This is a wonderful essay on mindfulness in education by Dharmacharya (Dharma Teacher) Richard Brady. Richard is a Dharma teacher at the Washington Mindfulness Community, in Washington, D.C., and a Math teacher at Sidwell Friends School also in Washington, D.C.

Teaching and Learning the Way of Awareness
By Richard Brady

During Thich Nhat Hanh’s (Thây’s) June, 2004 Feet of the Buddha retreat in Plum Village, France, a number of retreatants expressed interest in finding ways of sharing mindfulness practice with young people. A group of us gathered during a picnic lunch to make connections and discuss our particular concerns. Our gathering prompted me to begin thinking freshly about my high school mathematics teaching. My students learn new algebraic methods in a day. They learn new topics in a month. Then they move on to learn the math that comes next. All the while there is deeper learning in process that will continue for the rest of their lives. This learning is about things such as perseverance, taking risks, and communicating with others. Ultimately it is about understanding themselves and the world.

What could I learn from my Plum Village experience that would help me grow as a teacher? I pondered Thây’s teachings on the nature of consciousness. I thought about Dharma talks and presentations by others and about conversations I had with several monastics. A month after returning home, I look back at a particular moment of a conversation with Sister Jina and see important ingredients of mindful teaching and learning in it. The conversation took place after the retreat ended. A number of close friends left for home, and the full daily schedule gave way to unprogrammed lazy days. I was staying in Plum Village for two more weeks. I began to feel lonely and made an appointment to talk with Sister Jina about this loneliness and my practice at Plum Village.

Environments

Several conditions in the Plum Village environment led up to my talking with Sister Jina. In Plum Village feelings such as loneliness are more accessible to me not only because of the regular formal meditation with the Sangha but also because I?m not keeping myself too busy to experience difficult emotions. During a retreat, many others are in touch with and sharing their emotions. Their example and the sense of safety that is present support me to do likewise. I attribute the safety and trust I feel there to the quality of mindful listening and responding which monastics and practitioners bring to Dharma discussions and other interactions. I feel really heard there.

The Plum Village environment often provides the context for deep learning. It is a very significant ingredient of the learning process. As an educator, I place a high value on the consequences of the thinking that goes on in my classes. Thinking occurs at the level of mind consciousness. However, Thây tells us that the origins of most behavior are found in the store consciousness. For this reason, deep learning, learning that changes one?s understanding of oneself or of some aspect of the world, occurs as the result of changes in the store consciousness. Such change can come about when a great deal of thought is given to a particular issue, but the learning that results from direct absorption by the store consciousness is much more economical. In this kind of learning, the environment is a key factor.

Thinking about my teaching, I ask myself, “How can I create an environment in my math classes spacious enough for all of us to be in touch with our feelings and deeper questions? In a competitive, college preparatory high school, how can I help create an environment which feels safe enough for us to share from these places? What can I do to promote mindful speech and deep listening in my classroom? How might it affect the classroom environment if we sat in a circle some of the time as we do in Plum Village for Dharma discussions?”

Relationships

I had my appointment with Sister Jina. Towards the end of our conversation a special moment occurred when she remarked, “There’s one thing I don’t understand. You said that everyone you’re close to has left the Upper Hamlet. That’s not true.” I scratched my head and waited for her to continue. After a pause, Sr. Jina said, “You are still there.” I can’t describe how I felt at that moment, but I recognized that I had just received a teaching that was starting to work inside me. This is the kind of teaching that brings me to Plum Village. Like a Zen koan, it is something I can sit with, practice with, and let ripen until, over time, a transformation can occur.

