Thich Nhat Hanh’s Peony Blossoms

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Thich Nhat Hanh touches on the subjects of trauma, healing, interconnectedness and the concept of ‘self’ in his short story Peony Blossoms. The first part of the story revolves around the journey of one of the protagonists Tanh to healing and understanding, which was achieved after Tanh’s notice of a wildflower. In this essay, I will discuss the significance of the wildflower by explaining how Tanh’s sight of it results in his acceptance of the past trauma of war and the present worries concerning his nephew Thi, and thus his transformation. In Peony Blossoms, Tanh tries to overcome his trauma of the Vietnam War. This memory was brought about by the occurrence of his nephew falling fatally ill. In the process of revisiting the past, Tanh exercised mindfulness, a certain mode of attentiveness by watching his thoughts. Mindfulness allowed Tanh to become much more aware of his thoughts – delving deeper into them – and because of this, he notices the wildflower amidst all the chaos for the first time. The wildflower stirred something inside Tanh, which lead him to a revelation in relation to the two sides of reality, interconnectedness and the concept of self. What exactly got Tanh to notice the flower was its “fragile beauty” and how it “did not mind the destruction at all.” At that moment, the contrastive beauty and ugliness came together. In this, Tanh came to realize that good and bad have to come together. You cannot have one without the other. With good, there is bad. With life, there is death. With good memories of the past, there is trauma. By noticing that the beautiful wildflower was in the same environment as an ugly, destructive surrounding, Tanh finally admits to himself: as with the positive, negative happenings in life, such as the Vietnam War and Thi’s illness in his case, would always occur. Although there are two sides of reality, people usually
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