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The Lessons of Thích Nhất Hạnh
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Thích Nhất Hạnh. Source: Wikipedia
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The Lessons of Thích Nhất Hạnh

In Celebration of a Zen Master
Julia Fiedorczuk
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Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.

Thích Nhất Hạnh passed away in late January 2022. A Vietnamese Zen master, peace activist and mindfulness teacher, he was nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. A proponent of deep ecology and engaged Buddhism, he penned over 100 books. Still, he was forced to live abroad for over 40 years.

Alongside Shunryū Suzuki from Japan and Seungsahn from Korea, Nhất Hạnh was one of the great teachers who introduced Buddhism to the West in the 1960s. One week after his death, I set out to write this column at the Từ Hiếu Temple, where he began his Zen training as a 16-year-old boy and returned several years ago to spend his final years. According to his wishes, he was cremated here, too.

He will be remembered primarily as the creator of the mindfulness method, which has been hugely successful in the West, yet has proved to be somewhat objectionable. As it turns out, the practice of mindfulness dovetails with such aspects

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Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.
Translation: Grzegorz Czemiel
Publish date: 01.02.2022

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Metaphors of Nature
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Illustration by Joanna Grochocka
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Metaphors of Nature

Towards a Trans-Species Understanding
Julia Fiedorczuk
Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.

By assuming that thought, language and culture are exclusive to humanity, we have shut ourselves off from non-human experience and knowledge. What if we finally broke away from the old Cartesian division of the world into us and the rest? The humanities make it clear today that we are not the pinnacle of wisdom because there are other modes of cognition, which are no better or worse than ours.

What do cephalopods do when they meet deep in the sea and briefly touch each other’s tentacles? What is the intention of an octopus squirting water on the back of a disliked scientist (as described in Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith, a philosopher of science) and what determines their social preferences? What is the content of mice songs or the choreographic messages expressed by crabs? Why would a chimpanzee mother carry a dead baby on her back for as many as 40 days? Why would she eat a little of her offspring’s body, a portion too small to have any nutritional value? We have no answers to these questions – and will probably not arrive at them any time soon. Although science – humanity’s superpower – is developing rapidly also in the sphere of ethology, the methods it has at its disposal, even the most advanced, are necessarily limited by human perception. Indeed, scientific enquiry is based on a deeply internalized system of concepts and values. In short, human cognition is invariably anthropomorphic, i.e. bound by what our minds and bodies are capable of. Does this mean, however, that the worlds of non-human beings – along with their creative and meaning-making practices – have to remain radically beyond our ken?

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