LEADer/ Every Cell On

Photo courtesy Plum Village.

Manila, 3 Aug 2022 — Mindfulness means that you can turn every cell in your body on.

Story

It happened in January 2022. After a remarkable life spanning 95 years, a global influencer died after returning to the monastery he first entered as a novice at age 16. Years earlier, he confided to Oprah Winfrey that he already knew at age 7 that he wanted to become a monk and live with a beginner’s mind. I am speaking of the Vietnamese monk and Zen master known by his Buddhist name Thích Nhất Hạnh, meaning a Buddhist monk (Thích) with One Action (Nhất Hạnh). His followers around the world called him Thầy, meaning teacher. So what was this teacher’s One Action that is inspiring so many leaders in our times?

The monk we now know as a peace activist, poet, author of more than 130 books, and founder of Plum Village, an international community of engaged Buddhism, started his tertiary education by studying science at Saigon University. Later, he took up comparative religion at Princeton University and taught Buddhism at Columbia and Cornell universities in the US. Adding to his native Vietnamese, he also mastered French, Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali, and English. With his books translated into more than 40 languages and selling more than five million copies worldwide, he is best known as the father of mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is the One Action that pervaded his life and work.

In 1975, at the end of the Vietnam war, The Miracle of Mindfulness was first published in English, after earlier writings in Vietnamese had served as a practical guide to social workers who helped to relieve suffering during the brutal war. To teach the skills of mindfulness, Nhất Hạnh offered gentle anecdotes and practical exercises as a means of being awake and fully aware, in the tradition of Zen Buddhism. Noted the publisher, “From washing the dishes to answering the phone to peeling an orange, he reminds us that each moment holds within it an opportunity to work toward greater self-understanding and peacefulness." So what can leaders learn today from Thích Nhất Hạnh and his legacy?

Challenge

Thankfully, the war in Vietnam has made way for peace and rapid development. Around the world, however, humankind continues to face many kinds of suffering, from wars and conflicts to stress and loneliness. There are encouraging signs too. In many workplaces, cultures are changing and it is now more acceptable to talk about burnout and depression as we struggle to solve our global, local, and individual problems. This openness, which in itself is an expression of beginner’s mind, is in no small part due to Nhất Hạnh’s legacy, which has spread around the world through his many books, videos, and the movies made about his work. 

What about my own personal journey with mindfulness practice? It turns out that Thích Nhất Hạnh had a hand in that too. After getting introduced to the basics during my time living in Thailand, I remember discovering how to practice mindfulness more deeply when reading Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. This seminal book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts’s Medical School and a student of Thích Nhất Hạnh, set me firmly on the path. The development of mindfulness practice has since become an integral part of what I refer to as my Leadership Hygiene, which I also share with the leaders I work with.

One way to sum up Nhất Hạnh’s message would be to reflect on “Peace in myself, Peace in the world.” The journey to mindfulness starts in ourselves. To receive an immediate benefit from his rich legacy and realize its importance to our work and life challenges today, I recommend watching the 30-minute documentary A Cloud Never Dies about his life. I also enjoyed watching his 35-minute interview with Oprah Winfrey. If you’d like to go further, Walk With Me is a full-length cinema movie about his work, available on Amazon Prime. And The Way Out is a recent production on our climate change challenge and can be viewed on-demand at Vimeo.

Question

My question for you this week is what you are doing to practice mindfulness in your work and life. When tapping Nhất Hạnh’s repertoire of practices, which are now widely available, you are reminded to constantly come ‘home’ to the present and leave the past and the future for what they are. How is that going for you?

For me, I practiced mindfulness this week after watching Turn Every Cell On, one of the Dharma talks Nhất Hạnh gave to his students in the Plum Village community. What struck a chord with me in this extended talk was that in practicing walking meditation, we are not limited to walking slowly, as I first learned in Thailand years ago. We can also practice when walking at our usual pace during our work, travel, and exercise. Explains Nhất Hạnh, “Mindfulness can be slow and can be quick.” As I practiced it this week during my exercise in the park, I felt every cell in my body coming alive as I walked mindfully. 

Like mindfulness, leadership always involves practice in the present moment. In our coaching work to help leaders navigate through transitions, we spend most of the time discovering and practicing effective leadership behaviors and mindfully reflecting on the lessons learned from practice. That way, mindfulness becomes an integral part of daily Leadership Hygiene so that we can turn on every cell in our body. If you would like to make that a part of your leadership experience, set up a free strategy call.