My family took a vacation to a Buddhist monastery. This is what we learned.

Written by Diana Hill

Instead of taking a cross-country road trip this summer, my partner and I took our kids to Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhist monastery in Southern France. Teetering on the verge of parental burnout, we were craving peace, time away from devices, and strategies to handle increasingly uncertain times. It’s a stretch to sign up 9- and 12-year-old boys for a week of mindful walking, silent meals, and sitting meditation, but we were willing to take the leap if it would reconnect us. 

My family, like most, has been struggling. My partner works in education, and I am a clinical psychologist. During the pandemic, we have been guiding folks through the same troubles we faced ourselves: over-busyness, anxiety, irritability, and existential worry. 

To cope with pandemic stress, we found ourselves working more, becoming even more dependent on technology, and feeling increasingly dissatisfied. We were maxed out by relentless to-dos, we needed to find our ground as a family again. While a Buddhist monastery is not an obvious destination for a family vacation, we knew that returning to Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Monastery was what we needed most. 

Village de Pruniers 

Thich Nhat Hanh was a Zen master, author, and peace activist who founded Plum Village in Southern France 40 years ago. Thay (as his students call him) took refuge in Thanc, France after being exiled from Vietnam for speaking out against the war. Thay went on to teach peace on an individual and global level and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967. He was central to bringing mindfulness to the West, alongside many Western scholars like Jon Kabat-Zinn and Kristin Neff, both of whom cite him as a root teacher. 

Thay passed away in January 2022, and he is greatly missed. He taught that through the phenomenon of continuation, each of us has an effect on the world that lasts beyond our physical existence. For this reason, I’ll speak of him and his teachings in the present tense. 

Thay’s teachings are simple and accessible; they make sense to busy modern parents like my partner and me. Well known for saying, “When you wash the dishes, wash the dishes,” Thay urges us to be present in each aspect of living. Thay’s teaching and practice were about engaged Buddhism, which means taking the stance of mindful awareness and compassion and applying it to all aspects of living, starting with your daily activities and extending it more broadly to living in the world.

Thay’s message is particularly applicable to our current reality. His teaching of “No mud, no lotus” guides us to turn toward our suffering with compassion in order to transform it. In the center of each of the three hamlets at Plum Village sits a large lotus pond as a reminder that beautiful things grow out of mud. 

My partner and I first visited Plum Village Monastery 22 years ago, when Thich Nhat Hanh was still teaching. I was starting a clinical psychology PhD program, and the experience inspired me to research mindful awareness as an intervention for eating disorders. I now use compassion and mindfulness interventions in every aspect of my work. 

Noticing how exhausted and overextended my partner, my kids, and I all felt, I realized that the same teachings that had become essential to my professional life could help revive my family, too. And looking back on our trip, I can say that the lessons we learned at Plum Village helped restore the equilibrium of our family and planted the seeds for a healthier future. 

These last few years have been tremendously challenging for all of us, all at once. I imagine that you and your family might be struggling in some of the same ways we are. I also know that not everyone can pack the family off to a monastery in France! So I am sharing what we discovered at Plum Village in the hopes that these six lessons will help you and your family, just as they are helping us. 

Lesson 1. I Have Arrived. I Am Home. 

We spend more time at home than ever, but do we really feel at home? Instead of being present, we spend most of our time in our head: planning, fixing, and judging. There are so many ways the world pulls us out of the present moment, out of our body. 

At Plum Village, a bell rings every hour, signaling us to pause, come back to our body, slow our breath, and be present in this moment. Thich Nhat Hanh is known for his gathas, or short phrases you repeat with your breath. The first gatha we learned at Plum Village was 

Breathing in, I have arrived. 

Breathing out, I am home. 

This gatha is a reminder that there is a place within you that is protected and centered, and you can return to it whenever you need it. At any moment, you can remind yourself to come home, that you are home. 

Stopping and becoming present can become a new habit. This habit cultivates contentment, clarity, and peace in your body. Slowing your breathing has benefits at the cellular level and is fundamental in stress reduction, according to UCSF researcher Elissa Epel. And present-moment mindfulness can help you deepen relationships, something many of us are craving in our increasingly disconnected and distracted world. 

