Perhaps We Can Find Peace in Every Step
Robin B. Zeiger, Ph.D.
In difficult times like these, I find myself reaching again for Thich Nhat Hahn’s Peace is Every Step. Hahn, a world-famous Vietnamese Buddhist, peace Activist, and prolific writer on mindfulness lived through many difficult times. He was exiled from his country for his activism for almost four decades.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence”
In spite of his activism and his first-hand knowledge of war, Hahn was able to cultivate peace inside.
Right now, more than ever, we must fight and struggle to find the peace inside of us. In working on ourselves, we become better stewards of the world around us.
When I opened the book, I found a page turned over entitled “Breathing Room.” Hahn stated that we have a room for everything in our houses (e.g. eating, sleeping, TV). Yet we do not have a room for mindfulness. He suggested sanctifying a room where one can find space to be alone and to breath and smile. This room he entitled the “Embassy of the Kingdom of Peace.”
This room is to be decorated simply. Perhaps one places pretty items there such as an arrangement of flowers.
Hahn also recommends a bell with a beautiful sound. Every time someone in the house is upset, the person is given the opportunity to enter the room and “invite the bell to sound.” He points out that in his country people do not strike or hit a bell.
Many years ago, I bought a meditation bell. I must confess. I still am not so good at making the bell sound.
Hahn promises that the bell will not only help the person in the breathing room, but it will also touch and influence the others in the house. The spouse will learn to honor and respect his/her partner’s pain and suffering. The child will understand that the parent is upset. Sometimes other may join the individual in the breathing room. An atmosphere is created that invites peace and reconciliation.
In Hahn’s words:
I know of families where children go into a breathing room after breakfast, sit down, and breathe, “in-out-one,” “in-out-two”…and so on up to ten, and then they go to school.
Simple practices like conscious breathing and smiling are very important. They can change our civilization.
Sometimes we feel helpless in the face of trauma, aggression, world unrest, etc. Yet, we can begin with ourselves. We can begin with a breathing room. I must confess. Sometimes my breathing room is my beautiful deck that overlooks the field.
Perhaps we can create our special spaces one step at a time in the wider world.
Read one of my newest articles Time-Out is Not a Punishment: It is an Act of Peace.
Please follow me and discover articles on mindfulness, finding peace in difficult times, Jung, longing and the Little Prince, Black Lives Matter, Amanda Gorman’s poetry and grand-mothering. For more on childhood nostalgia of lighthousesand ice-cream trucks.
Robin B. Zeiger is a practicing Jungian psychoanalyst, a certified sandplay therapist, and a free-lance writer.
She is a member of the:
International Association of Analytical Psychology and the Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology. She can be reached at rbzeiger@yahoo.com.
