Tears Become Rain

Tears Become Rain

Contents

Introduction
PART 1: The Power of Community and Belonging
My Place in the Circle - Eliza King, United States
Together When the Dam Breaks - Richard Brady, United States 
Mother’s Bones, Father’s Heart - Camille Goodison, United States 
Wandering Along Like a Masterless Samurai - Gary Gach, United States
Insight Like a Mirror - Karla Johnston, United States
Confusion Disappears with Each Step - Hans d’Achard van Enschut, Netherlands 
A Handful of Salt - Natascha Bruckner, United States 

PART 2: Interbeing: We Are One
Holding Your Hand in Mine - Annette Saager, Germany
Gently Blowing out the Fires - Chaya Ocampo Go, Philippines 
Thầy in Disguise - Vickie MacArthur, Canada
The Whole Universe in an Apple - Huy Minh Tran, Australia

PART 3: Coming Home to Ourselves
Just One Look - Kaira Jewel Lingo, United States 
Owning My Voice - Trish Thompson, Vietnam 
So Much in a Cup of Tea - Paz Perlman, France 
My Kumbaya Moment - Susan Patrice Garofalo, United States
There Is Something in His Gaze - Celia Landman, United States
Suddenly I Realize I Need Nothing Else - Eevi Beck, Norway

PART 4: Reconciliation: Coming Back to Each Other
An Ex-Nun, Addiction, and Forgiveness - Joann Malone, United States 
We Come from the Same Quiet Place - Nel Houtman, Switzerland
My Five-Year-Old Father - Dale William (Bill) Woodall, United States
Us vs. Them: Letting Go of Sides - John Bell, United States

PART 5: Facing Fear
What If, What If, What If? - Jindra Čekan/ová, Czech Republic
Phew! What a Wonderful Colon I Have! - Katie Sheen, United Kingdom 
Raging with Reason - Marilyn J. Rivers, Canada

PART 6: Loss and Grief
The Last Time I Saw My Son, Alex - Teresa L. Waller, United States 
Freedom from My Own Mind - Joanne Friday, United States
A Tiny but Perfect Cloud - Jared Bibler, Switzerland
Unwrapping My Present - Alejandro Cerda, México 
Practicing Happiness in the Face of Death - Anne von der Lühe, Germany

PART 7: Being Here Now: The Wonders of the Present Moment
Finding Balance in a Wooden Canoe - María Victoria Rivera-Paez and Nicolás Bermúdez Vélez, Colombia 
What Is Eating Me - Coralee Hicks, United States
Thank You for Being Late - Nicole Dunn, United States

Excerpt from the Introduction


Many of us have stories of a moment that elicited a “wow” of wonder or a sigh of relief, when we realized that we are okay—our tears have become rain. This book is a collection of such stories, with a common reason for that quiet confidence: Thích Nhất Hạnh. Some of the authors shine light on ugly truths, which readers may experience intensely. Other stories reveal humbling moments that many of us can relate to. In some stories, we can hear the authors smiling as they marvel at the uplifting impact of looking deeply at their experiences and telling their stories. Many leaned on their mindfulness practice as they dug into feelings and experiences that had wounded them deeply, even as they expressed gratitude for the opportunity to do such painful work. All stories in this collection come from authors sharing what is real and true for themselves, “like water reflecting,” as Thầy says. Some authors navigated illness or other challenges while at the same time writing, revising, and answering our questions. For two authors, Joanne Friday and Bill Woodall, their stories are among the last gifts they gave. Having died before the book made it to final publication, they remain with us in these pages. Tears Become Rain is not full of solutions, and it does not address all of our problems. But each story illustrates a way to be okay with strong emotions, wherever and however they arise. In each story, Thầy is there, showing us that when we live completely in the present moment, we can discover the beauty of what is right in front of us and choose to water our seeds of joy.
[…]


Through his teaching, his many poems and books, and Engaged Buddhism, Thích Nhất Hạnh gave his life to helping other people suffer less, even while he contintued to sit with his own suffering. He learned experientially, implementing in his own life the Buddha’s teachings about understanding impermanence and showing ourselves compassion. Born in Vietnam in 1926, Thầy became a novice monk at sixteen. He studied and practiced during the Japanese occupation of his country and the famine that followed. Then, while the Vietnam War raged, he combined traditional Buddhist meditation with compassionate action to care for the victims on both sides while rebuilding shattered villages. This was the birth of Engaged Buddhism.


Devastation, chaos, and death were elements of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s daily life. As he described it, they were also his teachers and affected him deeply. He was determined not to hide within monastic life to avoid the violence; instead, he threw himself fully into efforts toward peace. In the midst of the Vietnam War, he lost his beloved mother and sank into a deep depression. Through daily practice, Thầy developed understanding and clarity that led him out of despair. “I realized that my mother’s birth and death were concepts, not truth,” he wrote in his journal several years later. “The reality of my mother was beyond birth or death.” In this way, Thầy used his personal experiences to gain insight into the truth of Buddhist teachings and, in doing so, became a source of peace for himself and others.
Throughout his life, Thích Nhất Hạnh has shown us that we have the special ability—and the opportunity, if we accept it—to stop and look closely at the source of our tears. We can quietly, slowly, with our in-breath and our out-breath, peel back the figurative onion layers of our complex existence. And, just like if we were peeling a real onion, that process may bring tears; how we hold that suffering is up to us.
“The way out is in,” Thầy explains. “To go back to oneself and take care of oneself, learning how to generate a feeling of joy, learning how to generate a feeling of hap- piness, learning how to handle a painful feeling, a painful emotion, listening to the suffering allows understanding and compassion to be born. And we suffer less.”


