March 6th7pm
We will discuss audience - was this a work intended to be read? To what extent is the author performing for an imagined future readership? Is that a wink at us buried in a book from decades ago? We will discuss self-knowledge - do we trust the account as given? What are they hiding from us? Have they completely lost the plot of their life and the lives around them? And of course, we will discuss what thrills - cameos from notables? Salacious asides? That single sentence from 1935 which you still hear ringing in your ears, weeks after reading it?
This month we'll discuss Thich Nhat Hanh's most intimate writings—a rare record of his unselfing, which made him himself - Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962-1966.
“Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal inner peace and peace on earth.”—His Holiness the Dalai Lama
“Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"It isn't likely that this collection of journal entries, which I'm calling Fragrant Palm Leaves, will pass the censors... I'll leave Vietnam tomorrow." Thus Thich Nhat Hanh begins his May 11, 1966 journal entry. After leaving Vietnam, he was exiled for calling for peace, and was unable to visit his homeland again until 2004. In the interim, Thich Nhat Hanh continued to practice and teach in the United States and Europe, and became one of the world's most respected spiritual leaders.
But when these journals are written, all of that is still to come. Fragrant Palm Leaves reveals a vulnerable and questioning young man, a student and teaching assistant at Princeton and Columbia Universities from 1962-1963, homesick and reflecting on the many difficulties he and his fellow monks faced at home trying to make Buddhism relevant to the people's needs. We also follow Thich Nhat Hanh as he returns to Vietnam in 1964, and helps establish the movement known as Engaged Buddhism.
A rare window into the early life of a spiritual icon, Fragrant Palm Leaves provides a model of how to live fully, with awareness, during a time of change and upheaval.
Reserve your place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the book club meeting on any product in store.