Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and world-renowned mindfulness teacher, has a strong, but streamlined, message. While this makes many of his books somewhat repetitive, “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life” is one of the best.
The book has 5 stars with 971 ratings on Amazon and 4.3 stars with 27,191 ratings on GoodReads. If you only read one book by Thich Nhat Hanh, this is it.
Thich Nhat Hanh divided this book into three sections:
- Breathe! You Are Alive
- Transformation and Healing
- Peace Is Every Step
Packed with mindfulness exercises, the book contains several ideas that especially spoke to me. He writes about the Eucharist as a practice of awareness of the presence of Christ, which it truly is.
He calls often for us to look more deeply, especially at people who we find repulsive. We do not know what we could have become had we lived that other person’s life, Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us.
What we need to work on is transforming ourselves into a light. “When you have become fresh and pleasant, the other person will notice soon,” he writes.
“When you begin to see that your enemy is suffering, that is the beginning of insight. When you see in yourself the wish that the other person would stop suffering, that is the beginning of real love.”
Amen to that. For other reviews on Christian mindfulness resources, click here.