[…]


We know that thousands of people just like us have also been lifted up by Thầy’s simple wisdom for how to live, love, and enjoy life. That is why we conceived this book: it is a gift, a labor of love to provide space for those with something personal to share. Neither of us expected what else this project became—a profound, essential practice that buoyed both of us through three years of personal and global turbulence and anchored us in gratitude during many sad and joyful moments. While we worked together and separately to guide, coax, encourage, and refine the work of nearly three dozen authors into a coherent whole, we found ourselves (by will and necessity) deepening our own mindfulness practice.
It has been an honor to be trusted by so many coura- geous authors. A personal story is different from fiction; it springs from our own experience, emotionally and psy- chically steeped in passionate purpose, and can therefore feel like a high-stakes endeavor. Our belief in the power of speaking from the heart and listening deeply bonded all of us on the path of producing this book. We are grateful for this opportunity to shine a spotlight on the art of spir- itual transformation and to inspire anyone with whom it resonates.
From the start, we wanted this book to be a place for people to thoughtfully share ideas and ways to bring more peace into their own lives and into the world at a time when it seemed to be going in the other direction. Then, nine months into our first year of work, the COVID-19


pandemic turned many of us upside down. Fear, misun- derstanding, and judgment swirled around the political landscapes in many countries, economies stalled, and the racial reawakening in the United States rippled into many other parts of the world. As these events stretched what we thought might be a yearlong project into two years, and then three, we saw again and again, vividly, the impor- tance of waking up and seeing things clearly as they are. We experienced how powerfully our actions affect others. Our authors’ stories reminded us of the infinite possibility of cultivating beauty, joy, and peace in all circumstances.
If you want to cry, please cry.
And know
That I will cry with you. The tears you shed
will heal us both.
Your tears are mine.
The earth I tread this morning
transcends history.
Spring and Winter are both present in the moment. The young leaf and the dead leaf are really one.
—From “Oneness” by by Thích Nhất Hạnh
Thầy shared this poem, an expression of love that feels both tender and solid, as a way of holding us gently and encouraging us to be present for each other. “I will cry with you.” During the course of producing this book, we received this message over and over, in heartfelt notes, short poems, and encouragement from people who believed in the project and believed in us. We are all interconnected.


As we editors adapted our pace to what our hearts and minds were able to hold at each step of this journey, we could hear Thầy’s voice in the stories we were reading. These submissions were mini dharma talks, Buddhist teachings that gently guided us forward.
Several authors featured here have taken great risk, sometimes personal, sometimes professional, and because of Thích Nhất Hạnh, they trusted us. It is a testament to the power of Thầy’s teaching and his many decades of community-building that these writers of different nation- alities, cultural backgrounds, ages, and identities would read an invitation from two total strangers, pour their stories onto paper, and send them for our consideration. “Student of Thích Nhất Hạnh” was the only credential we needed. All of us, editors and authors, have studied and practiced in Thầy’s tradition, probably even together sometimes, unwittingly attending the same public lecture or retreat but rarely meeting.
Several times, a story we were discussing turned out to be a love note to one of us editors as we cradled our own suffering. In our losses, viewed through the lenses of dear authors who had been there too, the idea of continuation was transformed from abstract to concrete. Through Jar- ed’s story, Mary started to accept her sister-in-law Carla’s sudden death. While we read about how other authors faced the prospect of not surviving cancer, Jeanine held her own father and later her mother closely until they both succumbed to the disease. Through our shared practice, we found the groundedness to work with whatever life threw at us.
And ultimately, a few months before this book went to the publisher, we experienced together the passing of dear Thầy himself. Although that event spurred us to quicken our pace to complete the project, we also had to gently release our attachment to the idea of handing a copy of the book directly to him with giant smiles and deep bows of apprecia- tion. As our authors enthusiastically encouraged us to bring this piece of Thầy to the world, we knew these voices that echo his wise words were now more important than ever.


We can see that he is with us in their stories, and that the world needs them. All the elements of Thầy continue to exist in the way people everywhere are gently present for each other, reminding each other to breathe and go slowly. Knowing that Thầy’s teachings are still present and alive in each of us, knowing that he is found in the pages of this book, we have chosen to keep these teachings in the present tense throughout this collection. As Thầy himself knew, there is, after all, “no birth, no death.”
The continuation of Thầy’s teachings, rooted in connection to a supportive worldwide community whom we can learn from and share with, is what we want to foster for our readers. It is why we believe this book can have imme- diate and lasting value, both for people who are familiar with Thầy’s teachings and for those encountering him for the first time. As the stories in Tears Become Rain illustrate, we all have the capacity to water our seeds of joy and to tenderly hold our suffering without losing ourselves to fear, anxiety, or despair. This is fundamentally empowering and life affirming. We can make it through small irritations, such as waiting for someone who is late, and we can make it through monumental losses, such as the death of a child. As we see in each story, all the conditions for happiness are available to us in our moment-to-moment practice.