Vegetable stir fries are one of the simplest and quickest meals you can prepare. This recipe features an Asian-inspired peanut sauce that you can make gluten free, and you can use a variety of vegetables.

Fesenjan is a Persian pomegranate and walnut stew that is traditionally made with chicken. This version is an instant crowd pleaser and uses young jackfruit to create a stew that is just as hearty and satisfying as the original.

When we met for our first Mindful Cooking potluck, we never imagined we were starting a practice that would continue for nine years and beyond.  Apparently, we have evolved a format that meets a need and keeps people coming.

We began as a small group of sangha members who were inspired by Thay's 2007 call to move to a plant-based diet for the sake of the Earth.  After several months of e-mailing recipes to each other, we met for a potluck in my garden. We gathered around the food table and read the Five Contemplations together.  When our plates were filled, we settled ourselves in a circle and took turns telling our food stories, going around the circle, and being sure to hear from everyone. The result was a fascinating, surprisingly deep conversation.  

To be alive with this awareness is to practice being an Earth Holder. Breathing in, I am aware of all the trees and plants that offer me oxygen.  Breathing out, I am aware that I offer the gift of carbon dioxide to the trees and plants as well. We interare. In fact, it is not possible to be separate.

A single breath can bring me to the realization of interbeing. As Thay teaches us, it only takes one breath to come back to ourselves.  In this case, the first breath helps me be aware that I am a part of the Great Bodhisattva Earth. In the next breath, I can ask myself, “What will I do with this precious moment, this day, or this life to support my Mother Earth?”

The role of an OI member is to build Sangha. But you don’t have to be an OI member to start building a Sangha.  How do we build Sangha? The manuals for Sangha building say that we need a bell, a vase of flowers, cushions and chairs, the Five Mindfulness Trainings, and some of Thay’s books. We learn how to give simple instructions on mindful breathing, sitting and walking meditation. But when we get caught in form, structure and guidelines, the practice can’t be as fresh, gentle and alive. We are unable to create safe space for nurturing brotherhood and sisterhood, which is the essence of a true Sangha. When we build Sangha, we build a new culture – the culture of mindfulness and love.

Thay has traditionally offered us verses at the beginning of the Lunar New Year as something for us to reflect on and practice with. To continue Thay's tradition, the Plum Village monastics have chosen the phrases, "Peace is the Breathing" and "Joy is the Walking." We invite you to print these out and post them around your home as a reminder of your practice.

If romantic love has these four elements, it can bring a lot of happiness. The Buddha never said anything negative about true love. Romantic love, if you are successful, will cultivate a lot of loving kindness and compassion.

Many of you remember to come back to Plum Village, so this is wonderful. Plum village is like a spiritual family, and I see a lot of familiar faces every year. We all need a spiritual home. This is something lacking in our society, something very important in our life as a human being. We’re not just going around “eating” and trying to make a living, get a car, a house, and so on. There is another dimension that involves the spirit. It is the same stuff that makes us cry, that makes us joyful and happy. There is something more than just running around.

ARISE (Awakening through Race, Intersectionality, and Social Equity) is a group of mindfulness practitioners and monastics in the Plum Village tradition who have come together with the aspiration to use the energy of compassion, understanding, and love in order to heal the wounds of discrimination and social inequity within ourselves and our society. In 2015, due to the racial violence and unrest occurring in the nation, members of the Plum Village community, together with other Buddhist communities, participated in national discussions on racial and social inequities. From these gatherings, ARISE emerged with the desire to use mindfulness as the vehicle to alleviate suffering wherever it existed, knowing that the suffering of one person was the suffering of us all.

If circumstances arise where you need to make a purchase on Amazon, please consider selecting Unified Buddhist Church, Inc. (UBC) as your charity on AmazonSmile. Amazon will donate 0.5% of the price of eligible AmazonSmile purchases to UBC.

We know that working on anger is not just a “management”. We hear that sometimes, “anger management.” I want to emphasize that working to understand our anger is peace work. Peace work, is anger work. Anger work, is peace work.

