Thich Nhat Hanh

• Born: October 11, 1926
• Birthplace: Hue, Vietnam
• Died: January 22, 2022
• Place of death: Hue, Vietnam

The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh was one of the most well-known spiritual teachers in the world. Considered by many to be the "Father of the Engaged Buddhism Movement," he is credited for much of the growth of Buddhism during the late twentieth century, as well as for promoting peace and justice following the early days of the Vietnam War. A prolific author, Thich Nhat Hanh penned over two hundred works of inspirational essays, poetry, stories, and memoirs that have been translated into dozens of languages and embraced by people of all faiths. Over the decades of his practice, he founded six monasteries, dozens of practice centers, and more than a thousand sanghas, or mindfulness practice communities, around the world.

Early Life

Thich Nhat Hanh was born Nguyen Xuan Bao on October 11, 1926, in Vietnam's central Quang Ngai Province, located along the coast of the South China Sea. He was one of six children in the Nguyen family. At the time of his birth—and until the Japanese invasion during World War II—Vietnam was a French colony. Nguyen Xuan Bao learned to speak French in school and his family practiced many French customs, while also attempting to maintain their national identity.

Many Vietnamese citizens were dissatisfied living under French rule. A growing resentment among the lower classes toward the middle and upper classes led to a widening of support for communist ideology. This support strengthened while Nguyen Xuan Bao matured. He grew up highly sensitive to the suffering of those living in poverty and the injustices caused by class divisions, but sought an approach to solving social problems that no political ideology could offer.

Monkhood

In 1942, Nguyen Xuan Bao chose to become a Buddhist monk and entered a nearby monastery. After his first year, he moved to the Bao Quoc Institute to continue his path. As a Buddhist, he vowed to embrace nonviolence, mindfulness, and compassion for all living things.

He later transferred to Saigon University for a more well-rounded education in literature, philosophy, and other academic subjects, but continued his monastic training. While a student, he wrote his first books of essays and poetry. These espoused traditional Buddhist teachings and also promoted his own approach to Buddhism that he later called "engaged Buddhism."

Engaged Buddhism was more active and assertive than the contemplative theology practiced by other Vietnamese Buddhists. Nguyen Xuan Bao was driven to this new approach by his intense desire to solve his country's political and economic problems, which had been magnified by the Japanese occupation of Vietnam during World War II, and complicated further by the return of French governance. As a result of these occupations, many citizens had joined the communist Vietminh Front to take back their country's independence. As the French Indochina War raged on, families not only suffered loss of lives but also lacked basic necessities and opportunities. Nguyen Xuan Bao was determined to dedicate his life to ending the violence and repairing the damage.

In 1949, upon completion of his training, Nguyen Xuan Bao earned the right to use the surname "Thich" a name which is used by Vietnamese Buddhist monks to show that they are all considered to be part of one family. He also chose a new name for himself: "Nhat Hanh," which translates to "one action."

Early Buddhist Initiatives

Thich Nhat Hanh began preaching nonviolence and compassion while teaching academic courses to high school students. His first major initiative was cofounding the Ung Quang Buddhist Pagoda in Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh city, a Buddhist monastery that later became An Quang Buddhist Institute and the center of Buddhist activity in South Vietnam.

In 1957, Thich Nhat Hanh partnered with Sister Dieu Am to build Phuong Boi, a monastic retreat high in the mountains of the Dai Lao Forest. ("Phuong" means fragrant and "Boi" is a type of palm leaf on which Buddhist teachings were traditionally written.) They envisioned the space would be used for healing and spiritual nourishment, which were especially needed amidst the tensions that continued to define their country. Vietnam at that time was divided into a communist North Vietnam and a noncommunist South Vietnam. While Thich Nhat Hanh did not profess an allegiance to either political persuasion, he was not happy with the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was a devout Roman Catholic. Diem had been enacting laws that supported Catholic dogma while imposing restrictions on Buddhist practices and beliefs.

Once Phuong Boi was established in 1961, Thich Nhat Hanh, seeking to enlarge his knowledge of the world, enrolled in a comparative religion program at Princeton University. He studied there for over two years and also taught Buddhism courses at Columbia University. However, his visit was cut short when his fellow monks called him home to help deal with the mounting crisis taking place between Buddhists and the South Vietnamese government. President Diem had begun cracking down on their nonviolent protests with force and arresting those who did not comply. Some Buddhists had been choosing self-immolation (sacrifice or suicide by fire) as the ultimate sacrifice for the cause.

In addition to the religious tensions, fighting had been breaking out as communist factions tried to take control of the south. Cities and villages were being destroyed and families were being displaced. Thich Nhat Hanh focused his energies on helping the people most afflicted by the war.

