In the rush of modern life, we tend to lose touch with the peace that is available in each moment. Zen master, peace activist and author Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the very situations that usually pressure and antagonize us. For him, a ringing telephone can be a signal to call us back to our true selves. Dirty dishes, red lights and traffic jams are spiritual friends on the path to "mindfulness" - the process of keeping our consciousness alive to our present experience and reality. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next aware breath and the smile we can form right now. Thich Naht Hahn offers commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories to show how deep meditative presence is available. He provides exercises to increase our awareness of our own body and mind through conscious breathing - and he also shows us how to be aware of our relationships with others and of the world around us, its beauty as well as its pollution and injustices.

Reviews

``Next time you are caught in a traffic jam . . . sit back and smile . . . a smile of compassion and loving kindness.'' While such sappy Zen advice from a Buddhist monk, a Vietnamese resident in France following his exile in 1966, could send Western seekers of enlightenment into overdrive, fortunately most of the suggestions offered in this slim guidebook are of more substance. In a series of vignettes and short passages, e.g., ``Cooking Our Potatoes,'' Nhat Hanh outlines techniques for living mindfullly, that is, in the present. Emphasizing that all things are interconnected on personal and political levels, he notes, for example, that the wealth of one society is based on the poverty of others. This book of illuminating reminders bids us to reorient the way we look at the world, turning away from a goal-driven, me-first modality toward a humanitarian perspective. (Feb.)