No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering

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At the very beginning of the book is a quote and approach that can be used when someone asks a difficult question about suffering that has no end in sight. During the Vietnam War, when someone would ask him when the war would end, he knew that he couldn’t tell a lie and say it would be over soon, nor did he want to say that he didn’t know because that would only cause even more despair. So he would answer, “Everything is impermanent, even war. It will end someday.”

No Mud No Lotus T-Shirt Warm Colors | Buddhist Saying | Buddhist Teaching | Gift for Yoga Instructor | Sangha | Meditation Teacher When we bring our mind home to our body, we stop our thinking. There is always a mental discourse going on in our mind, which can carry us away from the here and the now. Thinking can be productive, but most of our thinking is not productive. You may be lost in your thinking. Also your regret and sorrow about the past can stop, as well as your fear, worries, and uncertainty about the future. So just breathing in mindfully brings you a lot of freedom. In just a few seconds you get freedom from the past, from the future, from your thinking and your projects. Write and/or illustrate your own life story about a time you were experiencing darkness and challenging times. Explore as little or as much detail as feels comfortable. Perhaps reflect on whether there were hidden gifts in the darkness that you came to see? Then chronicle your path out of the darkness. Say i n g H e l l o experience what the end of suffering will feel like, it is in the here and the now with this breath. If you want nirvana, it’s right here. Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I smile. 29 The remainder of class we practiced yoga poses of strength in surrender—like the lotus flower that emerges victoriously clean above murky waters—representative of how each of us can overcome life’s painful challenges. In many traditions, the lotus flower symbolizes purification of mind, body and speech; of awakening and letting go. It embodies resilience, as rain from dark clouds slides easily off its petals and it opens itself to the sunshine that follows. In each pose we practiced mindfully observing and making peace with the darkness beneath the lotus—our fear, sadness, anger and other difficult sensations so that we could release them. We experienced the visceral lotus within our own bodies.

Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.” —THICH NHAT HANH” Holding up a card from a woman whose husband, the father of their 4 year old son, had suffered a stroke, my yoga teacher Susan reverently opened class. The card simply said: “No Mud, No Lotus”. This pen drawing of mine was inspired by the quote “No mud, no lotus” by the beloved Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. I have always been drawn to his teachings, and this quote in particular. Looking Deeply what you hear. While the other person speaks, you may hear a lot of bit- terness, wrong perception, and accusation in her speech. If you allow these things to touch off the anger in you, you’ll lose your capacity to listen deeply. Instead, hold on to your true purpose and remind yourself, “Lis- tening like this, my sole aim is to help the other person to suffer less. She may be full of wrong perceptions, but I won’t interrupt her. If I jump in with my perspective on things or correct her, it will become a debate, not a p

So many of us stay busy with diversions, to avoid suffering, despair,anger, loneliness and so forth. But if we don't care for ourselves, how do we offer care to others. That's why we must stop running and practice the work of returning to our minds and bodies, through the breath and stillness. Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.” —thich nhat hanh When a strong emotion comes, we should stop whatever we’re doing and take care of it. The practice is simple. Lie down, you put your hand on your belly, and begin to breathe. You may also do this while sitting in an upright position. Stop the thinking. Don’t allow your awareness to be on the level of the mind. Bring your mind down to the level of your abdomen. When you look at a tree in a storm, if you focus your attention on the top of the tree, it seems the tree is so vulnerable and fragile and could be broken at any time. But when you direct your attention down to the trunk of the tree, you see that the tree is deeply rooted in the soil and can withstand the storm. Your belly is the trunk of the tree and your mind is the top of the tree. In the time of a strong emotion we have to bring our mind down to our trunk, our abdomen, and focus all our attention on the rise and fall of the abdomen. Breathing in, notice the rising of your abdomen. Breathing out, notice the falling of your abdomen. Breathe deeply, and focus your attention only on your in-breath and out-breath. If you’re aware of anything, it's that an emotion is just an emotion and that you’re much much more than one emotion. You are body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. The territory of your being is large. One emotion is nothing. An emotion comes, stays for a while, and then it goes away. Tell the young person: "Why should you die just because of one emotion? You can learn now how to handle a strong emotion. Then later on when a strong emotion comes again, you'll be able to handle it.”No Mud No Lotus Keychain, No Mud No Lotus Charm, No Mud No Lous Quote, Sympathy Gift, Encouraging Gift, Motivating Gift, Success Quote Mindfully experiencing a negative emotion does not mean we don’t prefer, hope for, or work toward something better. It is not a passive approach to life. Rather, being mindful allows us to experience hard moments such as conflict, stress or failure—to learn and grow from these experiences—rendering them less acute and more manageable. And more, it helps us work through our afflictions so that we begin to experience the whole of life in a more productive way. The “Undoing” Effect of Positive Emotions

Plum Village is your home, too. Please help us take care of it and continue Thich Nhat Hanh’s dream – for all of us and generations to come. We see that Thầy has become a cloud; Thầy as a cloud—as the rain, as the mountain, as the forest—smiles on the Sangha in its multifold manifestations and is happy to see it growing in its capacity to serve all living beings. We shouldn’t wait until the strong emotion comes to begin learning. That may be too late; the emotion may carry you away. But you can learn now. Then, if the day after tomorrow you have a strong emotion, you’ll have confidence that you can handle the strong emotion. Nhat Hanh discusses the question of whether or not the Buddha suffered by saying that since he had a body, feelings, and perceptions (like all of us) he should also have experienced suffering. Both physical suffering and mental suffering are unavoidable, but we can suffer much less if we don’t water the seeds of suffering within ourselves. We cannot simply consume to cover up our suffering; we need to practice spiritual skills to develop the ability and strength necessary to look deep into our suffering and make an inner breakthrough. How Can We Use Suffering as a Tool for Growth?If you know how to make good use of the mud, you can grow beautiful lotuses. If you know how to make good use of suffering, you can produce happiness. We do need some suffering to make happiness possible. And most of us have enough suffering inside and around us to be able to do that. We don’t have to create more.” I often teach the practice of creating a coherent narrative to place traumatizing events in proper perspective, learning the lessons we can, and claiming that we can learn as we move into an uncertain future. Neff, K.D., and Germer, C.K. (2013), A Pilot Study and Randomized Controlled Trial of the Mindful Self-Compassion Program. NO MUD, NO LOTUS Both suffering and happiness are of an organic nature, which means they are both transitory; they are always changing. The flower, when it wilts, becomes the compost. The compost can help grow a flower again. Happiness is also organic and impermanent by nature. It can become suffering and suffering can become happiness again.”