Short Journey Home
Awakening to Freedom with Thich Nhat Hanh
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A friend on our path of mindfulness practice, Richard Brady shares one of the first deeply personal accounts of a lay practitioner following in the steps of world-renowned Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Short Journey Home presents a powerful story of transformation, rooted in the author’s long-term and life-changing practice with Thich Nhat Hanh. Richard Brady guides us through his life experiences and lessons learned, offering strikingly deep and sincere accounts of:
his time spent with Thich Nhat Hanh and with senior monastics, his successes and difficulties with community building, practicing with family,working with death, and sharing the practice with others.
Brady skillfully grounds his stories in direct teachings offered by Thich Nhat Hanh, and he organizes these stories according to some of Thich Nhat Hanh’s most powerful lessons on topics like impermanence, interbeing, and transformation.
By taking these teachings to heart, practicing with them diligently, and sharing the results, Brady acts as our spiritual companion, demonstrating how the Plum Village path of practice can lead us to peace, freedom, and awakening in this present moment.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Buddhist retreat leader Brady (Walking the Teacher's Path with Mindfulness) competently traces how his winding spiritual path has been guided by the lessons of Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh. Born into a reform Jewish family, the author flirted with Quakerism as an adult before finding in Buddhism the "missing piece" of his spiritual life. In 1992, he began practicing with Nhất Hạnh at Plum Village, a mindfulness community in France. Inspired by Nhất Hạnh's notion of mindfulness as "dwelling deeply in the present moment" and consciously empowering one's positive impulses, Brady sought to incorporate those lessons into his life. He details introducing yogic practices into his high school math classroom, and—most movingly—revitalizing his relationship with his Alzheimer's-stricken father: "I'm learning to be completely present with another, without language, past, or future." Brady's spiritual ups and downs are documented with welcome candor, though their impact is flattened by static prose and a fractured structure that dips into the author's childhood, therapy sessions, time at Plum Village, and more. Still, it's a robust reflection on what it means to search for life's deeper meaning.
