Monk’s efforts to promote reconciliation between the US-backed South and communist North Vietnam so impressed Martin Luther King that a year later he nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the revered Zen Buddhist monk who helped pioneer the concept of mindfulness in the West and was socially associated with Buddhism in the East, has died. He was 95 years old.
The death was confirmed by a monk at the Tu Hiu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, who said that Nhat Hanh, known as Thay to his followers, died at midnight on Saturday. The monk declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak to the media.
A post on the verified Twitter page of Nhat Hanh, responsible for The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism, also confirmed the news, saying, “We invite our beloved global spiritual family to take a few moments of calm, To come back to breathe our minds, as we hold thay in our hearts together.”
Born as Nguyen Xuan Bao in 1926 and ordained at age 16, Nhat Hanh spent a lifetime dedicated to working for peace distilling Buddhist teachings on compassion and suffering under easy-to-understand guidance. In 1961 he went to the United States to study, briefly teaching comparative religion at Princeton and Columbia universities.
For most of the rest of his life, he lived in exile at Plum Village, a retreat center he established in southern France.
There and in conversations and retreats around the world, he introduced Zen Buddhism, in its essence, as a form of peace through compassionate listening. Steady and steady in his brown robes, he exudes an air of attentive, pleasantly calm, sometimes sharing a stage with the Dalai Lama, the somewhat lively Tibetan Buddhist leader.
“The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We need to find an inner peace that makes it possible for us to be one with those who are suffering, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters, Which is to say himself,” Nhat Hanh wrote in one of his dozens of books, “The Sun My Heart.”
Surviving a stroke in 2014 that left him unable to speak, he returned to Vietnam in October 2018, spending his final years at Tu Hiu Pagoda, the monastery where he was ordained nearly 80 years ago.
Nhat Hanh plunged into anti-war activism after returning to his homeland in 1964 after the intensification of the Vietnam War. There, he founded the Order of Inter-Being, which supports an “engaged Buddhism” devoted to nonviolence, mindfulness, and social service.
In 1966, he met American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., a remarkable encounter for the two. Nhat Han told the king that he was a “bodhisattva” or enlightened figure for his efforts to promote social justice.
Monk’s efforts to promote reconciliation between the US-backed South and communist North Vietnam so impressed the king that a year later he nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his exchanges with the king, Nhat Hanh explained one of the rare controversies in his long life of advocating for peace – over the sacrifice of some Vietnamese monks and nuns to resist war.
“I said it wasn’t suicide, because in a tough situation like Vietnam, it’s hard to make your voice heard. So sometimes we have to burn ourselves alive to make our voices heard, so it’s an act of compassion that you do, An act of love and not of despair,” he said in an interview with US talk show host Oprah Winfrey. “Jesus Christ died in that spirit.”
Thai academic Sulak Sivaraksa, who embraced Nhat Hanh’s idea of socially connected Buddhism, said that the Zen master had “suffered more than most monks and was more involved in the pursuit of social justice.”
“In Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s, he was in contact with young people, and his society was in crisis, in crisis. He was in a really difficult position, between the devil and the deep blue sea – the Communists on the one hand, the CIA on the other. In such a situation, he has been very honest – as an activist, as a contemplative hermit, as a poet, and as an articulate writer,” Shivraksha was quoted as saying.
According to Nhat Hanh, “Buddhism means to be awake – to be aware of what is happening in one’s body, emotions, mind, and the world. If you are awake, you become aware of what is visible around you.” Nothing can do more than act compassionately to help relieve suffering. So Buddhism must engage the world. If it is not attached, it is not Buddhism.”
Both North and South Vietnam prevented Nhat Hanh from returning home after he went abroad in 1966 to campaign against the war, he said, “like a bee without a hive.”
He was only allowed back into the country in 2005, when the Communist-ruled government welcomed him for the first of many visits. Nat Hanh remained based in southern France.
The dramatic homecoming signaled an easing of control over religion. Nhat Hanh’s followers were invited by the abbot of Baat Nha to settle in his mountain monastery, where they remained for many years until relations with the authorities led to Nhat Han’s call to end government control over the religion. But it didn’t start souring.
From late 2009 to early 2010, Nhat Han’s followers were evicted from the monastery and from the other shrine where they had taken refuge.
Over nearly eight decades, Nhat Han’s teachings were refined into concepts accessible to all.
To face life’s storms and feel happier, he advised always “returning to the breath”, even while doing routine chores like cleaning and washing dishes.
“I try to live every moment as it is, to be comfortable, at peace in the present moment and respond to events with compassion,” he told Winfrey.
According to Buddhist Online, Nhat Hanh moved to Thailand in late 2016 and then returned to Vietnam at the end of 2018, where he was receiving traditional medical treatment for the after-effects of his stroke and traversed the temple grounds in his wheelchair. Enjoyed the “walk”. News bulletin LionsRoar.com,
It was a quiet, simple end to an extraordinary life, fully in keeping with his love for taking pleasure from the most humble aspects of life. “No mud, no lotus,” says one of his many acronyms.
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