thich Nhat Hanh

These 2013 recordings by Thich Nhat Hanh are from Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi during a 6-day retreat in 2013 with the theme Healing Ourselves, Healing the World. The program has been digitally remastered and has 12 hours of wonderful material.

How do we produce a thought that is filled with understanding and compassion? Building a sangha or a practice center is one method. In our tradition, we begin by looking at our suffering. We can then recognize the suffering in the other person. This is the first and second noble truth. With this, the energy if compassion arises because you have touched and understood suffering. We bring our mind and body together and come back to ourselves in order to be truly there and be able to stop our thinking. We can get lost in our thinking. When we are mindful and concentrated on our in-breath then our mind only has one object. Just breathing in mindfully we can get freedom from the past, the future, and our projects. Freedom is possible and the healing can start.