WALK WITH ME: THE BEST EDUCATION YOU CAN GIVE YOUR CHILDREN IS TO KNOW YOURSELF.
Marc J. Francis describes the making of Walk With Me, his atmospheric film depicting the life of zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh.
THE CALL
In 2011, my friend Max Pugh invited me to collaborate on a film about a Vietnamese monk named Thich Nhat Hanh. At that point I had never heard of him. I was a filmmaker who, by most outer measures, was “successful.” Yet inwardly I was restless, unsettled. I was also about to become a father for the second time, quietly asking myself: Do I really have what it takes to guide another human being into the world? What does it even mean to educate a child?
Something in me said yes before I knew what I was saying yes to.
300 STEPS TO TRUTH
My first encounter was at a monastery tucked in the chaparral mountains of California. I arrived at midnight, jet-lagged, ushered into the library with nothing but cushions and a sleeping bag. By morning I was late for Thich Nhat Hanh’s talk. In a panic I stumbled down 300 stone steps carved into the hillside. Each rock vibrated with a kind of ancient solidity, the air pungent with white sage, grounding me even as my heart raced.
I slipped into the meditation hall, a sea of hundreds sitting in silence. And then—he appeared. Thich Nhat Hanh glided across the hall so lightly it seemed as though his feet barely touched the floor. He turned, faced the room, and with eyes that seemed to look directly through me, said:
“The best education you can give your children is to know yourself.”
The words struck like lightning through my being. I had been thinking of schools, curriculums, opportunities. Never of the simple, devastating truth that my own presence—my self-knowledge—was their deepest inheritance.
Then he said, “And the best tool you can use to educate yourself is mindfulness. If you are with your children but your mind is elsewhere, your body is there but your presence is not. And when your presence isn’t there, they know it. You are actually absent. True love is total presence.”
Something inside me whispered: This is what I’ve been longing for. This is the medicine I need.
LIVING IN MINDFULNESS
I stayed for two weeks, not filming but learning to breathe, to walk, to eat with awareness. Soon after, I travelled to monasteries in the U.S. and France. I thought it would take 18 months to make a film. It took four years.
The monks were clear: “You need to embody presence. When we feel you have, only then will we trust you to capture our story.”
So I practiced. Day after day. Letting go of the deadline, of the need to control the outcome. Slowly, the film began to reveal itself—like a thousand-piece puzzle, one fragment at a time.
THE UNRAVELING
But immersion in mindfulness did more than shape the film. It pulled apart the scaffolding of my own life. Returning home from those first retreats, I began to ask: Who am I? What kind of life am I living? Is this truly what I want?
Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote in his journal Fragrant Palm Leaves: “You aspire to see the truth, but once you have seen it, you cannot avoid suffering. Otherwise, you’ve seen nothing at all.”
For me, that suffering came in the form of a marriage unraveling, a divorce. Yet I was steadied by the tools I had been given. Mindfulness became the way I walked through fire without being consumed by it, a way of holding pain without turning it into blame.
LIFE IS ART AND ART IS LIFE
In time, I began to see that Walk With Me was never just a film about a Zen master. It was a mirror of my own awakening. Life was art, art was life. What I was living off-camera was what I was trying to transmit on-camera.
The film reached its natural close when Thich Nhat Hanh suffered a massive stroke. By then, I knew the story was not just about one man but about the power of community, the collective body of practice he had nurtured. He had refused to be the hero of the film—and in doing so revealed a more radical truth: that transformation is never carried by one person alone, but by the shared breath of many.
When the film was finally finished, Thich Nhat Hanh watched it in a cinema in Thailand, eating popcorn. I’m told he smiled.
For me, his words continue to echo: “The best education you can give your children is to know yourself.”
A sentence like a bell, still ringing.
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