How To Come Back Home

• Choose a cue (such as getting in the car, starting a meeting, or a gentle alarm set on your phone) to signal you to stop. 

• Pause what you're doing.

• Find your breath. 

• Repeat I have arrived, I am home. 

• With this presence, go back to your activity. 

Lesson 2. Happiness Is Here and Now 

As an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy practitioner, I teach people to accept and allow for life’s suffering so they can act on what matters to them. Daily living, a pandemic, racial trauma, climate change, and war give us plenty of material to work with. At Plum Village, I learned that cultivating joy and happiness is as important as acceptance in facing our suffering. To cultivate more joy, the nun leading our group, Sister Joyful Effort, gave us homework: we were to look for joyful moments in our day and share them with others.

I noticed the cool shade of aspen trees on a hot walk and the sound of kids giggling during silent meditation. Sharing these joys with my family, enriched them.

In times like these, when so many people are struggling, it can seem saccharine to talk about joy. But it is what gives us the strength to go on. We need to cultivate joy in order to have the capacity to be with the suffering, and the bigger the suffering, the more we need to cultivate joy. Savoring the good things in life builds resilience and increases our satisfaction with life. Paying attention to the joyful moments builds our capacity to be present with pain.

How To Cultivate Joy

• Look for small moments of happiness or ease.

• Savor your experience by lingering on it, paying attention to your full sensory experience.

• Hold these moments lightly and with delight.

• Share the joy by telling someone else.

Lesson 3. There Is No Need to Hurry

Many of us are caught in a stream of striving, busy-ness, and distraction that leads us feeling increasingly disconnected from each other, nature and ourselves. Life is moving faster than ever, so we feel like we need to hurry to keep up. The paradox is that the faster we go, the more dissatisfied we feel with what we have, so we rush to get more.

At Plum Village, every activity is a meditation practice: walking, waiting in line for food, listening to others talk. All are done with full attention. We practiced eating in silence and contemplated the sun, rain, farmer, and plant in each bite. We walked mindfully as a stream of over 700 people through plum orchards and aspen trees. A group of 700 people moves slowly! I said the gatha silently with each step, Yes, yes, thank you, thank you.

Slowing down and connecting with yourself and with nature in this way benefits your cognitive functioning and overall well-being. Simple things become very rich. When you stop hurrying through life, you are better able to take in the good that is available to you right now.

As my family adjusted to being at Plum Village, we all struggled with slowing down. My kids whispered “When can I eat?” at meals and “Where are we going?” on walks. Together, we learned to sing this gatha:

Happiness is here and now.

I have dropped my worries.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do.

There is no need to hurry.

We soon realized there was nowhere to go, nothing to do but to be here and enjoy the moment.

How to Not Hurry

• Turn a daily activity such as eating, driving, or walking into a non-hurry practice.

• Carry it out in silence and with your full attention.

• Remind yourself there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, but to be here in this task.

• Savor it!

Lesson 4. Ask, Are You Sure?

When I arrived at Plum Village, my mind was a bit of a mess. It was full of emails I hadn’t returned, worry about what was to come next, and self-criticism.

With daily practice, I became increasingly aware of my mind and its tricks. I learned to pause and ask, Are you sure? This is similar to the cognitive defusion practice I teach from ACT. The more I asked, Are you sure? the more freedom I gained freedom from my automatic thinking

patterns. I began to see my mind as a storytelling machine, and I learned to stay present with reality rather than following its well-worn tracks to worry and judgment.

My mind: I have to get this thing done so I can get on to the next.

Me: Are you sure?

My mind: My kids are annoying people, and they need to be quiet.

Me: Are you sure?

My mind: It’s easier to do it myself.

Me: Are you sure?

There is lightness that comes when you realize that your thoughts are not always true. Cognitive defusion is an effective way to soothe difficult emotions and ease distress. You don’t have to change your thoughts. Just notice that there is actually some space between you and them.

How to Practice Cognitive Defusion

• Notice your mind’s rules, judgments, and chatter.

• Pause and ask, Are you sure?

• There’s no need to challenge your thoughts. Just give them some space.

Lesson 5. Let Your Work Be of Service

Plum Village is a working monastery, not a spa vacation. The dwellings are campsites or simple buildings. Some families are assigned to care for the garden, others to chop vegetables, some to clean toilets. Our family was given kitchen cleanup. After dinner we sanitized plates and bowls for over 300 residents. We took smelly compost to the bin and mopped the floors.

