Thich Nhat Hanh and Me

The world lost the incomparable Thich Nhat Hanh a few days ago. He was a Buddhist monk, a practitioner of living in the present moment treating all individuals with compassion, and a harbinger of peace. Thich That Hanh changed my life, though I never once met him.

In 2012, I found myself in spiritual crisis. Nothing made sense after the birth of my first child a little over a year prior. I’d lost faith that anything bigger than the world modern humanity created exists anywhere outside of us. God was dead. Dead was nothingness. Nothingness was indifference and the notion of an indifferent existence struck fear into me like nothing else ever has. Disembodied, residing in a state of lonely blackness, terrified that cognizance is occurring as a hellish empty black hole of all the voids I’d be forced to confront for eternity. Nothing actually meaning empty nothingness frightened me but I felt bitterly compelled to hang onto the overwhelming fear just to pacify the need of my own ego to know.

Truth be told, I was terrified of the notion that maybe God did exist and I wasn't good enough. Also scarred that hell awaited for me should I believe in my own innate badness taught to me from Christianity, I decided religion all together was a big pile of shit. God had abandoned me before, left me alone when I’d needed him most - so why believe in him at all?

In 2013 my husband decided to pursue Judaism after he and I both took an online quiz that notified us our spiritual values most greatly aligned with Judaism. Jon was very excited to get started, but I was much more apprehensive. After diving deeper into Judaism, something still didn’t fit. I loved our Rabbi, but she ended up leaving a little less than a year later and something still didn’t feel right. Spirit knew on some level that Judaism, as wonderful as some of it was, just wasn’t me.

Before we quit going to Temple (we moved to a place with no real Jewish community or temple), I’d decided to continue to explore. Our Rabbi had resolved some of my deep-seated fears and opened me up just enough that I thought maybe, just maybe, spirituality could be something that I could have, too. At home late at night in bed on my cellphone, I started searching for information about Buddhism. I’d already been reading the blog Zen Habits after stumbling upon it looking for organizational tips and realized he used Buddhist principles in his work. These searches kept leading to a prominent man in the buddhist community, a monk that had a sizable impact on the Buddhist movement - Thich Nhat Hanh.