The Next Buddha is the Community, Not an Individual
“One Buddha is not enough.
We need many Buddhas.”
—THÍC H N HẤT HẠN H ’S S P EECH
A DDR ESSIN G THE 20 0 9 P OWR I N
M E LBOU RN E, AUS T R A L I A
LE A DE R?
Our teacher, Thích Nhất Hạnh, always told us that
as Buddhist practitioners, our individual career
is the career of the Sangha, which is the work of
spreading the Dharma, the teaching of love and
understanding, through our daily actions of body,
speech, and mind.
Thầy used to say, “People do not benefit from
my talks alone; they benefit from the collective
energy of the Sangha. This is why I only accept
invitations to speak if I can bring my Sangha along
with me.”
Thầy alone wouldn’t have been able to reach
out to millions of people without his community.
Building community was at the heart of his work.
The same is true for the Buddha, who went
to look for the five spiritual friends who had been
practicing asceticism with him before. Right after
Shakyamuni Buddha reached full enlightenment,
he gave his first teaching, Turning the Wheel of
Dhamma (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta), in the
Deer Park near Varanasi to his former five companions. From there, more and more people joined
and followed him, a development that continues
today.
Brotherhood, sisterhood, and siblinghood are the
most important things in our practice and community life. The ability to live in harmony with others
is paramount.
“The greatest talent is to know how
to live in harmony with others.”
—T H Í CH N H ẤT H ẠN H
Plum Village, France, a monastic and lay residential community, has been a living community
cultivating peace, harmony, and healing (collective and individual) since its inception in 1982.1 We
have witnessed that when arriving on the grounds
of Plum Village (or in one of our mindfulness pracThe Next Buddha
is the Community,
Not an Individual
Sister Lực Nghiêm answers the question: How can a mindful living
community play a role in spiritual leadership, and how can it respond to
the multiple crises of our time as an example for change?
tice centers around the world), people instantly
feel something shift in their bodies and minds.
Thanks to the collective energy of mindfulness
generated over the last forty-one years through
simple yet very powerful practices, Plum Village
visitors benefit directly. Integrated in subtle ways,
this energy of peace and gentle awareness of each
moment helps us to touch and recognize what is
happening in our deeper layer of consciousness.
When as a community we commit to practicing walking meditation, following our breath,
slowing down, and stopping with the sound of the
bell, we develop a powerful collective energy of
awareness and concentration that by itself creates
a safe space for everyone. In this very present moment, we build the future.
Fully aware of what is happening in the here
and now, it becomes easier to act in a way that
supports goodness, beauty, compassion, peace,
and reconciliation. We refrain from uttering hurtful
or divisive words or from acting in a way we know
will continue the cycle of violence and suffering.
The way we are encouraged to speak to each other using mindful and skilful speech, to act with
calm and ease, to look at reality through the lens
of impermanence, non-self, and interbeing, has an
immediate impact on the quality of our being and
of our presence. Our state of consciousness, our
awareness, is the crux of the answer to the crises of
our time. We need not a state of doing or reacting,
but a state of being. We must know how to calm
our body and mind and learn how to be a true human being, not a human doing.
Just like other “corporations,” the monastics of
Plum Village need to have many meetings to prepare retreats and to make all kinds of decisions
relating to community life. Our meetings are a
laboratory where we explore our own hearts and
minds! Only one person shares at a time, and everyone else listens without interrupting. We invite
a bell to sound to help us come back to ourselves
and breathe together if strong emotions come up.
We take the time to ask everyone to give input,
because we know that the most powerful kind of
action is based on the collective insight and wisdom of the group. The eyes of the community see
far more clearly than any one individual’s eyes,
no matter how good that person’s ideas are. Collective action is not action for boosting our ego,
taking part in the battle of competitiveness and
one-upmanship, or having more fame, power and
success. In Buddhism, we consider such dynamics
to be aspects of the three main roots of suffering:
illusion/ignorance, hatred/violence, greed/desire.
Living every day with people from different
generations, backgrounds, countries, and cultures, we often encounter challenges and difficulties, but at the same time we encounter beauty and
hope. No one tries to impose their views on others
or pushes for a certain decision to be made, even
if they are an elder in the community. There is no
boss who is making the decisions for the community. It is always a decision based on the consensus
of the council of fully ordained monks and nuns.
The decision-making body is the community itself.
Compassionate leadership is an art2: the art
of being present for each other, listening to each
other, and trying to understand each other. We try
to understand the other person’s hopes and joys
as well as their fears and suffering. It is often only
when we have enough understanding among the
members of the community that a decision can be
made harmoniously; often, almost everyone has
to let go of their original ideas and viewpoints to
let the decision be shaped by the collective consciousness. Then great action is possible, because
everyone feels part of it—included, full of energy
and enthusiasm.