Whatever our task, we were instructed to see this work as a meditation, like all of our other practices. We were invited to enjoy the process of cleaning a floor, consider the people who will eat from clean bowls tomorrow, and feel the community working together as one. According to the Buddhist sutras of the four nutriments, when we tap into motivation and intention in this way, work can become nutrition for us. Motivated to serve a greater good, whether it’s scraping plates or writing treatment notes after a client’s therapy session, we gain energy from work rather than being depleted by it.

At home, I felt drained most days, and was losing my motivation as a therapist and mom. During work meditation at Plum Village, I remembered how to rejuvenate myself: by placing my attention on my values and my aspiration to serve. At the end of our service job, we would sing together:

Happiness is here and now.

I have dropped my worries.

Something to do, somewhere to go.

There’s still no need to hurry.

When you hold your aspiration in mind and see the work as an end in itself rather than something to rush through, the simplest tasks become fulfilling in a new way.

How to Practice Working Meditation

• Before starting work, choose an aspiration (an intention) to focus on. ● Be of service; offer your full effort and attention.

• Focus on process over outcome.

• Sing or hum a tune that motivates you.

Lesson 6. Your Future Is Today

When Thich Nhat Hanh died in January 2022, some of his ashes were sent back to be spread at Plum Village. Although we certainly hadn’t expected to, my family had the honor of being part of that ceremony. Thay knew that children are our future, and he always led his walks with the children. The monks and nuns continued this tradition in the procession to scatter Thay’s ashes.

My 9- and 12-year-old boys were up there at the front of the group of 700 people. Each of us received a spoonful of his ashes to spread across the plum orchards, aspen trees, and lotus pond.

I was far behind my kids, and when I caught up with them, I found my younger son crying with one of the nuns. He told me, “I feel like I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be at the front.” The nun told him that he had been given a powerful gift, transmitted from his grandparents to his parents to him, and that was the gift of these teachings, which he would now have the opportunity to share with others.

Sometimes, we get so caught up in whether or not we deserve to have something or do something that we forget that we all have this incredible gift: the gift of our actions, our presence with one another. It's the gift that nun gave me by caring for my son while I helped scatter Thay's ashes. Now my son has this gift in him.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s continuation is now in the soil, in plums, in air, in my children, and in my daily actions. By reading this he is also in you. Thay taught that there is “no birth, no death.” Our actions today continue into our future, and the actions of the past are present in our experiences today. When we consider climate change, racism, and political division, we can see how this moment came about, and we also know we have the power to change the future for our children by how we choose to act now.

How to Practice Your Future Now

• Cultivate habits that will grow the future you want.

• Water the seeds in others that you want to grow.

• Honor your ancestors, teachers, and parents through compassionate action.

Coming Home

My family went on an extraordinary journey this summer, escaping the constraints of our home life to a rare world of profound teachings and warm community. Yet as amazing as our time at Plum Village was, the true test of the lessons will be how we apply them at home.

This test began as soon as we arrived at the airport for our flight home. Apparently everyone in Paris goes on vacation at the same time, on the same weekend, and that was the weekend we were traveling. We stood in a busy security line – hundreds of people walking together, very slowly. I breathed in and said, Yes, yes. Thank you, thank you.

And then I noticed my worry: We’re going to miss our flight. Hurry up! All of those familiar habits of mind crept back in pretty quickly. My partner saw what was happening, and he helped me come back to the present and just be with it as it was. There is no need to worry.

We need each other as reminders. And we need practice. We need the repetition of these new ways of being before they will become automatic to us. I believe a different future is possible for us when we tend very carefully and with intention to the present moment.

Opening my computer full of unread emails, I remind myself that my work is my service. Before dinner, we ring a bell to remind us to come back to our bodies.

We have arrived. We are home.

To hear more about my experience at Plum Village, you can listen to this episode of Your Life in Process and see photos and videos on my Instagram @drdaianahill. To learn more about how to shift from stressful striving to productive striving, sign up for the free From Striving to Thriving Summit featuring Rick Hanson, Elissa Epel, Daniel Siegel, Jack Kornfield and more.