Presence, Ritual and the Garden

Each Friday, Michael Harding sits at his writing desk, switches on the microphone, and tries to feel that you are in the room. In this autumn reflection, he explores how repetition, far from being dull, is the way we go deeper into the present moment. Whether it’s photographing the same falling leaves year after year, sharing breakfast with a beloved for decades, or returning to the same garden each winter, life is not a straight line but a circle, and every return reveals more than the surface.

Drawing on a Buddhist parable about a tree that is “not a tree,” Zen wisdom about naming the blackbird, Rumi’s field beyond good and evil, and the healing power of hearing your own name spoken with love, he considers how language can distance us from mystery. He offers a meditation of light and compassion, one that softens even our enmities and eases the body as well as the mind.

The episode closes in Mullingar Cathedral, where he prepares to speak, returning to a church that remains home. There he tells the little-known love story of an icon-maker who gave Saint Anne the face of the poet Anna Akhmatova. Above all, this is an invitation to bring attention, which is a form of prayer, to your garden, your plants, and the people close to you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Eighty or ninety years is not my lifetime. My lifetime, like that of a leaf or of a Buddha, is immeasurable."

Consider the extraordinary context of a life. During the Vietnam War, Thich Nhat Hanh chose not to retreat into the safety of a monastery. Instead, he co-founded the Engaged Buddhism movement, walking directly into bombed villages, rescuing children, and facing death daily. He was banned from his own homeland for nearly forty years. When you lose your country, your home, and your friends to war, you quickly realize how fragile a single lifespan is.

This weeks podcast comes at a time of wars in many quarters of the world. I thought it might be useful to dwell on a very simple notion that is shared by both Christian and Buddhist practitioners. That every moment is sacred in life, and that every moment passes and teaches us impermanence. And our engagement with every moment is like the photographer paying intense attention to the light and pressing the shutter button precisely to capture the moment, knowing that in that same moment, the moment has passed. The now is not now once we arrive there.

But every moment is baked, and made complete by the recognition of God's presence. in this present moment I am paying attention to the ultimate source of meaning. Everything is God. I have no enemies. And thus I begin to find happiness. it's such a relief to think of the world in this manner, and even to think of enemies this way. it dissolves all the anger. so here we go; a podcast about nothing except paying attention in a single moment to everything. And yes, I'm still talking about the leaf and the tree and the relationship between the two. Enjoy. We're into October. Soon it will be wonderfully dark and we will find more light in that obscure place. Thank you for supporting the podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Eighty or ninety years is not my lifetime. My lifetime, like that of a leaf or of a Buddha, is immeasurable."

Consider the extraordinary context of this man’s life. During the Vietnam War, he chose not to retreat into the safety of a monastery. Instead, he co-founded the Engaged Buddhism movement, walking directly into bombed villages, rescuing children, and facing death daily. He was banned from his own homeland for nearly forty years. When you lose your country, your home, and your friends to war, you quickly realize how fragile a single lifespan is.

Photography is an attempt to measure time in fractions of a second—1/125th of a second, 1/500th of a second. But Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that our true nature cannot be caught by a shutter speed. When our friend closed their eyes for the last time, they didn't run out of time; they simply stepped out of the clock altogether.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.