What Gift Do You Give a Zen Master?

On Wednesday, October 11, 2017, it will be Thich Nhat Hanh's 91st birthday –or as our beloved teacher likes to call it, his Continuation Day! You may wonder, “What kind of gift can I give a Zen master? A person who already practices to have all the conditions of happiness? What would be meaningful for Thay?” We would like to offer this response: We can give Thay the gift of compassion.

The Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation is excited to unveil a new website!

This website features easier navigation, beautiful photographs, and fresh content so you can learn more about how your gifts impact the global Plum Village community. We also have additional mindfulness resources to support you in your practice, so feel free to look around.

When my daughter was around four or five years old, she began to be intrigued by the altar, my sacred little haven of refuge. She’d go over when I was not there, pick up, and study the various adornments and sometimes even sit on the cushion, clearly mimicking me. She’d sit still for a minute at most, and then she’d run off again. Though some part of me wanted to protect my private space from the intrusion of children, later I’d be glad that I’d not discouraged her from spending time there.

Being there for a child when you don’t want to be there for them is one of the biggest challenges of parenting. And it’s one we’re all familiar with because it happens multiple times, every single day. Being there, being right there, being present, in the now—it takes a huge amount of energy and focus.

She imparted the first Dharma lesson to me in the summer of 2009, in the midst of an especially trying day. Looking back now, I am not sure what set me off, only that the morning’s Dharma discussion had dredged up within me a deep melancholy that I hadn’t felt before. At its core was my frustration at the choices I was making as a parent. At the time, my daughters were eight and twelve. One was on the brink of teenagerdom, while the other was prone to regular temper tantrums. To put it simply, I was at my wit’s end and at some point that late morning, I had lost my temper with either one or both of my children.  In any event, I was now teeming with guilt.  I felt hopeless, tired, and very alone, as my husband (my better, calmer half), had not joined us on this particular retreat.  And so, with a heavy heart I left my children crying in the dorm for a walk in the woods. Perhaps with a bit of breathing and alone time I could cool off and find my bearings.

I had the opportunity to teach at a teen retreat recently, and a number of us staff were concerned about one of the youngest teens who seemed to have difficulty integrating into the larger group. The teen was shy and withdrawn, and didn’t come to activities. When they did, they would read a book rather than participate. We tried talking and listening to them and encouraging them to join in. When this met with some resistance, we simply accepted the teen and did our best to let them know they were welcome to be part of the group as they were. Other teens also reached out in different ways to help this teen feel connected.

As the week went on, the teen seemed to feel more comfortable joining in some activities and seemed to be less isolated in the big group. Then at the closing ceremony of the retreat, teens were invited to stand up, come into the center of the circle, and share something with the group. This teen, who at the beginning of the retreat appeared quite awkward and ill at ease, walked slowly to the center of our circle and shared very clearly and with great dignity that the retreat had helped them a great deal, they had learned important things, and they would be taking all of us with them after it ended. Then even more surprisingly, after the closing circle, this teen - who had spoken very little to others that whole week - stood at the door offering free hugs to anyone who wanted them!

The power of a group of people practicing sincerely together is enormous. Things that have not been possible for us up until then become possible.

Commercializing mindfulness is not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes we overuse the word or misunderstand it. It’s sort of like the word “love.” We overuse it. “I love this, I love that.” We lose sight that love is really something different, something larger and deeper than “I love pizza. I love Coca Cola.” I think this film can go a long way to inform people about something other than the commercial aspect of mindfulness.

It’s more than just a fad. It’s something that’s been around for thousands of years, and it is deeply grounded in the historical lineage, going back to the Buddha and other spiritual teachers. Now, it can be presented in a way that is more contemporary and much more accessible.

It is with great happiness that we can announce that “Walk With Me” will have its world premiere between March 10-19 at the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.SXSW is one of the most important and influential film festivals in the film industry calendar with thousands of people attending from all over the world.