Zen-Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (tik not hahn), wrote more than 100 books of poetry, fiction and philosophy. He founded monastic communities in France, Vermont and California. He conducts public workshops and peace-making retreats with Vietnam veterans, Palestinians and Israelis. (For his books I've read, click on his name.)

In nominating him for a Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout .His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”

Exiled from Vietnam more than 30 years ago, Hanh has become known as “a healer of the heart, a monk who knows how the everyday world can both enrich and endanger our spiritual lives.” In this book, Jesus and Buddha share a conversation about prayer, ritual, and renewal. Hanh shows how we can take Jesus’ and Buddha’s wisdom into the world with us, to “practice in such a way that Buddha is born every moment of our daily life, that Jesus Christ is born every moment of our daily life.” Different cultures, different words, but the same meaning. Christianity and Buddhism both have the notion of ‘the All’, the ultimate reality. Paul Tillich said “God is the ground of being.” Hanh says, “The ultimate is nirvana, it is God…What if we only have an idea, a notion of God? God is concrete in the form of a human being: God the Son, Jesus Christ….It’s much easier for you to touch the absolute, the ultimate, when you are able to touch a human being. That is why we tend to think of God as a human being, as having a body: God as a person.” We can’t really know what God is, but we can form valuable notions of God.

Buddhists say we must look deeply, live mindfully. What does this mean? “Mindfulness is a kind of light that shines upon all your thoughts, all your feelings, all your actions, and all your words. Mindfulness is the Buddha. Mindfulness is the equivalent of the Holy Spirit, the energy of God.” Buddhists practice Five Faculties: faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight. By this ‘way’ you can cultivate enlightenment, or “The Holy Spirit is something to be cultivated and the seeds of the Holy Spirit are already within you.” We cultivate our seeds – as we do, our Five Faculties grow. Much of this book describes the Buddhist way of cultivation. I have adopted word-for-word his Five Mindfulness Trainings as prayers to help me cultivate the Spirit within myself. Thich Nhat Hanh ‘translates’ Buddhist practices into Christian ones. Only in the final chapter do Jesus and Buddha meet. They recognize that they each describe nearly identical ways or paths to guide us in cultivating our seeds. I found this book to be spiritually very rewarding and informative as well as a joy to read. I give it my very highest recommendation.