Throughout history, people have stood on two sides of a fence…
Either they have felt alone and powerless to change their future. They’ve felt that one person just can’t make a difference in the world.
They’ve asked the question, “What can I do?” and answered it with “Nothing. I’m just one.”
Then there’s the people who have believed in the “Power of One…”
People like Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus Christ, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and more.
These people have realized that one single person with a vision, purpose, and commitment can in fact start a movement and change the world.
These people asked the question, “What can I do?” and they answered it with actions, words, and the ability to inspire others to join their purpose and mission.
The hope is that this Caring Catalyst inspirational video, “The Power of One,” inspires you to always try and be in that second group of people.
You have the power of one.
You have the power to make a difference. . .
BUT WILL YOU?
MORE THAN A MOMENT
When I heard of his death
I took a Moment
and then to really honor him
I TOOK ANOTHER MOMENT
and PAUSED
without hitting any magical button. . .
I took a Moment
and then to really honor him
I TOOK ANOTHER MOMENT
and PAUSED
without hitting any magical button. . .
Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was one of the world’s most influential Zen masters, spreading messages of mindfulness, compassion and nonviolence, died this past Saturday, January 22, 2022 at his home in the Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam. He was 95.
The death was announced by Plum Village, his organization of monasteries. He suffered a severe brain hemorrhage in 2014 that left him unable to speak, though he could communicate through gestures.
A prolific author, poet, teacher and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam after opposing the war in the 1960s and became a leading voice in a movement he called “engaged Buddhism,” the application of Buddhist principles to political and social reform.
Traveling widely on speaking tours in the United States and Europe (he was fluent in English and French), Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced tik nyaht hahn) was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism, urging the embrace of mindfulness, which his website describes as “the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment.”
In his book “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life,” he wrote, “If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.”
His following grew as he established dozens of monasteries and practice centers around the world. The original Plum Village, near Bordeaux in southwest France, is the largest of his monasteries and receives visits from thousands of people a year.
In 2018, he returned home to Hue, in central Vietnam, to live out his last days at the Tu Hieu Temple, where he had become a novice as a teenager.
Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the idea of death. “Birth and death are only notions,” he wrote in his book “No Death, No Fear.” “They are not real.”
He added: “The Buddha taught that there is no birth; there is no death; there is no coming; there is no going; there is no same; there is no different; there is no permanent self; there is no annihilation. We only think there is.”
That understanding, he wrote, can liberate people from fear and allow them to “enjoy life and appreciate it in a new way.”
His connection with the United States began in the early 1960s, when he studied at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and later lectured at Cornell and Columbia. He influenced the American peace movement, urging the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War.
Dr. King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, but the prize was not awarded to anyone that year.
“I do not personally know of anyone more worthy than this gentle monk from Vietnam,” Dr. King wrote to the Nobel Institute in Norway. “His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
Thich Nhat Hanh was born Nguyen Xuan Bao in Hue on Oct. 11, 1926. He joined a Zen monastery at 16 and studied Buddhism there as a novice. Upon his ordination in 1949, he assumed the Dharma name Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich is an honorary family name used by Vietnamese monks and nuns. To his followers he was known as Thay, or teacher.
In the early 1960s, he founded Youth for Social Services, a grass-roots relief organization in what was then South Vietnam. It rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools, established medical centers and reunited families left homeless by the war.
Thich Nhat Hanh began writing and speaking out against the war and in 1964 published a poem called “Condemnation” in a Buddhist weekly. It reads in part:
Whoever is listening, be my witness:
I cannot accept this war.
I never could I never will.
I must say this a thousand times before I am killed.
I am like the bird who dies for the sake of its mate,
dripping blood from its broken beak and crying out:
“Beware! Turn around and face your real enemies
— ambition, violence hatred and greed.”
The poem earned him the label “antiwar poet,” and he was denounced as a pro-Communist propagandist.
Thich Nhat Hanh took up residence in France when the South Vietnamese government denied him permission to return from abroad after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973.
He was unable to return to Vietnam until 2005, when the Communist government allowed him to teach, practice and travel throughout the country. His antiwar activism continued, and in a talk in Hanoi in 2008 he said the Iraq war had resulted from fear and misunderstanding in which violence fed on itself.
