LIFESTYLE | EPISTEMOLOGY | BUDDHISM

A profound lesson that I learned from Thich Nhat Hanh about truth

(two kinds of truth, two kinds of freedom)

The beauty in the work of Thich Nhat Hanh is that you do not have to be a Buddhist practitioner to understand his teachings. This does not mean that Thay’s teachings do not originate from Buddhist practice. What it means is that Thay¹ had a unique way to present the Buddhist dharma in such a way, that it caters to everyone’s tastes.

Dharma is an interesting word here. In the context of PIE (proto Indo-European) linguistics and semantics, dharma derives from *dʰér-mos, which appears in Latin as firmus — with the generic meaning of something stable, something to hold on to. The root is very widely spread, with forms and derivations of it occurring in languages all over the Indo-European belt.

In today’s context, dharma is easily translatable as lifestyle. This implies that Buddhism is a lifestyle much rather than a religion, for which is it often mistaken. It also implies that Buddhist practice is as much something of the spiritual realm as it belongs to the practicalities of daily life. In fact, Buddhism is about non-dualism: where the spiritual and the mundane are mere mirroring aspects of each other.