Yesterday, I went on a walk around the neighborhood. As I did, I reflected on the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh (1926 - 2022), a Buddhist monk whose teachings I’ve followed for quite some time. Thich Nhat Hanh, also known as Thay, was a proponent and practictioner of walking meditation. He practiced this form of meditation all of his life and taught it to others as well. When people would ask Thay why he practiced walking meditation, he was known to respond “Because I like it.” In his book of brief essays, How to Walk, Thay said, “Every step makes me happy. There’s no use in doing walking meditation if you’re not going to enjoy every step you make; it would be a waste of time.”
That is at the heart of many of Thay’s teachings. Enlightenment is not about transcending the world but living deeply within it. For Thich Nhat Hanh, it is through our awareness that we become free.
As someone who identifies with the values of anarchism, I’ve been thinking about how Buddhism and anarchism overlap and intersect. One of the greatest areas of overlap is that both philosophies share the same end goal: liberation. For the anarchist, liberation is made possible by rejecting all forms of hierarchy and coercion to create more equal ways of relating and living with one another. Often times, this definition is closer to our modern view of liberation. We look at the external forms of oppression and coercion that affect us: governments, social institutions, systems of belief. These can all take harmful forms, yet what about the forms of coersion and oppression that exist within our own bodies? This is where the Buddhist might look for liberation first. Not only the outwardly, authoritarian forces of the dominant capitalist culture but all of the feelings and experiences we’re running away from as well.
For Thay, freedom begins in our awareness of the present moment.
“When we are pushed and pulled in many different directions, we lose our sovereignty. We’re not free. Don’t allow yourself to be carried away anymore. Resist. Each mindful step is a step toward freedom. This kind of freedom is not political freedom. It’s freedom from the past, from the future, from our worries and our fears.”
For followers of the Buddha, much of our liberation begins within us. They contend that we cannot be free, nor can be be effective at liberating others, if we are not fully present in our bodies in this moment.
This is not to say that Buddhists deny the realities of the physical world, including the political. In fact, Thay, who was Vietnamese, was very active in trying to bring peace to Vietnam during their period of war from 1955 to 1975. He even wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr for his support in calling for an end to the war, and their conversations inspired Dr. King to nominate Thay for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 for his activism — though no prize was awarded that year.
If we seek to liberate others from suffering — whether it be the suffering caused by war or an internal state of unease — Thay would encourage us to start by liberating ourselves. This can begin with something as simple as walking meditation.
From an American perspective, this can sound selfish. As if to say, “No one should be free until I can free myself first,” advocating for an Objectivist worldview. This is quite the opposite of this teaching. Buddhist teachers view all liberation as interconnected, just as we are all interconnected: our bodies are connected to other bodies which are all connected to the earth body. We cannot separate one from the other.
By working to liberate ourselves from suffering, we create happiness and ease in ourselves and that will naturally extend to other living beings. Thay illustrates this with a story.
“When I go to the airport, I like to arrive early so that I can do walking meditation before the flight. About thirty years ago I was walking in the Honolulu airport. Someone came up to me and asked, “Who are you; what is your spiritual tradition?” I said, “Why do you ask?” And he said, “Because I see that the way you walk is so different than the way others walk. It’s so peaceful and relaxed.” He had approached me simply because of the way I walked. I hadn’t given a speech or a conference. With every step you make, you can create peace within yourself and give joy to other people.”
When we think of how we can make a difference in the world, we often think about the big actions we can take. We think of superheroes like the fictional Captain America or the real-life hero Harriet Tubman. While serving others and leading them to liberation can take grand forms, it can begin by cultivating greater inner peace and awareness. That alone can create more room for kindness and tranquility, both in ourselves and in the world around us. By practicing walking meditation, we set ourselves on a path of peace and invite others to join us.
When we practice walking meditation, we are also not alone in our practice — even when no one else is walking beside us. We bring with us all those who live within us: our ancestors, our friends and family who have passed, and those whose love we carry with us all of the time. They walk with us, as well, and when they cannot physically walk, we can make it an intention to walk for them.
“Every mindful step has the power to transform us and all our ancestors within us, including our animal, plant, and mineral ancestors. We don’t walk for ourselves alone. When we walk, we walk for our family and for the whole world.”
As I went on my walk, yesterday, I set an intention to walk for my partner, Al, who is fully bed-bound and cannot walk a single step. With every step I took, I honored them. They are unable to experience walking and it’s unclear if they will ever be able to walk again. So, right now, I am walking for the both of us. I am carrying the love I have for them with me — a love they have helped cultivate — and sharing it with the earth in every step.
When we commit ourselves to walking with awareness, we walk freely. If we walk for others, we share that freedom with them.
“Happiness is not an individual matter. As long as the ancestors in us are still suffering, we can’t be happy and we will transmit that suffering to our children and their children. When we walk, we can walk for our ancestors and future generations. Maybe they had to walk with sorrow; perhaps they were forced to march or migrate. When we walk freely, we are walking for them.”
As an anarchist, I care deeply about the liberation of my friends and family, the liberation of my community, as well as the liberation of all living beings on this planet. As Ed Simon wrote in a recent piece for Lit Hub, “While the communist finds salvation in the state and the capitalist in the corporation, the anarchist understands redemption as imparted by friends and neighbors, family and comrades.” Redemption and liberation do not come from political parties, heroic leaders, or even exceptional individuals. They are co-created by every being on this planet. We are interdependent of one another, and both our suffering and our liberation are intertwined. “Nobody's free until everybody's free.” This is the belief of civil rights activists just as it was the bodhisattvas.
In times as divided and challenging as this, when there is so much visible suffering in our world, it can be easy to feel paralyzed. This is why the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh are so necessary, as he reminds us that action can begin with a single footstep.
“The first thing to do is to lift your foot. Breathe in. Put your foot down in front of you, rest your heel and then your toes. Breathe out. Feel your feet solid on the Earth. You have already arrived.”