August 2005 | Journeys
The Bell of Peace
by Thich Nhat Hanh
Some time ago I had a dream that I was a music student. In my dream, I learned that I had been accepted into a class taught by the best teacher at the university. It was an honor to be a student in his class, and I told my friends about my acceptance. One of them was also a student, but she had not been accepted into the class. She was very kind and said, “Never mind, you are accepted, it’s just like I am accepted.”
The first day of class, I had to walk through many doors. There were a lot of students, and the class was at the top of the building. Suddenly, I saw a young man trying to make his way into a room. The young student looked exactly like me; he was my mirror image. I was very surprised to see me outside of myself. How could he be me? I went to the office nearby and asked the lady in charge of registration, “Who is he? Has he been accepted into that class too?” She said, “No, he has not.”
Only after I woke up did I understand the meaning of the first part of this dream. Tripitaka Master Hsuan-tsang of China lived in the Tang dynasty. He went to India in search of Buddhist scriptures and he wanted to go to the Gridhrakuta Mountain where the Buddha resided, to ask the Buddha for the scriptures—the direct way! He and three of his students set out for the mountain, but they needed to cross a very large river. There was only one boat on the shore and the boat had no bottom. The boatman said, “Well, this river has only one ferry boat, and this is it. If you want to use it, the opportunity is there. If you are afraid, then you’ll stay on this shore forever.” All of them were very eager to get the scriptures and to meet the Buddha, so they ventured down and sat in the boat.
They began crossing the river and yet they did not drown. When they had gone halfway across, Tripitaka Master Hsuan-tsang saw the body of a drowned man floating on the river. He asked the boatman, “Who is that person? Whose corpse is that?” The boatman looked at him intensely and said, “You don’t know? It’s you. You have shed that body by having the courage to step on this boat. You have released that mundane, secular body and you have got a holy body. That’s you. If you do not die, there’s no way for you to cross the river as a new being.” When I woke up I remembered all the details of that story, and I began to understand that if I had not died as that student, I could not have been accepted into that teacher’s class. I had to let go of my self, my ego that wanted to be in the class, before I could go in.
In the second part of the dream, I was still trying to get to class. In order to get to the class, I had to go through many corridors, some of them dark. At one point I walked through a hall filled with musical instruments. I knew I was supposed to take one and then go to the class, but I did not. Finally I reached the classroom. When I opened the door, I saw that the room was huge. I had thought there would be twenty or twenty-five people, but there were several thousand of them sitting and waiting for the teacher to arrive. Looking out, I saw stars, suns, moons, peaks of mountains covered with snow, cascades, and waterfalls. I had the impression that I had been there before. The scenery was so familiar. It was our true home, the place we want to come and to be all of our life—all the wonders of life, a highly spiritual kind of landscape. I felt very at home. This was my place.
As usual, I didn’t want to sit in the middle. I found a corner where I could sit quietly and observe. But someone came up to me and said: “Today it’s your turn to make a presentation; you have to move to the center.” “What presentation?”— I was not prepared to make a presentation to this huge class and this illustrious teacher. But I had to go. And I was thinking: what kind of thing am I going to do? Out of habit, I put my hand into my pocket and took out something very small. It was a miniature bell.
Suddenly I got enlightenment, I had great confidence, and I realized that with this mini-bell I could play music—because I know how to invite the bell, that’s true. This music is wonderful, because it brings harmony, calm, peace, and enlightenment to you and to the whole community. I had been practicing listening to the bell and inviting the bell all my life, and I had not realized that I was practicing music—the kind of spiritual music that brings peace, harmony, mutual understanding, and happiness to people. So with that small bell, I had great confidence that I would please the teacher and the assembly. And with that I woke up.
I am convinced that each of us has a bell in our pockets. We can be students of music. We can help bring harmony and peace and joy into our bodies and our minds. And we have not just one, but many musical instruments. Our in-breath and out-breath is a kind of violin that we can play all day. Our steps, our lungs, our noses—everything can become a musical instrument. We can play music while sitting, while walking, or while eating—and that music will bring joy, calm, and peace into our lives. And as I am a student of that class, I invite all of you to be my co-students, and you will learn how to play music in such a way that will bring peace to our society, our communities, and ourselves.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, author, and peace and human rights activist. Reprinted from Sounds of Freedom: Musicians on Spirituality and Social Change (2005) by John Malkin with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California.
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