How is it that a teaching has the potential to set this deeper learning process in motion? During the retreat Thây Phâp Dung, in answering a question about the student/teacher relationship, described how teachings mediate this relationship, how particular teachings are evoked by particular relationships. Along with environment the student/teacher/teaching relationship is another ingredient of deep learning. This relationship became more explicit for me when Sister Jina continued. “As a young person I was blessed always to be close to myself. However, I wasn’t aware of this until a time came when it ceased to be so. I lost that connection to myself. I recovered this closeness again and have treasured it ever since.” This sharing of Sister Jina’s connected us at the heart level, helping me to open and receive it more deeply. I wonder how in teaching I can become more aware of what students are touching in me and teach from that place.

When I think about all the relationships that include the teacher, the teaching and the many students in a class, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. When Thây gives a teaching, almost everyone feels personally addressed. Each person in attendance hears and carries the teaching differently, depending on his or her life experience and experience with mindfulness practice. I was reminded of this uniqueness recently by one of my math students. As much of my students? time in class is spent working cooperatively in small groups, I?ve borrowed an idea from Thây, who once gave us stickers that said, “I walk for you” to put in our shoes. I give my students stickers that say, “I learn for you” to put on their textbook covers. Last May a student told me that it had take him the entire year to understand the meaning of that sticker. I realized that all the members of the class had different experiences of cooperative learning. However, each time they opened their books, they were invited to be aware of whatever their current experience of it was. The unfolding of the unique learning experience of each of my students is fundamentally a mystery. How can I do a better job of honoring and supporting it?

Practices

After receiving a teaching, the process of learning continues. It’s up to the student to integrate it into his or her life. The teaching opens a door to new practice, another ingredient in deep learning, and it is this practice that can lead to transformation. However, students do not always see how to put teachings into practice. Last spring I advised an algebra student to slow down and do the math to do the math, not to get it finished and go on to the next thing. Intellectually she understood what I was saying. She wanted to follow my advice, but her habit energy of rushing was very strong. She kept doing her work in the same way. Did she need a concrete way to focus her mind as she worked so that she could develop new habits? Did she and I need to talk further about this?

During a previous retreat, Sister Jina made the observation that I was the person who knew what love I needed. Not knowing how to practice with this insight at the time, I asked her. She gave me several helpful suggestions based on her experience. Now, with this new conversation with Sister Jina, I might have asked her for suggestions about how to practice being close to myself, but it didn’t feel necessary. What she had said to me immediately brought to mind the practice of chanting to Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. I began doing this chant several days before, when the monastics invited the retreatants to join them as they closed the retreat. My experience of it was so powerful that tears came to my eyes. I had just told Sister Jina about my starting to chant. Now I understood that, in some way, watering the seed of my compassion was a way for me to be close to myself.

There is an internal environment for deep learning as well as an external one. The store consciousness provides this internal environment. When a teaching connects with well-developed seeds in the store consciousness, as Sister Jina’s did for me, the learning process unfolds in an organic way. Much of my students’ internal environment is unknown not only to me but also to them. I wonder how I can support their becoming more acquainted with it in order to better draw on their own wisdom.

Obstacles

In Plum Village I continued sitting and walking, chanting to Avalokiteshvara. I was aware of being in touch with myself more deeply. I brought my chanting practice home and continued trying to do it. However, the conditions at home are quite different. Email, phone calls, a curriculum writing project at school, chores, and relationships began to overwhelm me. After I spent several days with my extended family, I completely lost touch with myself.

During the retreat Thây told us that transformation comes about as the result of conditions that nurture the positive seeds in our store consciousness. It also comes about as the result of obstacles. Obstacles can become the basis for learning if we become aware of the misperceptions that have produced them. Obstacles are another ingredient of deep learning. Thây Phâp Tuâ pointed out to me that when we feel stuck, there is an implication that this feeling is recurrent and that each time it seems as if it is the same feeling. However, in actuality the situation is constantly changing. We can see this if we look deeply, but we tend to avoid looking deeply because there is pain in the situation we don’t wish to face.

