I wondered if I would ever see Thich Nhat Hanh again.
It was 2013, during his final North American teaching tour, and we were at Blue Cliff Monastery in the Catskills. The retreat had just wrapped up, and I’d stayed to interview him. We talked about many things—his family, karma, the key to happiness. Then at the end, feeling a mix of happy and sad, I put my hands together in gassho. It was wonderful to connect with Thay, as his students call him, but he was getting older, frailer. Would this be the last time I’d see him?
The next day, almost all of the eight-hundred-plus retreatants were gone, leaving only the monastics, lay volunteers, and me. In the morning, we were a small group eating breakfast under a tarp.
Truth be told, I wasn’t chewing my corn on the cob as mindfully as I could have. But suddenly I was brought back to the present moment by the sight of Thay crossing the lawn, coming toward us.
Thay walked with a couple of brown-robed brothers, taking slow, deliberate steps. His facial expression was placid but profoundly aware. Even in movement, he expressed a stillness I’d never seen in anyone else.
Arriving under the tarp, he went from table to table, greeting people individually and smiling widely as children spontaneously hugged him. When he came to me, he patted me on the shoulder and asked if I was enjoying the dharma book he’d lent me. If I’d had the unselfconsciousness of a child, I would have hugged him.
Then Thay took his quiet leave, crossing back over the green lawn. Again, I found myself wondering: Is this the last time I’ll see him?
was still a child when he had his first spiritual experience. On a school trip, he visited a sacred mountain near his home in central Vietnam where a hermit was said to live. Thay, separating from the group, wandered into the forest to look for him. But instead of finding the hermit, he found a natural well with water so
