Peace Is Every Step is my favourite book. I like it so much that I am thinking about getting another copy just in case something happens to my current one. When researching about this book, i found many others saying the exact same thing!
'in the rush of modern life, we tend to lose touch with the peace that is available in each moment.'
Peace In Every Step is was written in 1991 by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, poet and peacemaker.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Thich Nhat Hanh has written many other books such as ‘Living Buddha,’ and 'Zen Poems.'
He was born in Vietnam but now lives in France in the monastic community, Plum Village. He lectures and gives retreats annually in North America.
The book was published by Bantam Books and contains messages about Buddhism and meditation used in the hectic modern day life.
The book is divided into three parts: "Breathe! You Are Alive," That section teaches the mindfulness principles to use in everyday life in the modern western world.
"Transformation and Healing," which has a gentle approach on the best way to deal with destructive emotions through meditation. Thirdly "Peace Is Every Step" where he provides an approach to peaceful work from meditation.
Bantam describes the book as ' The search for meaning, growth and change.' I couldn't agree more.
the book has 134 pages and has 9 extra blank pages at the end. I presume is it to write peaceful notes or drawings or anything you wish in general. I doubt that those pages were just blank for no reason as it would be a waste of paper.
One day a few years ago I finally understood that I did not want to be like my family and others within the community I live, in life and online (which is a huge point, as my generation spends a lot of their time on the internet.)
I often see and also personally have (now had) a lot of bad emotions, thoughts and actions. I understand that I am oblivious to a lot of the world, as I have been told so, but I think that's my brain cutting off negativity.
I do not wish to harm living creatures, my only wish is that I lead a happy and healthy life and bring others joy. It sounds very corny but I believe these keys things are important. If you don't have your health, you could be happy, is you are not happy, you could try to bring others joy instead of one person. It works in a circle.
As a child I would often have peculiar dreams, strange visions. I believe now that it could have been a previous life. I also believe that because I am fully aware of my actions in this life that it may be my last. In a way I have created my own faith. But from learning Buddhism at school when I was 11 I realised I connected to it strongly.
I have strong writings from when I was younger about the stories I had been on in my previous lives. I was once a female pirate wearing a long frilly red coat and had a huge crew of mixed members. The story I wrote was about a sword fight and how I got stuck in a barrel and peeped through a crack in the wood.
Another was that I was what we would call now as a cave man. I had gotten my hand stuck in part of the rocks of a cave I lived in. I yanked my hand and it began to bleed huge amounts. The last life I will share is I remember being a Jewish slave building the pyramids, I was on a high slope and I looked over my left shoulder to view the pyramids.
I believe I could write a book about my previous lives and about how I remember them. Or maybe it's just my mind playing with previous events i experienced through my day to day life.
I picked up this book in a charity shop. I believe I was meant to pick this book up, it was to happen for a reason. I believe a lot of things are suppose to happen in your life, it's not just a coincidence or something that just happened.
It has only been recently that I have learnt about Buddhism. It was after reading Peace Is Every Step that I decided to look more into it, and I wanted to share the peaceful messages in the final project as I feel that people would appreciate the kind atmosphere of Buddhism and escape suffering for a short time.
My favourite point about this book is that it is not written with an assumption that the reader is a practicing Buddhist, or knows much about Buddhism and meditation.
From reading I have agreed that he offers principles that anyone from ant religion or faith can practise. Religion after all is about peace and happiness. Through the practice of mindfulness and meditation, stress and suffering can be minimized.
The chapters are very short, most likely a page to two or three long. Thich Nhat Hanh was very clever by doing this as he understood that in the current world we live in not many have patients and it is all fast paste. By having short chapters, the points are minimal and straight to business.
I often try to rush through books, but when reading this book I didn't not want to as I was practicing his teachings and enjoyed it more knowing there was still more to learn, something I often don't feel with other non-fiction books.
There are also some humorous passages: "Some of us may prefer to go into our room, lock the door, and punch a pillow. We call this 'getting in touch with our anger."
But I don't think this is getting in touch with our anger at all. In fact, I don't think it is even getting in touch with our pillow. If we are really in touch with the pillow, we know what a pillow is and we won't hit it."
Thich Nhat Hanh, was a huge role in the peace talks that helped end the Vietnam War. He says in order to create peace, every person must become peaceful. The reason behind writing this book is to help others find this way of peaceful living. Even if you do not wish to become a Buddhist, the writing in the book is enough to give the reader thoughts about their actions and to help them in the busy life of the 21st century.
The audience would most likely be humans from North America and Europe. He talks about how others in the world are not as fortunate enough to eat or have possessions.
Before each meal we should draw our hands together in mindfulness and think about those who are not as fortunate enough to eat. He states that doing so it will help us maintain our mindfulness of our good fortune and hopefully one day we could help break the system and gives others help.
From reading the book fully about three times through, and often picking it up as a reminder, my outlook on life has dramatically changed. At times I do think his writing can come across as corny, but I truly believe that's because of how happy Thich Nhat Hanh has become from practicing his preaching's.
He explains that our actions of throwing away masses amounts of plastic is not the direction of peace. Because of the rate and amount of the rubbish we are throwing away, the longer it takes for the items to decompose. He says that natural materials take less time to decompose and become a flower again compared to a plastic bag which could take four hundred years or longer.
The point of sharing this knowledge and making the reader aware is that future generations of children will be living in the world we created and will not know what to do. It might not be effecting us right now but will heavily in years to come.
It is important that as human beings we connect back to nature and breathe away from our own selfish desire of materials.
I generally believe that everybody should have a copy of this book or at least read it. The only criticism I have is that is can come across as cheesy sometimes, but perhaps that could be the fault of the way I am living my life and take information.
Sometimes when I lose my path I pick up this book and flick to any page and start reading. I soon become mindful again.
Comments