An Excerpt from Transformation at the Base: Fifty Verses on the Nature of Consciousness by Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master and mindfulness teacher, has written a profound overview of Buddhist psychology. Here is a passage that reveals his concept of the spiritual practice of you.

"Many winding paths make up the cycle of rebirth. In every instant, we are receiving input from the universe, society, our food, our education, our loves, and our hates. At the same time, we are producing output, breathing out carbon dioxide, making other people happy or sad. To say that we are going on a straight path in a certain direction is not correct. In every instant, we go out into all directions. . . . Each time we say or do something, write a line of poetry, disseminate an idea, send a letter, we go out in many different directions. Once we have set out in these directions, there is no way we can pull ourselves back to the place we were before. . . . We are already in all corners of the universe. We are present in our children, students, friends, readers — all the people we have made happy and all the people we have made suffer. We are in a cycle of rebirth in every instant."