Reframing Suffering as Medicine

Welcome to episode 45 of The Way Out Is In: The Zen Art of Living, a podcast series mirroring Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s deep teachings of Buddhist philosophy: a simple yet profound methodology for dealing with our suffering, and for creating more happiness and joy in our lives.

This time, the presenters – Zen Buddhist monk Brother Phap Huu and journalist Jo Confino – are joined by lay practitioner Nick Kenrick to talk about Plum Village as a healing center, the many reasons people go there, and the personal transformations and deep healing life journeys taking place there. For the past 18 months, Nick has been living with the Plum Village community of monastics and lay practitioners, and kindly agreed to share his own transformative deep healing journey. 

Nick Kenrick worked as a diplomat for the British government for nine years before retraining to work as a psychotherapist for the next decade. He has visited Plum Village every year since Thay and his monastics came to the UK in 2010, and helped to found Wake Up London — a local sangha for younger practitioners in the city – following Thay’s visit. He joined the Order of Interbeing in 2018 and has been living in Plum Village since June 2021. 

Nick’s deep sharing touches upon the conditions that brought him to Plum Village, and upon exhaustion and breakdown, changing careers, and recovery and aspects of healing, including the practices he found refuge in. He further delves into individual and collective suffering; perceptions and the roots of conflict; befriending despair; psychotherapy and spiritual practice; healthy boundaries; following ‘the schedule’; sharing circles; taking refuge in the sangha; and much more.

In addition, Brother Phap Huu shares about Plum Village as a practice center for meditation and mindfulness; the energy of collective mindfulness; meditation and its healing dimension; mindfulness of the body; and the importance of the schedule in the life of the community. 

And Jo recollects aspects of his own healing journey, and of learning through practice about some hard facts of life.

You also get to witness the Plum Village tradition of watering the positive seeds and showing appreciation. 

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Co-produced by the Plum Village App:
https://plumvillage.app/

And Global Optimism:
https://globaloptimism.com/ 

With support from the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation:
https://thichnhathanhfoundation.org/ 

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List of resources 

Sister Chan Khong
https://plumvillage.org/about/sister-chan-khong/ 

Wake Up London
https://wakeuplondon.org/ 

Order of Interbeing
https://orderofinterbeing.org/

‘Home Practices for the Rains Retreat’
https://plumvillage.org/articles/home-practices-for-the-rains-retreat/ 

‘Extended Practises’ (Dharma sharing)
https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness/extended-practises/ 

The Organic Happy Farms
https://plumvillage.org/community/happy-farm/ 

Brother Phap Linh
https://plumvillage.org/people/dharma-teachers/brother-phap-linh/ 

Sister True Dedication
https://plumvillage.org/people/dharma-teachers/sister-hien-nghiem/ 

Calligraphy
https://plumvillage.org/thich-nhat-hanh/calligraphy/ 

‘The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings’
https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness/the-14-mindfulness-trainings/ 

Bodhicitta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhicitta 

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Quotes

“Plum Village is a place where monks, nuns, and lay practitioners come to cultivate the seeds of mindfulness and the seeds of awareness, so that they can take care of their personal lives physically and emotionally. And through meditation, it offers a space and time to reflect.”

“Plum Village has evolved into a community where practitioners live together, practice together, and produce an energy of collective mindfulness. And this collective mindfulness can become a source of energy to help individuals return to themselves, to look deeply within their current situation and find a way to heal, and find a way to rediscover themselves, so that they can come to the base of their suffering for a real transformation.” 

“We never say meditation and Zen will heal you completely and take care of all your suffering. Because for us, it’s a journey, it’s a path, and, actually, suffering is a part of the antidote. Suffering is a part of the transformation – so this understanding of Zen and Buddhism is very important; we’re not here to give you a quick fix: it’s a commitment to be with oneself and to learn to be vulnerable to oneself, as well as to others. I believe that’s where true transformation can begin, because that’s accepting oneself.” 

“Spirituality, the practice of meditation, also has a dimension of healing, because what is healing? For us, healing is having time to stop, to rest, and to discover what is happening in the here and now, physically, emotionally, and mentally, so that we can rebalance and not suppress our wounds, but have time to care for them, to mend them, to patch them, to give them the tenderness that they need.”

“I’m so grateful to Thay for using organic metaphors in the teachings, [for suggesting] that being a mindfulness practitioner is like being a gardener. Sometimes you’ve got this really smelly compost, I mean, awful: ‘What on Earth can I do with this?’ And I did not know what to do with this except to follow the schedule and watch my mind. And gradually I saw my mind turning it over. The following day, it would be softer, some of the edges would come off. And then I would see that it would bring pains up, it would turn them over; they would go down again. And I began to realize that there was a practitioner within my mind that was starting to take care of this for me. And the condition I needed to provide was to keep showing up, to let that process work.”

“If I wake up in the morning and I feel good, I follow the schedule. If I wake up and I feel bad, I follow the schedule. If I wake up and I’m consumed by existential dread and despair, I follow the schedule. And I recognize through this the potential for a gradual liberation; that no matter what state I’m in, I can follow the schedule, because the schedule is so fundamentally wholesome.”

“Being open is the first element of learning.” 

“When we learn to practice, we always say, ‘Feel the breath, don’t think about the breath.’ We say, ‘Feel the body, don’t think about the body.’ Because if you are mindful, you can feel the tension, you can feel the muscles. And the body is a teacher. If you truly learn to tune into your body, you know what to do and what not to do.” 

“Don’t wait until you suffer to practice. It’s too late by then; you won’t know how to practice, because you haven’t yet tasted the goodness of the practice.” 

“The engine that was moving forwards left me with a sense of helplessness, because I could only do the bit I could do. But it was enough to experience in that situation these awful conflicts; when perceptions changed and when trust could develop, and when the humanity of each other could be recognized, genuine change in attitude and motivation could take place. I saw that in conflict. Of course, I’ve also seen that in the therapy room; I’ve seen that in the community. And the Buddha’s diagnosis was that, when we get down to the root, the drivers of pain and suffering will be in the energies of hatred, of delusion, of ignorance, of greed. That’s absolutely what I saw.”

“The despair held in mindfulness was slowly dissolving aspects of my past that I was very locked onto. And when I started to see that these experiences of very deep pain could actually be healing experiences, healing me of a fixation or an attachment, when there were enough conditions of safety and mindfulness and care around, there was a very deep shift in my relationship to suffering.”

“When we become rigid and certain about a worldview and we need to have other people agree with it, peace will not come. That is not the way to peace. We can’t wait for everyone to hold the same view. We need the tools to live in harmony; even when we have different perceptions, we have ways to work with it.”