Lachlan Brown
The first time I read Thich Nhat Hanh, I was sitting in a cramped apartment, nursing the emotional aftermath of a breakup that had quietly hollowed me out. I didn’t want inspiration. I didn’t want quotes. I wanted someone to say: yes, this hurts—and you can stay with it without being destroyed.
And then I found this line:
“Don’t run away from your suffering. Embrace it, and cherish it. Go to it with compassion and tender loving care.”
I didn’t believe it at first. How could I possibly cherish something that felt like a tearing in the chest? But something about the quiet authority of his voice, the gentle insistence that suffering was not an enemy but a teacher—I couldn’t look away.
The mindfulness of turning toward pain
Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen master and poet, built much of his life’s work around one core principle: suffering is not something to be eliminated or ignored. It’s something to understand and hold. Not to indulge it — but to be present with it.
In his seminal book The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, he writes:
“The way out is in. The way to transformation is through mindfulness.”
This wasn’t the mindfulness of apps or productivity hacks. This was mindfulness as compassionate awareness. A moment-by-moment invitation to meet what is—especially the parts of ourselves we’d rather exile.
According to Thich Nhat Hanh, the first step in working with suffering is to recognize it without judgment. Not to label it as “negative energy” or “low vibration,” but to say: this, too, is here. Let me greet it with breath.
Mindfulness, then, becomes not a means of escape—but of contact.
“Hello, my little anger”
In one of his Dharma talks, Thich Nhat Hanh described his method of speaking to emotions like they were old friends. When anger arises, he said, you can say: “Hello, my little anger. I see you.”
This simple sentence changed my relationship with difficult emotions.
Instead of resisting shame, I tried naming it. Instead of pushing sadness away, I welcomed it like a temporary guest. Not because it felt good, but because I started to trust that turning toward discomfort—gently, non-reactively—was less painful than running from it.
And neuroscience agrees. According to Dr. Judson Brewer, a leading researcher at Brown University, mindfulness can reduce activity in the default mode network—particularly in areas related to rumination and emotional reactivity. In one peer-reviewed study, mindfulness practitioners showed decreased amygdala activation and increased prefrontal regulation in response to stress.
In other words, when you acknowledge suffering with presence instead of panic, the brain begins to rewire itself toward calm.
But Thich Nhat Hanh wasn’t interested in clinical explanations. He was more concerned with tenderness. Be with your suffering as you would be with a child crying for help, he said. And suddenly, my sadness wasn’t a problem. It was someone who needed to be held.
Breathing in, I know I am hurting. Breathing out, I hold myself with care
Every morning, I would sit for 10 minutes and simply breathe.
Not to “calm down.”
Not to “be productive.”
Just to witness the knot in my chest and not try to untie it.
Thich Nhat Hanh often taught gatha—short meditation verses that unite breath with awareness. One of his simplest was:
Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
It seemed almost childlike. Smile? In pain? But I tried it. And the smile didn’t come from joy. It came from kindness. From a subtle shift in posture—from tightening around pain to softening beside it.
According to the Greater Good Science Center, this kind of mindful breathing interrupts the cycle of reactivity and allows the parasympathetic nervous system—the “rest and digest” mode—to take the lead.
But even without the science, it just helped.
Lotus in the mud
Thich Nhat Hanh often said: “No mud, no lotus.”
He meant that the beauty of the lotus flower—calm, radiant, poised—was only possible because it grew in the dark, murky mud. Without the mud, there’s no growth. Without suffering, no transformation.
This isn’t romanticizing pain. It’s contextualizing it.
Suffering becomes the compost for compassion.
When I reflect on the most meaningful shifts in my life, none of them came from success. They came from the moments I thought I had failed. They came when something cracked—and through that crack, light seeped in.
Zen doesn’t ask you to be grateful for suffering. It asks you to stay close enough to it that its message can be heard.
- Sometimes the message is: “Slow down.”
- Sometimes it’s: “You are not who you thought you had to be.”
- Sometimes it’s just: “You are here. You are alive. Keep breathing.”
Letting go without abandoning yourself
Thich Nhat Hanh never encouraged avoidance. But he also didn’t glorify emotional wallowing. Mindfulness wasn’t about sitting in pain endlessly—it was about touching it just long enough to release it.
He said:
“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”
This helped me during the months after a major loss in my family. Grief would rise without warning, often at the most inconvenient times.
Instead of trying to push it down—or let it swallow me—I practiced naming it and breathing with it. I’d say: “Hello, sorrow.” I’d place a hand over my heart. And I’d remind myself: This is just a cloud. Let it pass.
And it did. Sometimes slowly. But always.
Final words
Thich Nhat Hanh didn’t offer a quick fix for suffering. He offered something deeper: a way to be with it, without fear.
His teachings don’t ask you to become invincible. They ask you to become honest. Present. Gentle.
The next time suffering comes, try this:
Sit. Breathe. Say hello.
Don’t force it to leave. Don’t pretend it’s not there.
Just notice.
And slowly, you may discover what Thich Nhat Hanh taught with such grace:
That suffering is not the end of peace.
Sometimes, it is the beginning.
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