Brother Pháp H&#361;u (Dharma Friend) first encountered Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village community as a nine-year-old child when his father, a former refugee from the war in Vietnam, took his family from Canada to visit Plum Village France in 1996. From the age of twelve, Brother Phap Huu knew that he wished to become a monk. After much persistence on his part, his family allowed him to realize this wish when he turned thirteen. Brother Pháp H&#7919;u was ordained as a novice monk in 2002 and received full ordination on December 18, 2006 and the Lamp Transmission as a Dharma Teacher in 2009. He has been the abbot of Plum Village Upper Hamlet since January 2011. Executive coach, facilitator, journalist, and sustainability expert Jo Confino has partnered with the UN Development Program on a consciousness and systems change initiative, and sits on the boards of various climate organizations. Jo held senior editorial positions at the HuffPost in New York and <The Guardian< in London, where he oversaw its sustainable business website. A mindfulness advocate, Jo has worked closely with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and his monastic community in France since 2009. Jo gained his MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice at the University of Bath.

Autorentext

Jo Confino and Brother Phap Huu

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**A timely Zen guide for those seeking emotional stability, self-compassion, and inner peace in an anxious and perfection-driven world

A new book in the Zen Ways series from the hosts of the popular The Way Out Is In podcast**

In an age marked by climate anxiety, social fragmentation, and unrelenting pressure to perform, Calm in the Storm is a much-needed anchor. This deeply compassionate guide invites readers to cultivate inner stability in a world that often feels on the brink. Rather than offering quick fixes or bypassing pain, Zen teacher Brother Phap Huu and spiritual mentor Jo Confino draw on timeless teachings to help readers meet the chaos of modern life with grounded presence and resilience.

Through intimate stories, mindfulness practices, and heartfelt reflections, the authors gently guide us back to ourselves—back to a place where we can breathe, feel, and respond with clarity rather than react with fear. Whether facing personal overwhelm or collective grief, Calm in the Storm offers a path toward rooted compassion and meaningful engagement.

Readers will learn to:
• Cultivate emotional balance, belonging, and self-compassion
• Navigate perfectionism, self-judgment, and burnout with mindfulness
• Connect with the wisdom of their ancestors and inner child
• Integrate Zen teachings into everyday moments and social change
• Find their center in a time of polycrisis, climate fear, and global uncertainty

Grounded in wisdom yet deeply relatable, this book is not just a guide—it’s an invitation to step fully into your own humanity. If you’re ready to break free and live with greater ease, this is your roadmap.

Leseprobe
Your true home is not an abstract idea; it is something you can touch and live in every moment. No one can take it away from you. Other people can occupy your country, they can even put you in prison, but they cannot take away your true home and your freedom.
—Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

Preface: Arriving

Welcome, dear friends, to this guide to coming home to ourselves and coming home to life. Many of us have traveled a long distance from our center, the place where we can accept ourselves as we are and feel stability in an often chaotic world. We live in an age of anxiety; our nervous systems are overloaded.

Many of us juggle complex lives and face pressures to do more and be more. Navigating our own lives is difficult enough, but we do so in the context of a world in turmoil. Exponential changes in technology alongside the fraying of political consensus and institutions that have for many decades helped to create social cohesion are challenging our stability and trust. As if this were not enough, we face threats of runaway climate change, eco-system degradation, and increasing social injustice. This heavy emotional load generates grief and despair—the possible collapse of civilization as we know it has entered our consciousness and the mainstream dialogue.
In these times when everything appears to be in turmoil and we can feel powerless to shape our world, it is important to cultivate calm in the storm. When we are stable in our center, we can develop the capacity and resilience to accompany ourselves and others through these difficult and momentous times. We can respond rather than react or burn out.

This requires taking time to reflect, a habit that is in stark contrast to our current culture of striving, our expectation for constant progress, and a belief that time is money. When we’re always looking forward, we sometimes forget to slow down long enough to pay attention to the streams of wisdom passed down to us through many generations that are still as fresh and relevant today as when they first emerged into our collective consciousness.

We have both found great treasures in the 2,600-year-old teachings of the Buddha, which offer valuable pathways to help us face the polycrisis—the convergence of multiple, interconnected crises that amplify each other—with stability and presence. We are grateful for the simple and profound way these teachings have been embodied and transmitted to us by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, our teacher, who is known as “Thay” (an affectionate Vietnamese term for teacher). Thay would
have said: “There is no path to being calm, calmness is the path. There is no way to stability, stability is the way.”
The title of this book is inspired by one of Thay’s teachings in which he uses the metaphor of a boat battered by a big storm and in danger of sinking. The passengers and crew on this boat are fearful, and they’re frantically running from one side of the deck to the other. If everyone panics like this, Thay points out, the ship will surely be lost. If even one person is able to remain calm, however, their stability might be transmitted to others, and then there is a chance the crew of this sinking ship will be able to work together to save the vessel and their own lives.

To start benefiting from Zen practices involves no complexity or esoteric knowledge, nor years of formal training. All that is needed to get going is to take the first mindful breath and then to keep breathing with awareness, to take the first mindful step and then to keep walking. Cultivating calm in the storm is neither a sprint nor a marathon. We can deepen our understanding until our very last breath and share the wisdom we accumulate along the way with others, who can then further develop their own insights and share them in turn with their family, friends, and community. There is no beginning and no end to this path of peace and freedom; we are drops in the eternal river of life.

Our wish in writing this book is to share what we have learned about cultivating calm in the storm with the hope of offering you spiritual sustenance and practical encouragement as you walk your own path. Many people question what it takes to remain hopeful in these difficult times. In this book, we focus our attention on the understanding that while we cannot change the world on our own, we do have the capacity to change ourselves. Tending to our overwhelm or anxiety offers the greatest opportunity to find our own stability; from this place of centeredness, we can reach out into the world and act with fierce, rooted compassion. It takes visceral knowing, not intellectual understanding, to bring about fundamental change. If we want to see greater kindness in the world, we need to find our own tend…