Some of the monks Photo: Lynda Berry
An Asian adventure
visit to Thailand as part of an international delegation to witness the establishment of a special Buddhist centre
I remember setting out one October morning from my Portsmouth home, knowing that I was travelling into the unknown. A first time world traveller, I took the train to Heathrow, and from there flew for ten hours to Suvarnabhumi International Airport. On arrival I joined the Thich Nhat Hanh South-east Asia teaching tour for the Thailand segment. We were bussed to the Paradise Resort in Pak Chong, a hotel surrounded by a national park. The scenes of mountains in the distance covered in jungle greeted us each morning.
On the third day the international delegation were taken to visit the ‘new land’ in the process of being purchased by Plum Village. This is where a new practice centre in the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition will be built. We were privileged to be the first to view this land. It is surrounded by mountains and was chosen for its fantastic quality of air. We walked amongst fields of corn and tropical plants, and I recall being handed a piece of vegetation by a Vietnamese nun with a gift for understanding when and which plants were good and ready to eat – an ability so far from any of my own skills. The Plum Village Thailand will replace Bat Nha, the monastery destroyed in Vietnam in 2009 by a Vietnamese government mob. The purpose of the South-east Asia teaching tour was to connect the monastics who had fled Vietnam, many under the age of twenty-five, and to establish a practice centre for them. The Thich Nhat Hanh movement attracted great numbers of Thai people: this was clear from the number who attended the public talks. On the retreat there were 1,600 registered people, mainly from Thailand and Vietnam. Many of the Vietnamese travelled twenty-four hours by bus to take part in the Thailand retreat.
As a result of my first experience of travelling, I have contracted the travel itch. Spiritually, I felt I have joined a much larger story than myself. There was a wonderful energy gelling the international delegation together from the outset of the trip. We were exposed to both Thai Theravada Buddhist traditions alongside Vietnamese Mahayana traditions. Thich Nhat Hanh was open to the Theravada tradition, saying in one of his talks that the ‘son can be found in the father’. Mahayana teachings are derived from Theravada teachings.
As a Quaker attender and practitioner of Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition, I find they complement each other very well. My fellow traveller Paul Davis, an American social worker from Ohio who is descended from Welsh Quakers, commented on how he considered himself to be an eastern Quaker. Both approaches place weight upon direct experience, rather than on theoretical understandings of theology. In Dharma Discussions we are encouraged to speak from the heart, which is paralleled in the Advices & queries 13 ‘…Pray that your ministry may arise from deep experience…’ The importance of silence in healing and resting from our everyday lives is another aspect they have in common.
I found encountering both eastern Buddhists, alongside western Buddhists, opened my eyes to how the ‘practice’ was understood in different parts of the world. I gained a great deal from the experience of the older members of the delegation, and I became a little more considered in my spiritual practice. In the opinion of John Chapman, the teaching tour in Thailand was a great success, which we can only hope will continue, and the plans to build a Plum Village Thailand will succeed. The link to the blog I kept during my travels is as follows: http://thichnhathanhawakened.blogspot.com/.
