Stepping into Freedom

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's guide to daily life in the monastery with 99 practice poems, 10 novice precepts, and 41 fine manners offering the basic teachings of mindfulness for all aspiring practitioners in the Plum Village tradition.

For millennia, people have set out for the hills, forests, and mountains to find freedom, happiness, peace, joy, balance, fulfillment, and God or enlightenment while living simply in spiritual community. Now more than ever we look for a way to live a life of integrity and purpose. Fortunately, the monastic tradition is still very much alive, and who better to share it than the monks and nuns of Plum Village, the largest Buddhist monastic community outside Asia? Stepping into Freedom offers us a detailed look at every aspect of monastic life, showing us all ways to live simply, beautifully, and happily in the present moment.

As a book of guidelines, encouraging words, reminders, and poems for novice monks and nuns in the Plum Village tradition, this revised second edition of Stepping into Freedom helps us lead a wholesome and happy life, whether in the monastery or in the larger world. Here are 98 practice poems, 10 novice precepts, and 41 fine manners providing basic teachings on sitting and walking meditation as well as mindfulness in daily life. With inspiration for every moment in the life of a practitioner from waking up in the morning to lighting a candle in the evening, this book is perfect for beginners to mindfulness who wish to enhance their practice at home as well as anyone considering living in spiritual community especially those who wish to deepen their understanding of the monastic way of life.

Renowned author Thich Nhat Hanh has taught several generations of young monks and nuns in Vietnam and the West, as well as many thousands of lay practitioners, founding several monasteries worldwide, most notably Plum Village in France. In Vietnam he cofounded the An Quang Buddhist Institute and the Van Hanh Buddhist University. He has studied and taught at Columbia and Princeton universities and the Sorbonne in Paris.

Auteur
Thich Nhat Hanh was a world-renowned spiritual teacher and peace activist. Born in Vietnam in 1926, he became a Zen Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen. Over seven decades of teaching, he published more than 100 books, which have sold more than four million copies in the United States alone. Exiled from Vietnam in 1966 for promoting peace, his teachings on Buddhism as a path to social and political transformation are responsible for bringing the mindfulness movement to Western culture. He established the international Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism in France, now the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and the heart of a growing community of mindfulness practice centers around the world. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 95 at his root temple, Tu Hieu, in Hue, Vietnam.

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Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's guide to daily life in the monastery with 99 practice poems, 10 novice precepts, and 41 “fine manners” offering the basic teachings of mindfulness for all aspiring practitioners in the Plum Village tradition.

For millennia, people have set out for the hills, forests, and mountains to find freedom, happiness, peace, joy, balance, fulfillment, and God or enlightenment while living simply in spiritual community. Now more than ever we look for a way to live a life of integrity and purpose. Fortunately, the monastic tradition is still very much alive, and who better to share it than the monks and nuns of Plum Village, the largest Buddhist monastic community outside Asia? Stepping into Freedom offers us a detailed look at every aspect of monastic life, showing us all ways to live simply, beautifully, and happily in the present moment. 

As a book of guidelines, encouraging words, reminders, and poems for novice monks and nuns in the Plum Village tradition, this revised second edition of Stepping into Freedom helps us lead a wholesome and happy life, whether in the monastery or in the larger world. Here are 98 practice poems, 10 novice precepts, and 41 “fine manners” providing basic teachings on sitting and walking meditation as well as mindfulness in daily life. With inspiration for every moment in the life of a practitioner from waking up in the morning to lighting a candle in the evening, this book is perfect for beginners to mindfulness who wish to enhance their practice at home as well as anyone considering living in spiritual community—especially those who wish to deepen their understanding of the monastic way of life.

Renowned author Thich Nhat Hanh has taught several generations of young monks and nuns in Vietnam and the West, as well as many thousands of lay practitioners, founding several monasteries worldwide, most notably Plum Village in France. In Vietnam he cofounded the An Quang Buddhist Institute and the Van Hanh Buddhist University. He has studied and taught at Columbia and Princeton universities and the Sorbonne in Paris.

Échantillon de lecture
Foreword by Translator Sister Annabel Laity

When we step into the monastery, we feel right away a sense of harmonious order: a peaceful, serene atmosphere far from the chaotic busyness of life outside. Where does this order and peace come from? Monastic culture, transmitted from the time of the Buddha through more than a hundred generations, creates conditions for this peace. The instructions in this little book that you hold in your hands contain the essence of this monastic culture.

In the 1980s, when I asked our teacher, Thích Nhất Hạnh, to allow me to ordain as a Buddhist nun, he did not give his consent right away. In fact, I had to ask many times before I received it. My father had told me once that when he asked my mother if she would marry him, she said she needed time to think about it. Our teacher needed time to think about starting a monastic order in Plum Village; I also needed time to see if I had the capacity to be a nun. The commitment to monastic life is not a light one; it is a lifelong commitment to a way of living very different from the one we knew before. We commit ourselves because we know that this is the way to freedom—a deep inner freedom that is not possible without discipline and a Sangha. Our teacher and I did not yet know if I would be able to keep that commitment or whether I would be happy as a nun. So, I needed to wait two more years for ordination.

After I ordained, I was given a copy of the twenty-four chapters on fine manners compiled by Master Zhuhong in the sixteenth century, which had been translated into Vietnamese. As soon as my Vietnamese was proficient enough, I did my best to translate it into English, and, soon afterwards, I wrote a commentary on it. Some points of the commentary were matters of etiquette, hygiene, or common sense. Some resembled the table manners I had learnt from my parents and school teachers.

Much of this traditional content was new to me. I needed to train not to leave my socks lying just anyhow alongside my bed but to fold and place them neatly. I could not just quickly undo the top buttons of my robe and then pull it up over my head. Every button had to be undone and then done up again with mindfulness when I put the robe back on again. There were many everyday actions that I had been accustomed to performing on “automatic pilot” as my mind made plans for the future or ruminated about the past. Now I had the oppor-tunity to enjoy these actions fully with the help of a short verse known as a gāthā and mindful breathing. It may have taken longer to do things, but in the end they were done well—with attention and awareness—and did not need to be done a second time. I realized that as I was able to stay present in the action, I was nourishing concen…