Buddhist master a source of peace, understanding.

Byline: FROM HEART TO HEART By Nancy Nina For The Register-Guard

In June 1967, my husband and I, along with the teenagers of our Quaker meeting, joined thousands of others in Century City, Calif., to protest the Vietnam War.

On that sunny day, I saw a peaceful protest turn into acts of state-supported terrorism. As I ran from the swinging clubs of the riot police, my attention turned to a slight young woman sitting beautifully in the lotus position. As I watched her, I saw a club come down on her head, sprawling her on the ground.

The officer closest to me turned to see what I was looking at, raised his club, ran to her motionless body and clubbed her again. I watched as her blood flowed into the street. Terrified, I ran.

For many years, I tried to run from that scene and what was revealed in that moment about the politics of my beloved homeland.

In less than a year, we had moved to Southern Oregon, where others were gathering to try to create an alternative to the culture of war. We longed to transform the patterns of violence and materialism within ourselves.

A decade later, I moved to Eugene. I was still carrying within me the rage and pain of the injustices of this world, and longed to find peace, to be peace.

I read the Dalai Lama's autobiography "Freedom in Exile." Surely, here was a man who had transformed pain into compassion. I followed his suggestion and began to repeat a prayer by Shantideva: ` ... like earth and the great elements, and also vast as the immensity of space, let me be the living ground of love, for innumerable beings ... '

Soon I attended a retreat in Ashland, led by a teacher in the lineage of the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Master, Thich Nhat Hanh. I was given practical and helpful tools on my path of transformation. In a few months, I went to Santa Clara to be with Thich Nhat Hanh and his monastics for a retreat.

I wept in joy and recognition. I felt like I had come home. I stepped forward with 500 others when `Thay' (Vietnamese word for teacher) offered his support and guidance to all who wanted him as their root teacher.

I am learning to sit and settle, just like a glass of freshly pressed apple juice. I find when I sit and rest my busy mind on my in-breath and my out-breath, the pulp and debris, the mental chatter, slowly settles. What remains is not unlike the juice - sweet and clear, spacious and joyful.

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us to stop. He teaches us to embrace and accept our own pain and suffering and transform it into understanding and compassion.

We learn to rest in the spaciousness of mindfulness, in the endlessness of the present moment. Only such a vast container can hold the violence and injustices of our times, as well as the joy and beauty of this precious human life.

Nancy Nina practices meditation with the Cedar Sangha, a local community that is a lay branch of the Unified Buddhist Church and sits in the tradition of Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh. This column is coordinated by Two Rivers Interfaith Ministries, a network of faith communities in the Eugene-Springfield area. For more information, call 344-5693.