Sabine Lichtenfels - Spiritual Work

To all Peaceworkers,

It is not unusual that governments regard people who are committed to peace as a threat and thus attack them. This time the Buddhist monk Tich Nhat Hanh and his monastery movement is under attack.

About Tich Nath Hanh:

Tich Nath Hanh was born in Vietnam in 1926. Early in life he became a Buddhist monk and began to teach and to renew and modernize the Buddhist religion. He is regarded as the spokesman for the Buddhist peace movement. In 1967 Martin Luther King nominated Tich Nath Hanh for the today Nobel Peace Prize. Many of his friends who took an unconditional stand for nonviolence are treated today as war criminals in their country. Tich Nath Hanh now lives in the south of France where he has established a monastery.

In 2005, he had been invited to Vietnam, after that, thousands of young people formed groups to follow his teachings of awareness. Some of them started the Zen monastery Bat Nha. Now the government threatens to abandon the monastery on September 2nd. For weeks, the monchs and nuns have been persecuted. Thich Nhat Hanh asks you to sign this petition to help.

We have only a few days left to help. Please look at the following link for exactly how you can offer your support:

http://www.plumvillage.org/public_html/sangha-news/146-sign-petition-to-help-thich-nhat-hanh-and-bat-nha.html

Text of Empowerment:

(from Tich Nath Hanh, "The Buddha, his life, his teachings, his wisdom." Theseus Verlag - publisher)

Love is understanding

(...)

The King regarded Buddha kindly.... There are many ways of loving. We should examine the nature of each kind of love carefully. Life requires a high measure of love, but not the kind of love that is based on lustfulness, passion, attachment, discrimination and prejudice. Majesty, there is another kind of love which is urgently wanted and needed; this love consists of loving kindness and compassion, or maitri and karuna.

When people speak of love they normally refer to the love between parents and children, man and woman, family members or members of a cast or a country.

However, since the nature of such love dwells on the notions of "I" and "mine," it remains caught in attachment and differentiation. People want to only love "their" parents, "their" partners, "their" children, "their" grandchildren, "their" own relatives and "their" countrymen. Since they are entangled in attachment, they worry about accidents that might happen to their loved ones before anything ever happens. If an accident does occur, they suffer terribly.

Love which rests on differentiation creates prejudice. People become indifferent or even hostile towards people who do not belong to the circle of their loved ones.

The love all human beings hunger for is loving kindness and compassion. Maitri is the love through which we can bring happiness to each other. Karuna is the love through which we can put aside all suffering for one another. Maitri and Karuna demand nothing in return....They embrace all human beings and creatures. In Maitri and Karuna there is no differentiation, no "mine" or "not mine".....They cause neither suffering nor despair. Without them, life would become meaningless, as you have said.

Loving kindness and compassion fill life with peace, joy and contentment.

Sentence of Empowerment: With compassion in our hearts, every thought of ours, every word and every deed can create a miracle.

With best wishes

Sabine Lichtenfels