Through meditation and the support of friends who listened to my turmoil, I began to see what was happening. During my time in Plum Village, especially the last two weeks of quiet and extended periods of solitude, I’d begun to get in touch with a young, tender part of myself, my little flower, a flower nourished by my being-nature. Once home, all the old stimuli set my doing-nature in motion. My inner flower wilted. Losing this new experience of my being-nature was particularly painful.

Looking deeply, I saw that my problems did not stem from all that I have to do but from my planning/reviewing mind, a prominent characteristic I also see in my mother. When this part of my mind quieted down in Plum Village, I got in touch with my flower and with it my vulnerability and impermanence. At home my planning and reviewing heritage serves to shield me from these things. This “defense mechanism” is a part of me just as my flower is. Embracing them both with great compassion is now my path of practice. I continue invoking Avalokiteshvara to water my seed of compassion so that it will be strong enough to hold my vulnerability and my defenses.

When my students encounter obstacles, their first impulse is usually one of two extremes: they try to overcome them or give up. The approach of welcoming obstacles, sitting with them, and seeing what gifts of understanding they have to offer is foreign to my students. Yet it is one that could serve them well in life. I ask myself how I can do a better job of modeling this way of relating to difficulties in the classroom. I realize I could begin by curbing my impulses to diagnose and suggest remedies for students’ problems and learn how to just be with the students and their problems.

I feel good about the direction my questions are taking me and look forward to the coming of the new school year. All the while, I’m aware that so much of my students’ lives is spent in ways that do not promote awareness. At best I can help them water their seeds of mindfulness for a brief time and trust that this will make a difference.

Sutra on a Better Way to Practice

By Jerry Braza, True Great Response

I heard these words of Sister Jina one day when she was staying at the Deer Park Monastery with many venerables including Thich Nhat Hanh. The senior bikuni who spent over 13 years at Plum Village instructed the lay community attending the Winter Retreat; She said that there is “a better way to practice”; when one leaves the retreat by writing your own sutra as Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh has recommended. The Sutrashould inspire us with various aspects of our practice and above all create joy when it is read. When writing a sutra, begin by looking deeply at our practice and see which areas need to be strengthened.

Areas to consider include stopping, walking, eating, meditations, and communication. It is written in such away that it does not create a “should” but stated in a way that will offer a way of deepening our practice. When the sutra is read, it will water the positive seeds and strengthen the practices we are attempting to embody. While reading the sutra, go beyond the words and visualize how they will affect everyday life.

Today, I begin anew. Today, is a new day and I live each moment freshly by “letting go.” The past no longer affects me.

I live fully in each moment by being aware of my in-breath and out-breath. I bring joy and relieve the suffering of my beloved and others. I water the seeds of loving-kindness in myself and others.

Stopping is my practice. Bells, people, meals, and tea remind me to enjoy the full length of my in-breath and out breath.

By stopping, my mind is calmed through mindfulness. By concentrating, the opportunity is available to experience each moment as for the first time.

By letting go, I am mindful, my concentration is enhanced, and I gain insights through the process of looking deeply.

There is no need to seek happiness. I simply look around and experience each moment deeply.

I do not seek anything.? I am enough. I have already arrived. Happiness is available in the here and in the now.

Today, I am aware of my speech. Listening is the key to communication. I listen deeply and through breathing know when to be quiet or to speak.? By stopping, breathing, and being aware of what is on the tip of my tongue, I know when to be quiet and how to speak with love and compassion.

I create the space needed for solitude so that the seeds will emerge from the store consciousness. By looking deeply, an awareness of impermanence and interbeing arises. I am not a separate self and my actions affect all beings in the present moment. My practice is not only for me but for all beings.

By stopping, I nourish myself in the present moment, look deeply into the objects of mindfulness, and discover the doorway to the ultimate dimension. Heaven is found in the here and in the now.

My eyes and presence offer the conditions needed for love. I water the seeds of love by keeping my heart open, practicing the mindfulness trainings, and being generous.

Being is more important than doing. Becoming is more important than achieving. Loving is most important.