WHEN it comes to mindful living, I love the saying 'No mud no lotus'. The quote comes from the great Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who was lovingly called Thay.
Thay was a monk who was exiled from Vietnam, later taking refuge in France where he set up a flourishing Zen community called Plum Village. Thay passed away in January 2022 aged 95. He visited Belfast in April 2012 and addressed MLAs and others up in Stormont.
My memory of Thay goes back a number of years to a time when me and my good friend Chris attended a retreat that Thay led in London. It was on that retreat that I first heard the quote 'No mud no lotus' and I found that what I loved most of all about his teachings was his emphasis on keeping it simple. Sometimes when we hear of mindfulness we see too much, but Thay would point out that the beauty of mindfulness lies in keeping things to the minimum.
His talk on 'No mud no lotus' brought to my awareness how we grow through suffering. Another way of putting it is 'No pain no gain'. As an addict I believed that pain was to be avoided at all times and I would have taken anything to avoid suffering. But thanks to mindfulness practice and attending Twelve Step groups, I learned how to live with the pain. From where I sit today, I can honestly say that I can see the lotus grow and blossom from the mud of my suffering. I now know that certain things I resist will persist and that through acceptance I am able to grow.
Mindfulness practice is a way for us to navigate the insanity of this world at any moment in time; it guides us towards healthy coping strategies that are fertilisers to our growth.
I remember in my granny's two-up two-down house in Gibson Street, off Leeson Street, she always had a couple of houseplants in her front window and how she tended to those plants with loving care and attention. She told me that the plants were a reminder of the Armagh countryside where she came from. I recall too around this time of year how her houseplants flowered, like the lotus, and how she had her little bit of Armagh in Gibson Street.
Over the past few days I have been blessed with my own gardening activities as I watch the spring flowers begin to appear and feel how this brings about a certain inner joy as the colours manifest themselves from the seedlings planted in the soil in colder, darker days. This week I was driving through the countryside between Newry and Dundalk and the beauty of the countryside was such that I had to stop the car, get out and breathe it all in.
We must remember in our busy and sometimes hectic lives to stop and smell the flowers, whether outside or inside, to enjoy the countryside, or a garden, or even a houseplant. To notice the lotus.
Let's learn to tend to our inner garden and from our own pain and suffering cultivate compassion for all living beings, that they may be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. And remembering, as the song 'My Lagan Love' says, that 'love is lord of all'.