This is why Thầy always suggested to politicians, CEOs, and business leaders that they come
together within their teams or corporations to
practice the art of togetherness: mindful breathing, walking meditation, eating meditation, and
“just listening” to each other, “just being present”
for each other. We need to bring calm, sanity, and
ethics into our corporate world and political parliaments to support decisions that make sense in the
face of the many complex problems of our times. If
we want peace, we need to be peace.
GOING B EYO N D “YO U A ND I ”
When we take refuge in the Three Jewels—the
Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha—we are not
taking refuge in doctrines or scriptures or a guru,
but in a way of life, a way of living together as one
body. We stop seeing ourselves as a separate cell
in the body with special needs and demands. We
clearly experience that Being rather than Doing is
the most important contribution we can make to
benefit the community. We go beyond the idea of
“same and different,” beyond the dualistic thinking of “You and I.” We free our mind from thinking,
comparing, judging, or criticizing.
This experience of togetherness supports each
of us widening the elusive borders of our “uniqueseparate-self-ego-Me” that has brought about
much of the suffering of our modern, industrialized countries: competition, insatiable desires,
despair, loneliness, burnout, and unworthiness,
all of which have led to the ongoing exploitation
and destruction of our relationship with the Earth
and others. The joy, love, and hope that comes
from feeling truly alive and from living the reality
of togetherness is like a flame in our hearts that
brightens our days and the days of the people we
live and work with. We become the light.
The community of mindful living is a soil for understanding, transformation, and healing, both on a
personal level and on a larger scale. When everyone takes refuge in oneself and in the collective at
the same time, our powers of discernment and action are strengthened.
When we understand the delusion of our mind
and stop trying to avoid unpleasant feelings while
desperately searching for happiness outside of
ourselves, we lay out the foundations for resilience
and peace both within us and in the world.
It isn’t always easy, but with the energy of
mindfulness and concentration supported by each
community member looking deeply into themselves to gain more understanding and bringing
their ancestral and spiritual heritage to the group,
we are building a magical communion, a reunion,
a coming-together-as-one human family: one loving family.
The love generated through joys and tears,
love rooted in the deep source of life, makes us
touch life as a miracle—we treasure and respect it
as the most precious gift we have. This reverence
for life should be the ground on which national and
international political decisions are made. The
ability of religious and spiritual communities to be
part of this decision-making depends on an individual and collective shift in consciousness so that
we can come together, talk together, and listen to
each other; in this way, we can build the world we
want to see.
1 For more convenience to the reader, I will use our root
community in France called “Plum Village” as the main
subject of this paper, bearing in mind that each of our
eleven monasteries practice and live in the same way,
applying the same principles.
2 Examples of Thầy’s actions in the 1950s that supported
togetherness and showcased his art of leadership:
- In 1954, Thầy, aged twenty-eight, was appointed
director of studies of the Ấn Quang Institute in Saigon.
There was so much poverty and hardship in the country
at that time—everyone was desperate for food, clothing,
and shelter, and an attitude of “chacun pour soi” (each
man for himself) reigned. Thầy made efforts to change
this attitude: he took out walls in the dorms so that
monks lived, studied, worked, practiced, and played
together, thus learning to care for each other. - 1956: Thầy became chief editor of the official Buddhist
association magazine in Saigon—he then brought all the
different Buddhist groups together to promote peace
and reduce suffering. But there was a lot of opposition,
especially from the religious leaders—they feared they
would lose their positions and “power” if they joined a
larger entity.
These are excerpts from papers written for the
Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, Illinois,
US, in August 2023. The complete versions of these
papers can be found at mindfulnessbell.org.
Sister Lực Nghiêm was ordained in 2008 by Thích Nhất
Hạnh in Plum Village, France, and received the Dharma
Lamp in 2016. Sister Lực Nghiêm has offered retreats in
Israel/Palestine and continues to organize opportunities for
young Palestinians to come to Plum Village to experience
mindfulness practice in the spirit of friendship, joy, and
compassion. In 2016, Sister Lực Nghiêm started a Happy
Farm in the Lower Hamlet and reached out to local organic
farmers and grocery stores to help her community eat more
locally and organically. She is always looking for ways to
improve and deepen her relationship with Mother Earth and
to be in touch with the suffering of the world in order to find
answers in herself and within her community. Sister Lực
Nghiêm is the co-founder and a core member of Gardiens
de la Terre (the francophone Earth Holder Community).
She has a strong aspiration to walk the path of spirituality,
exploring the art of merging contemplation and action, and
giving space to let her musicality and her love for mountains
be heard and explored.
Sisters Lực Nghiêm and Trì Nghiêm at the
PoWR Climate Repentance Ceremony; photo