How to Smile (Mindfulness Essentials)

The latest book in the bestselling How To series: simple, refreshing meditations of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh give us inspiration and tools for transforming our suffering and cultivating happiness

In inspiring passages and simple exercises, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us what he calls “the art of suffering.” He gives us teachings and tools for transforming suffering as well as ways to touch moments of happiness and smile even while suffering is still there.

Written with characteristic simplicity and wisdom, these insightful meditations—born from the Zen master’s lifetime of Zen practice and peacemaking—teach us how to come back to ourselves, calm our body and mind, and not let suffering overwhelm us.

When we’re willing to face our suffering and look deeply into it, we begin to understand its origins. Transformation and healing become possible, and along with it a greater capacity to understand the suffering of others and resolve conflicts in our relationships.

Creating peace and understanding in ourselves and our relationships in this way is essential for helping create true understanding and peace in our communities, society, and the world.

Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices for transforming our own suffering, listening deeply to the suffering of others, and especially how to cultivate our own smile and happiness.

All Mindfulness Essentials books are illustrated with playful sumi-ink drawings by California artist Jason DeAntonis.

Thich Nhat Hanh was a world-renowned spiritual teacher and peace activist. Born in Vietnam in 1926, he became a Zen Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen. Over seven decades of teaching, he published more than 100 books, which have sold more than four million copies in the United States alone. Exiled from Vietnam in 1966 for promoting peace, his teachings on Buddhism as a path to social and political transformation are responsible for bringing the mindfulness movement to Western culture. He established the international Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism in France, now the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and the heart of a growing community of mindfulness practice centers around the world. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 95 at his root temple, Tu Hieu, in Hue, Vietnam.