HANOVER — A group of 12 Buddhist monks and nuns will visit Dartmouth College next week for a week of events centered around meditation and mindfulness.
It will be the third year in a row the monastics, who practice in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, have made to Dartmouth. They are visiting from Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, Calif., Blue Cliff Monastery in Pine Bush, N.Y., and Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Miss.
The events — titled “A Week of Monastic Wisdom at Dartmouth” — are organized by Mindful Dartmouth, a campus-wide program that “helps address the personal, communal, national, and global psychosocial stressors that threaten physical and emotional well-being, academic and workplace performance, and achievement of our aspirational educational mission,” according to a description on the college’s website.
One of the visiting monastics is Brother Phap Lu’u, a 1998 Dartmouth College graduate, who will give a talk with Dartmouth Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences professor Tor Wager at 5:15 p.m. Wednesday at the Oopik Auditorium in Dartmouth College’s Life Sciences Building (78 College Ave.). The event can also be streamed virtually.
The week-long event schedule can be found at plumvillageatmindfuldartmouth.org.
In an email Q&A, Dr. Diane Gilbert-Diamond, a professor at the Geisel School of Medicine and member of the Mindful Dartmouth Steering Committee, and Wayne Gersen, a member of the Norwich-based Heart of the Valley Mindfulness Practice Center, discussed the monastics’ upcoming visit. The exchange has been lightly edited for length, style and clarity.
Question: How did the relationship between the Plum Village Tradition and Dartmouth College come about?
Gilbert-Diamond: Plum Village has a long historical connection in the area. Brother Phap Lu’u is now a monastic in the Plum Village tradition. He was first introduced to the tradition shortly after college when local monastics from Hartland came into Left Bank Books in downtown Hanover where he was working. He later joined the community and became a monastic. More recently I started conducting mindfulness research with Brother Phap Lu’u and we collaborated on bringing Plum Village monastics to Dartmouth to lead a week of mindfulness practices.
Gersen: The Green Mountain Dharma Center, where the sisters lived, was in Hartland and the Maple Forest Monastery, where the brothers lived, was in South Woodstock. They were the first Plum Village monasteries in North America.
Q: What’s something people should know about the Plum Village monastics’ beliefs?
Gilbert-Diamond: Plum Village monastics believe that through mindfulness practice, we can cultivate inner peace, transform our inner suffering and live happily in the present moment. They believe that when we cultivate inner peace and compassion, we can increase our capacity to positively impact the world.
Gersen: Those who practice in the Plum Village tradition strive to abide by the ethics set forth in the Five Mindfulness Trainings, a version of the Five Precepts of Buddhism developed by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Q: Many people throughout the country were captivated by the Walk for Peace, where a group of Buddhist monks from Fort Worth, Texas, walked to Washington, D.C. What are some similarities between the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center monks — whose walk began last October and ended in February — and those who practice in the Plum Village tradition?
Gilbert-Diamond: Monastics from both traditions believe in cultivating inner peace and happiness by connecting with the present moment. They believe that we are all interconnected and that cultivated compassion for ourselves and others can help us to reduce suffering and increase happiness.
Q: The Plum Village monastics’ visit offers “simple and profound practices for meeting strong emotions, navigating difficulty, and remembering our shared humanity,” according to a description on Dartmouth’s website. How can people apply the monastics’ teaching to their everyday lives?
Gilbert-Diamond: Through mindfulness practice, we can learn to recognize when we are having strong emotions and we can learn to take care of those emotions, so that we have more freedom to respond to situations in the way that we want to respond. Further, through meditation, we can better understand ourselves and what fuels our strong responses to certain stimuli.
Gersen: The Plum Village Tradition places an emphasis on the importance of meeting regularly with others who are on the path in a “sangha” (a community of fellow practitioners) where they can get support from each other and share insights on the challenges they face in the practice.
Mindful Dartmouth will continue to have mindfulness offerings throughout the year. Visit sites.dartmouth.edu/mindfulness for more information.
The Heart of the Valley Mindfulness Practice Center meets weekly in person from 9 to 11 a.m. on Tuesdays at Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church (262 Main St., Norwich); from 10 to 11:30 a.m. on Sundays at Room E042 in the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College (15 Thayer Drive), and online on Wednesdays from 6 to 7:30 a.m. Visit uvmindfulnessmeditation.org for more information.
