The key ideas

The Miracle of Mindfulness

Thich Nhat Hanh, 1975

How do you stay yourself when there is a war around you and more work than strength? In 1974 Thich Nhat Hanh answered that question in a letter to a friend in Vietnam, and the letter became a book. You will learn how to turn washing the dishes, a walk and one day a week into practice, and why the most important person is the one beside you right now.

Who it is for

For anyone who has no spare hour for meditation, but does have washing-up, a commute and people they love close by. And for anyone who wants to see where practice begins for one of the best-known Zen teachers.

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.

A letter to a country at war

In 1974 there was a war in Vietnam. The School of Youth for Social Service was working there: its young graduates went wherever the bombs were falling. They rebuilt burned villages, taught children, opened medical posts and helped peasants set up cooperatives. There was more work than strength, and tiredness built up faster than anyone could notice it.

The school's founder, the monk Thich Nhat Hanh, was living in exile at the time and could not go home. He wrote a long letter to one of the school's leading workers, Brother Quang. There were no slogans in it. It talked about how to wash the dishes, how to breathe, how to eat a tangerine and how to live one day a week differently. That letter grew into the book The Miracle of Mindfulness.

The author's main thought is simple and unfamiliar. Mindfulness is not something you do on a mat once you find a free hour. It is a way of doing what you already do: working, eating, talking to the people close to you. To someone who has not a minute to spare, the author does not suggest dropping their tasks, but living them differently.

You will learn where to find time when there is none, why to eat a tangerine one section at a time, what a pebble thrown into a river teaches, and which three answers an emperor received when he wanted never to make a mistake. The book was written for people living through a war, so there is nothing superfluous in it.

How Allen found time that was not there

One day Thich Nhat Hanh's friend Allen came to visit. He said he had discovered a way to have much more time. He used to divide his hours into parts: these for his son, these for his little daughter, these to help his wife, these for the housework. Whatever was left over he counted as his own time, and only then did he read, write or go for a walk.

There was almost nothing left over, and Allen felt his life was going to other people. So he stopped dividing. He began to count the time with his children as his own. When he helped his son with homework, he tried to be in that homework completely and take an interest in it, rather than wait for it to be over. And suddenly he had all the time for himself he could want.

Thich Nhat Hanh does not tell this conversation as a tip on planning. For him it is the heart of practice. As long as you wait for your duties to end and your real life to begin, you are never where you are actually living. But once every task becomes your own, life stops splitting into what you must do and what is yours.

For Brother Quang and his companions this was not an abstract question. Their work in the villages took up the whole day. By the author's logic, work lived this way stops taking life away and becomes life itself.

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About the author

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and Zen master, and the founder of the Plum Village community in France. In 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

All books by this author: Thich Nhat Hanh

The Miracle of Mindfulness Quiz

Terms from the book

  • Mindfulness
  • meditation
  • Hermit
  • Allen
  • Tolstoy
  • Interbeing
  • School of Youth for Social Service: A school Thich Nhat Hanh founded in Vietnam in the 1960s. Its graduates helped peasants hit by the war: they rebuilt villages, taught children and opened medical posts.
  • Quang: Brother Quang, one of the leading workers of the School of Youth for Social Service. The letter that grew into the book was addressed to him.
  • Forest: Jim Forest (1941–2022), an American writer and activist in the movement against the Vietnam War, and a friend of Thich Nhat Hanh.
  • Half-smile: A practice from the book: a slight smile that relaxes the face and helps bring attention back to the present.
  • Day of mindfulness: The author's advice: live one day a week slowly and attentively, doing every ordinary task as practice.
  • Interdependence: The Buddhist idea that everything arises thanks to something else and nothing exists on its own.
  • Contemplation: Looking at something long, calmly and attentively in order to understand it more deeply.

All terms

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