Thich Nhat Hanh, part 1

By Adam Grant

Many great people have served to convey Eastern religious and spiritual ideas to the West, and one of those persons was Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed on January 22nd of this year. The gap between the understandings of these two hemispheres of the Earth is sometimes difficult to bridge, so a person's devotion to the work must be steady to invite success. When this success comes, a tide of energy is able to rush towards areas of need within the field of work.

The East is in the West and the West is in the East, but there is yet more East in the East and more West in the West, even in modern times of increasing globalism. In the West people have pioneered the great monolithic social institutions, driving progress in material enjoyment and comfort to great degrees. Collectively they have come to depend not just on the fruits of these institutions but also on the increasingly rapid delivery, expansion, and evolution of those resources. Expanding in tandem are the pressure and rewards for those working to supply those objects and accelerate the momentum of advancement. As a result, many work beyond their capacity and eventually take a fall. They make great sacrifices for their work, forgetting relations and personal endeavors, but unable to hold the pace, they begin to indulge in vices and are infected by negative thoughts. 

To prosper in demanding circumstances, the mind must be kept strong and improved through mental exercise, and to get free of vices, both mental exercise and purification are necessary. Mindfulness, as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, gives good exercise to the mind and purifies it, so that it is not only unperturbed in and through experiences of everyday events and objects, but also does not spill the droplet of bliss in its palm. The adoption of mindfulness we see in Silicon Valley may not be the full expression of the spiritual attitude of practice, but it’s at least a start. Having a transactional relationship with meditation is much better than having that type of relationship with Adderall (a prescription stimulant commonly abused to increase productivity). The truth is that one who can see the highest emotion in mundane things can easily detect the droplet of poison in those objects of lust and greed, and this truth is in effect from the start.