Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Reconnect to moments of everyday peace with this “terrific” (San Francisco Chronicle) guide to the transformative power of mindfulness, from world-renowned Zen master, spiritual leader, and bestselling author Thich Nhat Hanh.

“This is a very worthwhile book. It can change individual lives and the life of our society.”—from the Foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama

In Peace Is Every Step, 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.

Lucidly and beautifully written, Peace Is Every Step contains commentaries, meditations, personal anecdotes, and stories from Nhat Hanh’s experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. It begins where the reader already is—in the kitchen, office, driving a car, walking in a park—and shows how deep meditative presence is available now. Nhat Hanh provides exercises to increase our awareness of our own body and mind through conscious breathing, which can bring immediate joy and peace. Nhat Hanh also shows how to be aware of relationships with others and of the world around us, its beauty and also its pollution and injustices. The deceptively simple practices of Peace Is Every Step encourage the reader to work for peace in the world as they continue to work on sustaining inner peace by turning the “mindless” into the mindful.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, poet, and peacemaker who was nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize. The author of many books, including Living Buddha, Living Christ, he lives in France in the monastic community known as Plum Village and lectures and gives retreats regularly in North America.