“We know very well that airplanes, guns and bombs cannot remove wrong perceptions,” he said. “Only loving speech and compassionate listening can help people correct wrong perceptions. But our leaders are not trained in that discipline, and they rely only on the armed forces to remove terrorism.”
Yeah, I took a moment last Saturday when I heard of Thich Nhat Hanh’s death
AND THEN I TOOK ANOTHER ONE. . .
Now
I’m inviting you to take a little more than
A MOMENT
not to pause
not to remember
not to honor
not to celebrate
a Life
BUT THE LIFE IN YOU
WORTH LIVING
WORTH SHARING
W O R T H
taking more than whatever we think is
A MOMENT
A Call To ARMS
Another Horrific Tragedy:
We are all still stunned
As WE seek for
UNDERSTANDING
REASONS
THEORIES
SAFETY
HOPE
HEALING
L O V E
Non-Violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the lightest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man–Mahatma Ghandi
T R U E L Y
are we past T H I S ?
Aside from totally being stunned by the sheer madness;
the utter devastation of at least 5 9 innocent people being massacred. . .
theres’s a Call to Arms. . .
And if there’s ONE TIME
that’s absolutely true. . .
IT IS NOW
after recent hurricanes and earthquakes
and now, THIS:
I T I S N O W
. . .But,
A C A L L T O A R M S ?
A B S O L U T E L Y
but not by buying more guns
or even absurdly thinking to rid the world of them. . .
but by using what is so readily available to each of us:
O U R A R M S
. . .But, H O W
Literally HUGGING everyone you know
and those you don’t. . .
RESPECT EVERYONE–INCLUDING YOURSELF
No one can degrade you without your permission and it is WITHIN YOU to uplift ANYONE, the richest, the poorest, the most kind or the most evil around us. . .
ALWAYS INCLUDE CONSTRUCTIVE ALTERNATIVES
Fancy way to say:
B E T H E D I F F E R E N C E
Thousands of studies have shown that working together is the most effective way to unite people–this is being an ultimate CARING CATALYST; It builds community and reassures the general public that YOUR MOVEMENT is not a danger to any social order but a pure restoration of IT
BE AWARE OF THE LONG TERM
Yes. . .VIOLENCE is effective, maybe way too much effective but in the long run it leads to more misery and DISorder; In non-violence, we can lose battles but still go on to win the war
LOOK FOR WIN-WIN SOLUTIONS
Whenever I can be a part of another’s success; I AM SUCCESSFUL; When I row you across the roughest and most troubled of waters, I get to the other side, too!
U S E P O W E R C A R E F U L L Y
PROVE that the greatest power is never at the end of a gun barrel but at the end of your hand. . .it’s true, that when you reach out you may get hurt, shunned, mocked, but you also run the high risk of not just healing, affirming, comforting but actually REACHING what needs reached most: A N O T H E R
TRUE OR FALSE:
Is all LIFE is interconnected; Your PAIN is my PAIN; YOUR HAPPINESS is MY HAPPINESS. . .
I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. Martin Luther King, Jr.
When it comes to not just bearing arms,
but actually using the two most powerful ways possible:
O U R A R M S
to effect the most drastic means of healing change
there’s but one answer:
Without a doubt
Violence is a bon-fire of hurt that burns many,
Love is that small flicker that makes it impossible
for us to forget the
F L A M E
We hear. . .
We witness what happens
most recently in Las Vegas
and while we’re so tempted to
r e m e m b e r
the senselessness of it
we need more to be
m i n d f u l
of how our own personal
C A L L T O A R M S
is a Caring Catalyst way
that will bring the most
long lasting solution. . .
Our Constitution
is not going to be amended to repeal our right to bear arms
H I S T O R Y
i n s t r u c t s
evil will remain. . .
u l t u m a t e l y
G U N S and L O V E
can never be legislated. . .
but of the two—
only one has a everlasting effect. . .
B E
T H E G L O W O F T H A T W A R M E M B E R
which is always inextinguishable
L I G H T T H E W A Y