Waking Up to Now

Letter From Our Executive Director

July 2024

Dear Beloved Community,

The history of Buddhism offers many wonderful and often colorful stories of lay and monastic practitioners suddenly “waking up” to fully inhabit the present moment.

A bell, the tap of a stick, even the sound of one hand clapping may help us drop the veil of delusion, attachment, and aversion like scales from our eyes. Sometimes, if we’re fortunate, that wake-up comes in the form of a few words spoken by a beloved teacher, as happened to me a number of years ago.

I had the privilege of helping organize Thay’s biannual teaching tours in the United States, which meant I had opportunities to spend time in his company. During one such visit, a few years before Thay’s stroke, a small group of us gathered to have tea with our teacher.

There was the happy recollecting of shared memories, which Thay enjoyed, and then one lay friend asked: “Dear Thay, when are you going to return to the U.S.?”

Thay paused for a few seconds, then said to the friend: “I am here now.”

I bring that moment to mind when I find myself getting carried away with worries about the future or regrets about the past. I remember, as Thay’s friend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, the “fierce urgency of now.” Urgent, because it passes so quickly, and because we know it’s all we really ever have to offer the world.

Which raises the question: how do we spend our “nows” knowing they are fleeting and in limited supply? In a world of wars, climate disaster, and political upheaval, where do we put our energy? What serves as our north star?

For our monastics, their nows are spent offering their presence, practice, and homes (the 11 monasteries Thay established around the world) as refuges of peace, joy, and compassion.

As Thay’s direct spiritual descendants, our monks and nuns are deeply committed to engaged Buddhism and each year offer hundreds of retreats, teaching tours, and Days of Mindfulness, as well as podcasts, online courses (like Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet), books through Parallax Press, and articles on their websites.

You’ll read about many of those activities in this year’s Annual Highlights. You’ll learn about the considerable help some of our monasteries need to meet local building codes and remain open, adequately house monastics and retreatants, and continue serving those seeking a path through suffering. And you’ll meet a few of our many donors who, like you, understand the need to act now to ensure Thay’s monastic community will be here for future generations.