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Book, “A Handful of Quiet,” by Thich Nhat Hanh

In the sweet little book written by Thich Nhat Hanh, A Handful of Quiet: Happiness in Four Pebbles (2012), Thich teaches a meditation in which we imagine ourselves being something such as a flower, and we imagine feeling a quality of that that thing within ourselves. (For example, in the case of the flower, he invites us to image feeling freshness.)

In the last of the four images that are part of the mediation in the book, Thich invites us to imagine ourselves as space—to experience a sense of spaciousness—and to imagine the feelings of that spaciousness such as that of feeling free. He writes, “Space is within you. When we cultivate spaciousness inside and outside of us, we can offer our acceptance and generosity…” (p. 28); “to feel free, we need to have space, and so do our loved ones” (p. 18).