Oprah: Beautiful. Now I'm going to ask just a few
questions about monkdom. Do you exercise to stay in shape?
Nhat Hanh: Yes. We have the ten mindful movements. We do
walking meditation every day. We practice mindful eating.
Oprah: Are you vegetarian?
Nhat Hanh: Yes. Vegetarian. Complete. We do not use
animal products anymore.
Oprah: So you wouldn't eat an egg.
Nhat Hanh: No egg, no milk, no cheese. Because we know
that mindful eating can help save our planet.
Oprah: Do you watch television?
Nhat Hanh: No. But I'm in touch with the world. If
anything really important happens, someone will tell me.
Oprah: That's the way I feel!
Nhat Hanh: You don't have to listen to the news three
times a day or read one newspaper after another.
Oprah: That's right. Now, the life of a monk is a
celibate life, correct?
Nhat Hanh: Yes.
Oprah: You never had trouble with the idea of giving
up marriage or children?
Nhat Hanh: One day when I was in my 30s, I was
practicing meditation in a park in France. I saw a young mother with a
beautiful baby. And in a flash I thought that if I was not a monk, I would have
a wife and a child like that. The idea lasted only for one second. I overcame
it very quickly.
Oprah: That was not the life for you. And speaking
of life, what about death? What happens when we die, do you believe?
Nhat Hanh: The question can be answered when you can
answer this: What happens in the present moment? In the present moment, you are
producing thought, speech, and action. And they continue in the world. Every
thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your
signature. Action is called karma. And that's your continuation. When this body
disintegrates, you continue on with your actions. It's like the cloud in the
sky. When the cloud is no longer in the sky, it hasn't died. The cloud is
continued in other forms like rain or snow or ice. Our nature is the nature of
no birth and no death. It is impossible for a cloud to pass from being into
nonbeing. And that is true with a beloved person. They have not died. They have
continued in many new forms and you can look deeply and recognize them in you
and around you.
Oprah: Is that what you meant when you wrote one of
my favorite poems, "Call Me By My True Name"?
Nhat Hanh: Yes. When you call me European, I say yes.
When you call me Arab, I say yes. When you call me black, I say yes. When you
call me white, I say yes. Because I am in you and you are in me. We have to
inter-be with everything in the cosmos.
Oprah: [Reading
from the poem] "I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the
river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.... I am the
child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am
the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the 12-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by
a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.... Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and
laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by
my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open,
the door of compassion." What does that poem mean?
Nhat Hanh: It means compassion is our most important
practice. Understanding brings compassion. Understanding the suffering that
living beings undergo helps liberate the energy of compassion. And with that
energy you know what to do.
Oprah: Okay. At the end of this magazine, I have a
column called "What I Know for Sure." What do you know for sure?
Nhat Hanh: I know that we do not know enough. We have to
continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our
knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality. When you climb
a ladder and arrive on the sixth step and you think that is the highest, then
you cannot come to the seventh. So the technique is to abandon the sixth in
order for the seventh step to be possible. And this is our practice, to release
our views. The practice of nonattachment to views is at the heart of the Buddhist
practice of meditation. People suffer because they are caught in their views.
As soon as we release those views, we are free and we don't suffer anymore.
Oprah: Isn't the true quest to be free?
Nhat Hanh: Yes. To be free, first of all, is to be free
from wrong views that are the foundation of all kinds of suffering and fear and
violence.
Oprah: It has been my honor to talk to you today.
Nhat Hanh: Thank you. A moment of happiness that might
help people.
Oprah: I think it will.
