Comforting words of wisdom and powerful practices for transforming grief and loss into healing and joy from the beloved Zen Master.

Thich Nhat Hanh does not merely teach peace; Thich Nhat Hanh is peace. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of *Eat, Pray, Love
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In the immediate aftermath of a loss, sometimes it is all we can do to keep breathing. With his signature clarity and compassion, Thich Nhat Hanh will guide you through the storm of emotions surrounding the death of a loved one.

How To Live When A Loved One Dies offers powerful practices such as mindful breathing, arranging celebrations of life, writing a love letter to your beloved, and more. Thich Nhat Hanh s guidance will help you reconcile with death and loss, feel connected to your loved one long after they have gone, and transform your grief into healing and joy.

“The monk who taught the world mindfulness.”
—TIME
 
“Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal inner peace and peace on earth.”
—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
“Thich Nhat Hanh’s work, on and off the page, has proven to be the antidote to our modern pain and sorrows. His books help me be more human, more me than I was before.”
—Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

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Thich Nhat Hanh was a world-renowned spiritual teacher and peace activist. Born in Vietnam in 1926, he became a Zen Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen. Over seven decades of teaching, he published more than 100 books, which have sold more than four million copies in the United States alone. Exiled from Vietnam in 1966 for promoting peace, his teachings on Buddhism as a path to social and political transformation are responsible for bringing the mindfulness movement to Western culture. He established the international Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism in France, now the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and the heart of a growing community of mindfulness practice centers around the world. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 95 at his root temple, Tu Hieu, in Hue, Vietnam.

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"In this book that offers relief to anyone moving though intense grief and loss, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh shares accessible, comforting words of wisdom on how to transform our suffering in the face of death"--

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Editors’ note
Here are some of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s most insightful teachings on grief and loss, together with self-care meditations and practices in the Plum Village tradition gathered by the editors. We hope that you will find them helpful for connecting with your loved one and all of life.

Listen to Yourself
When you are suffering greatly, if you have suffered a profound loss, you need people who are able to just sit and listen to you with compassion. But what is even more important is that we can listen to ourselves with compassion. To do this, we need to learn the art of deep listening. We stop whatever we’re doing and come home to ourselves. We look deeply to recognize and name our suffering and embrace it tenderly. Listening deeply to our own suffering is an act of self-compassion.

Like a Tree in a Storm
When a painful emotion comes up, stop whatever you are doing and take care of it right away. Bring your attention home to what is happening in your body. The practice is simple.
Put your hand on your belly and feel the movement of your breathing. Bring all your awareness down from your head to your navel and stop thinking about what has upset you. In a storm, the leaves and branches at the top of the tree thrash about wildly. The tree looks so fragile and vulnerable, as though it could break at any moment. But when you bring your attention down to the trunk of the tree, you see the trunk is very calm and still. You are no longer afraid because you realize that the tree is strong and stable, that it is deeply rooted in the soil and can withstand the storm.

Self-Care: Belly Breathing
A strong emotion is like a storm, but if we know how to practice, we can survive the storm. When we are caught in a storm of strong emotions, we need to identify what is causing our emotional response immediately and disengage ourselves gently from it. Whether it is a thought, an image, a sound, a smell, a touch, or a person speaking, we turn our attention away from it for a moment and bring all our attention back to our breathing. If we continue to pay attention to or think about what is causing us to suffer, it will only increase our strong emotions.
So, we practice deep belly breathing. Whether standing, sitting, or lying down, we become aware of our breathing. If our breathing is rapid and shallow, we notice it, then we bring our attention down to the belly and focus on the rising and falling of our abdomen.
The practice is simple:
Breathing in, I am aware of my abdomen rising.
Breathing out, I am aware of my abdomen falling.
Gradually the storm will subside, our breathing and our heart will calm down, and we will feel more at peace.

We Are More Than Our Emotions
Right now, you may find life unbearable. Yet everything is impermanent. Our emotions are impermanent; they come and they go. This insight can save your life. An emotion comes, stays for a while, and then it goes. This is the nature of all phenomena.
You are so much more than your emotions. You are your body, your feelings, your perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. You are your actions of body, speech, and mind. You are your aspirations, your capacity to love and understand; and you are connected with all of life. The territory of your being is infinite.
Focusing our attention on the rising and falling of our abdomen as we breathe deeply, our emotions will no longer overwhelm us or push us to do something destructive. When you survive a strong emotion once, you will have confidence that you can do the same again the next time.

Going Home to Nature
The earth is our home. She is our true mother. In times of grief and loss, we can return to the earth who gave birth to us. The earth can embrace us and all our sadness and despair. She is always ready to receive you. Her arms are always open for you. Nature invites you to dive into her lap. Fall into her loving embrace and surrender yourself; release your suffering. The relief that we seek is right under our feet, and all around us. Each mindful step on the earth can heal us.

When We Don’t Want to Be Overwhelmed by Grief
If we let the suffering come up and take over our mind, we can quickly be overwhelmed by it. So, we invite another energy to come up at the same time, the energy of mindfulness.
With the energy of mindfulness, we can recognize our pain and embrace it tenderly like a mother whose baby is crying. When a baby cries, the mother stops everything she is doing and holds the baby tenderly in her arms. The energy of the mother will penetrate into the baby and the baby will feel relief. 

The function of mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering that is there and then to take care of the suffering by identifying and embracing it. It is important that we are able to name what we are feeling, to identify what is making us suffer so that transformation, peace, and joy can be possible.
When we can embrace our sorrow and pain, our anger and fear with the energy of mindfulness, we’ll be able to recognize the roots of our suffering. And we’ll be …