It's Now, It's Zen and It's Life-Changing

ESCONDIDO, Calif. — In a sun-splashed sanctuary of chaparral, lilac and oak groves, brown-robed Buddhists have gently transformed a land once used for weapons training by San Diego-area law enforcement.

Followers of Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh have replaced the rattle of machine guns with the ringing of sacred bells. They have repainted and repaired bullet-scarred buildings. Their 400-acre Deer Park Monastery now features a light-filled meditation hall, a waterfall, a fish pond and Zen sayings posted throughout the grounds: Breathe, you are alive.

In the four years since they purchased the land, however, the Buddhists have been tackling even more challenging transformations: helping Hollywood entertainers, teenage runaways, inner-city youth, gang members and others tame their personal demons and find peace with themselves.

At a recent retreat for the film and television industry, for instance, Nhat Hanh preached the importance of self-love to an assembly of artists including comedian Garry Shandling and producer Larry Kasanoff, who spearheaded the gathering.

"You don't need to pretend to be someone else. You don't need plastic surgery," the soft-spoken Nhat Hanh said, setting off a ripple of laughter from the crowd.

With such teachings, the monastics of Nhat Hanh's Unified Buddhist Church aim to equip people across different faiths and cultures to practice "mindfulness" -- the cultivation of inner calm in daily life through breathing deeply, slowing down and living fully in the present.

Many of the retreats took place earlier this year, when Nhat Hanh spent three months at Deer Park during a winter retreat from his normal residence in France.

The teacher, 67, has established 800 meditation groups in two dozen countries and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr. for his peacemaking efforts during the Vietnam War.

But a sangha, or community, of four dozen monastics from several countries live and work in Escondido year-round.

The monastics include both women and men who sport identically shaved heads and long brown robes. They include people like Abbott Phap Dung, a Vietnamese refugee who came of age as a San Fernando "Valley Boy" break dancing and skateboarding. He says he struggled in school, fending off racial taunts, before eventually graduating from USC and working as an architect in Santa Monica.