Thoughts from Plum Village: Stopping
For the past two weeks, I’ve been living and learning at Plum Village Monastery in France. Plum Village is a Buddhist community that focuses on the art of mindful living with the Earth. This community was started by the activist, writer, and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, and there are now mindfulness practice centers around the world that practice in the Plum Village tradition.
The time that I spent at Plum Village was a complicated mix of blissful, challenging, and eye-opening. The lifestyle of the monks and nuns living at Plum Village seriously had me questioning my life choices and even made me think about joining the monastics for a minute!
There is this enchanting peace on the grounds of the monastery. The monastics have cultivated an environment where I feel like I can finally take a breath and slow down. As someone who lives every day with a fair bit of anxiety, the ability to rest my overactive mind was a blessing.
The monks would frequently say that “there was nowhere to go and nothing to do.” At first, I struggled with this as someone who perpetually feels like there are many, many things to do. But something that I had to work on during my time at Plum Village was decoupling myself from my sense of productivity.
The first day I was there, I was constantly looking for insights that I could bring into my work. I could write an article about this, I should make this connection, this practice is something I should implement at my university etc. I wanted the experience to be personally and professionally productive, and I struggled to just sit in the experience. Ultimately, all these thoughts about implementing the Plum Village teachings were taking me away from the core teaching, which is about being present. This is when I was introduced to the beautiful practice of stopping.
At Plum Village, a bell is invited many times throughout the day. Each sounding of the bell is an invitation for rest, to stop your present task and connect back to your breathing. Whether you are eating, talking, farming, or playing volleyball, the sound of the bell is an invitation to come back to the present moment. Each time the bell was invited, I would gently close my eyes and take three deep breaths. I would feel the Earth beneath my feet, the sun kissing my skin, and the smell of the forest around me. I would smile to myself and feel a deep sense of gratitude for my body, the earth, and the community surrounding me. The practice of stopping is so simple, but it was truly revolutionary for me. In a world that encourages us to move faster all of the time, intentionally stopping to sit in the moment is an act of resistance.
When I stop, I am reminded that I am here, in my body right now. That all of the worries I have for the future aren’t happening right now. I am safe, and I am a part of something so much bigger than just me. Throughout my stay, I would often ask one of the monks to invite the bell when I felt overwhelmed, full of emotion, or just needed a moment to stop. Creating this small moment for rest reminds me to move a little slower and be a little kinder to myself and to the world. Now that I have been living life outside of Plum Village for a week, I can say that it is definitely hard to stop outside of the peace of the monastery. It is something I have to intentionally do for myself instead of having it built into my day. But I downloaded an app with a bell sound, and I try to remind myself to stop for just a moment.
The world will still be turning after I’ve taken a breath
