Julia’s Wild Story from Plum Village
Written by Julia Ponsonby
Long Read – Approx. 17 mins
Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Love Letter to the Earth, begins with the words, “…at this very moment the Earth is above you, below you, all around you and even inside you…..the Earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the Earth and we are always carrying her with us”.
Later the phrase, “real change will only happen when we fall in love with our planet” echoes what my late husband Stephan Harding used to say. We all need to fall in love with Gaia. These words could also be from Satish Kumar. Or David Abram. Many or most of us who have found ourselves at Schumacher College have imbibed this message or perhaps we already felt it and just needed the net curtains of everyday life to be pulled away for it to be revealed in all its wondrous brightness as a basic truth of living well. Thich Nhat Hanh continues, “Only love can show us how to live in harmony with nature and with each other and save us from the devastating effects of environmental destruction and climate Change” (p.29).
My recent journey to the Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism in South West France came courtesy of June Mitchell and was one of those offers I had no doubt about saying ‘yes!’ to immediately and without hesitation. After the sadness of Stephan’s illness and passing, visiting the monastery of Thich Nhat Hanh seemed a meaningful distraction and something to look forward to. I also have to thank Teri West who was due to travel with June but had to duck out due to dog sitting duties.
As most people will know, the concept of Mindfulness refers to a process - and indeed a way of life - that Thich Nhat Hanh has played a key role in promoting within the modern western world. He has done this through his books, talks, courses and through the spread of other Plum village centres across the world. (Though not all will be combined with actual plum trees, as the hamlets are in France, where plums suitable for making delicioussweet dried prunes grow alongside tall Poplar trees, bundled with Mistletoe).
Back in the ‘noughties’ I was commissioned to write a book on Mindful Baking and later Mindful Thoughts for Cooks. This provided a great opportunity to re-immerse myself in the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, and the practice of paying attention to my breathe. I also co-taught a course on Mindful Baking at Schumacher College with Kaira Lingo Jewel and Andrew Whitley. Kaira had been a nun at Plum Village for many years and taught mindful walking, meditation and breathing on the course. Andrew Whitley founder of the real bread movement in the UK taught us about handling heritage grains for sourdough. I contributed with further baking input, and the wonderful Voirrey assisted.
Despite all this mindful writing, and practising, and hearing about Plum Village from others, I had never been there myself. I had no preconceived notions about how it would be. I just felt confident it would be a good experience - so I let the experience unravel in front of me! It turned out that June and I were one of a group of 20-30 week-long retreatants who were joining during the longer 3 months ‘Rains Retreat’, during which the Monastics were engaged in an annual period of serious study and practice.
Another group of 20-30 lay people were also there for 3 months, practising more deeply. Thankfully, (from my point of view) this was a less busy time of year. In the dining room there were only about 100 eating in silence - though on days when the hamlets joined together the numbers were more. I was told that during the summer when the children’s programme runs the number of participants could go up to 1000, although not everyone would be in residence.
Even with 100 - a number I’ve occasionally had to cater for at Schumacher college - the incredibly efficient lay out of the serving room, dining room, washing up room and kitchen was very noticeable. The fact that all meals were had in ‘Noble Silence’ was very welcome as the noises of voices on top of knives, forks and chopsticks would have been deafening. The way the dish washing was arranged particularly caught my attention. A sign at the entrance to the washing up area announced, “wash your dishes as if you were washing the baby Buddha”. This was interesting to experience because I knew that in Thich Nhat Hanh’s writing, the mindful washing of dishes was a prominentes theme. His writings on this had often been read out at Schumacher College morning meetings. I had even quoted them myself.
Meditative awareness and being in the present with washing up is one thing, but the physical arrangement of a system to facilitate this takes it to another level! And, here it was - four tiled counters, with four plastic washing up bowls on each counter, and a sink for drainage at the end. The first of each sink contained soapy water and the rest contained clear water, though a certain level of soap would migrate up to the second and third bowl as the dishes were washed gently by individuals, standing one on each side of each bowl, moving up the system and then finally stacking their clean dishes and cutlery in racks ready to go through the steriliser at the other end of the room. At one of the counters, the plastic bowls were a bit bigger - this was where the pot washing happened and to my amusement, I noticed that literal baby baths were being used!
Perhaps the efficient and very practical layout of the large dining room is a reflection of something refreshingly simple and utilitarian about mindful breathing itself. By narrowing the focus of our attention on the ‘in’ breath and the ‘out’breath, we engage in a process of optimising a biological system that already weaves through us, as we weave through Gaia. The mindful focussing on our breath whilst walking, sitting or lying down clears an inner path to happiness when practised regularly. This simple act of mindfulness is therefore not only efficient but also restorative.
June and I were staying at Lower Hamlet which was the first of four hamlets to be established in France by TNH in 1982, and the first of 9 centres across rhe world. Prior to the establisnent of the hamlet Thich Nhat Hanh had lived in Paris after arriving from from Vietnam in the mid 1960s during the war. Vietnam had been a French Colony and, at that time, war waged between America and the freedom fighters who may have favoured communist China above losing sovereignty to another colonial power. For Thich Nhat Hanh, the issue was peace not politics.
The monastic community at Plum Village soon joined Thich Nhat Hanh in exile to form a strong Sangha, with works to be done both on the land and in the Dharma Halls. Men and women are now included on separate sites, joining together once or twice a week. The majority of the nuns and monks seem to be Vietnamese but with a generous sprinkling of other nationalities, such as French, German, English, and American. At Lower Hamlet there seemed to be 20-30 nuns rotating rolls and with an Abbott in charge - though I am not sure who this was! It all seemed quite democratic.
Beds were in shared dormitories of 2-6 and every day began with a wake up bell at 5.00am, ringing out from one of the beautiful Vietnamese pagodas that adorn the rustic country campus. This was followed by sitting meditation at 6.00. Breakfast was at 7.30. This meant that on most days I had the treat of doing bamboo stick Qi Gong with June on the wide veranda of the Dharma Hall, as light filled the sky and a new day dawned.
June has been coming to Plum Village for 28 years and learned the stick exercise there, which she now finds to be an essential part of her daily wellbeing. Much less flexible than June, I attempted to copy her movements as she elegantly twisted and rolled the stick in motions that evoke another world, closer to the Earth and its magic. Each exercise is named for its action whether it be working in the paddy field; Dragon presents his homage to the King, looking at the crescent moon; or rowing a ferry boat in the evening. Many participants who have joined Satish and Junes’ Radical Love courses at Schumacher College will have enjoyed these same stick exercises with June - and have been transported just as I was. One last thing to add about this is that although I had been wanting to practice Qi Gong with bamboo sticks for a long while, thinking it looked so exotic and so picturesque, I had not realised how the practice really does get you flexing your muscles, in ways that are often neglected in a sedentary daily life. With the aid of a bamboo pole the same height as yourself, you really do get a proper work out!
After Qi Gong, we then followed four different breakfast queues for a vegan breakfast, consisting of porridge, lovely organic sourdough baguette, homemade plum jam, fruit and soya yoghurt. After collecting our breakfast we would wait for everyone at each table to sit down. Only then would the bell ring for us to eat, in silence. From 8.30 we could speak to each other again for another 12 hours (provided it wasn’t meal or meditation time). By this time our triste with the baby baths was usually complete and dishes washed.
On most days, a sitting meditation or dharma talk would come an hour after breakfast. Following this, an hour of walking meditation interjected with pauses to appreciate the miracle of being in the surroundings as well connecting with Mother Earth underfoot. Learning to breath gently and deeply, in and out, in and out, coordinated with careful steps is something I really enjoyed and will try to maintain in my regular life. Slowing down, avoiding rushing - making time for mindfulness by building more space into our lives - these are all lessons I need not just to learn but to practice. This includes turning phones onto aeroplane mode and doing a rain check on all the paraphernalia of the modern world that crowds the present moment with constant activity and cultivates grasping and desperation whether we realise it or not.
Nurturing joy was another important thread at Plum Village. I remember one nun giving a dharma talk that stressed the importance of not getting caught up in the moments of pain and suffering either in our own life or other people’s. This means that while you can have compassion for someone’s anguish, and try to support them, you can also balance this support by stepping out of it temporarily, and reconnecting with the joy that is the broader miracle of existence which Thich Nhat Hanh advises is always accessible in some form even, in the worst situations. It could be as simple as a blue sky or a leaf…. or a smile! Or the wagging tail of a dog.
The rhythm of life was pretty similar each week that I was at Plum Village but because different nuns held the dharma sharing, for example, whether it was the ‘beginning anew’ practice (which focussed on developing appreciative forgiving relationships) or the service (or work) meditation, there were always new things to discover about Plum Village and its Theravadan Buddhist philosophy, including mindfulness.
On one Sunday when lay people and Monastics had come together for a formal lunch and a Dharma talk, June and I had the lovely surprise of bumping into the delightful Jacopo Miceli, a former Schumacher College volunteer and student. Jacopo explained that he had already been at Plum Village for a year and planned to stay longer. As a result of meeting Jacopo, we were very lucky to be given a special tour of the Happy Farm where he works. One of Jacopo’s projects is to grow tea - using cuttings from a tea plant that grows on a mountain in China and with advice from a tea grower in Devon, of all places! I later discovered that Dartmoor Estate Teas have been winning awards for their tea, so perhaps Devon is not such a strange place to grow tea after all!
One of the overall highlights for me was the weekly screening of a Dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh himself. I had missed my opportunity to hear Thay in person, so a video was the next best thing. The nick name ‘Thay’ simply means ‘teacher’ and is how everyone at Plum Village refers to the great sage - and indeed, it was how he addressed himself. Having passed away two years ago after suffering a debilitating stroke a few years before this, Thay ended his days in the Vietnamese monastery he originally came from - no longer a threat to the government due to the thousands who would take over the streets to hear him speak and to follow him. By this time, he could no longer speak and communicated only with gestures. Through the videos I came to greatly appreciate Thays scholarship, flexibility and grasp of the Dharma - as well as his humour and compassion.
Regular singing together was also very much part of the Plum Village scene. At first, the songs reminded me of the nursery school songs we used to sing with our children. Songs with positive, simple words, and hand gestures. For example, “I love the roses. I love the daffodils. I love the mountains. I love the rolling hills….”. Soon enough, however, I saw that these songs, so joyfully engaged in by everyone, were almost like mantras - affirmations to remind us continually of what we were about. They were as much part of the furniture of life at Plum Village as the ringing of the bell; the nun singing the heart sutra; or the fluid calligraphies that adorned the walls stating, “the bread in your hand is the body of the cosmos” or, “ you have arrived, you are home” or, “peace in every step”. The wholesome vegan food was another aspect that was also a practical reminder of the fundamental Buddhist precept, not to kill. And with every mealtime contemplation, came some final words which urged us not to contribute to climate change.
The wisdom I bring home from this Wild adventure to Plum Village, is to ride the waves of potential, to optimise abundance, continuity, and integrity…and to see that there may well even be wisdom in a simple washing-up system! This happy, mindful, way of life is our love letter to our mother, the Earth.
Julia’s recommended Earth Loving references for further reading are; Thich Nhat Hanh’s ‘Love Letter to the Earth’ and ‘Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet’; Stephan Harding’s ‘Animate Earth’; and David Abram’s ‘Spell of the Sensuous’.