Vietnam War Activism

By the early 1960s, Russia was lending support to the northern communist effort, while the United States was backing South Vietnam. In 1965, the US commenced bombing North Vietnam, and for the next several years continued extensive military operations in support of the South Vietnamese cause. The war resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties, including the deaths of many civilians.

Thich Nhat Hanh led rallies against the violence. He united Buddhists and other pacifists in peaceful protests and prayer sessions. He started a Buddhist publishing company and transmitted his outline for engaged Buddhism to the entire country via the journal he edited, Vietnamese Buddhism. For his outspokenness against the war, both the North and South Vietnamese governments censored his books, including Prayers for the White Dove of Peace to Appear and Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire.

Thich Nhat Hanh also founded the Buddhist-principled School of Youth Social Service in Saigon and drummed up support from hundreds of volunteers to found and run orphanages, restore schools and medical centers, organize farming cooperatives, help families find housing, and other social measures. He also worked on the details for the planned Van Hahn Buddhist University in Saigon.

In 1966, Thich Nhat Hanh left Vietnam for a speaking tour organized by the Fellowship for Reconciliation, a US-based interfaith peace organization committed to nonviolence. While in the US, he voiced his "Five Point Proposal to End the War" to members of Congress and Robert McNamara, then the US secretary of defense. The proposal stated the need for a unilateral ceasefire, immediate withdrawal of troops, and the need for the US to help rebuild Vietnam "free of political and ideological strings." Thich Nhat Hanh also met with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and convinced King of the moral necessity for opposing the war. The two activists appeared on national television together as a statement of unity and the following year, King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Thich Nhat Hanh also met the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who wrote the foreword to Thich Nhat Hanh's Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. This was the first of Thich Nhat Hanh's books to be translated into English and other languages, although it was still banned in Vietnam. Thich Nhat Hanh also met with Pope Paul VI, who influenced Vietnamese Catholics to support the Buddhists' peace movement, and he met with influential leaders in Canada, Great Britain, Holland, and other countries.

In Exile

When Thich Nhat Hanh's speaking tour was over, he was forced to go into exile when neither the South nor North Vietnamese government would permit his reentry. He settled in Paris, France, where he established the Unified Buddhist Church. He edited the organization's publications and continued to write his own books. He taught Buddhist history at the University of Paris, famously known as the Sorbonne. Most notably, he headed up the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation, which worked to influence the Paris Peace Talks. These talks eventually led to the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, which marked the end of direct US involvement in the Vietnam War.

As Thich Nhat Hanh's reputation spread worldwide, followers began streaming into Paris to meet and study with him. To accommodate his visitors, he established a community known as the Sweet Potatoes Meditation Center. There he also enjoyed gardening, meditating, and writing books.

During the 1980s, Thich Nhat Hanh expanded the retreat and called it Plum Village, where he lived and regularly welcomed Buddhists and their supporters from throughout the world. Thich Nhat Hanh's United Buddhist Church has also established retreats at the Green Mountain Dharma Center in Vermont; Deer Park in Escondido, California; and Blue Cliff Monastery, in New York's Hudson Valley.

In 2005, Thich Nhat Hanh was granted a visa for the first time in over thirty years to visit Vietnam to tour and give lectures. He was greeted like a celebrity by thousands of followers. Some of his fellow Vietnamese exiles criticized his visit, saying that in doing so, he legitimized the Communist government and gave the false impression that it allowed freedom of worship. Yet, when he returned to Vietnam in 2007, he asked Vietnamese president Nguyen Minh Triet to disband the committee charged with monitoring religious groups. The following year, Plum Village's annual journal called for the end of communism in Vietnam. In response, Vietnamese police and a hired mob threw hundreds of monks and nuns out of a popular monastery Thich Nhat Hanh had built in southeast Vietnam.

In 2008 Thich Nhat Hanh founded Wake Up, a worldwide movement for mindfulness practitioners aged eighteen to thirty-five. Wake Up members follow Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings, the Five Mindfulness Trainings.

During the 2010s, Thich Nhat Hanh opened Plum Village monasteries in Paris, Hong Kong, Thailand, Mississippi, and Australia. In the mid-2010s, he founded the first European Institute of Applied Buddhism, located in Waldbröl, Germany.

Thich Nhat Hanh suffered a severe stroke on November 11, 2014, which left him unable to speak and semiparalyzed on his right side. He led the Plum Village community in France until October 2018, when he decided to return to Tu Hieu Temple, a nineteenth-century pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, where he was ordained as a monk in 1942. After his return to Tu Hieu, where he lived in a villa on the temple grounds, he was visited there by Ambassador Daniel Kritenbrink, several US senators, and many devotees.

Thich Nhat Hanh died at his residence at Tu Hieu, at the age of ninety-five, on January 22, 2022. Plum Village organized virtual and in-person mindfulness sessions lasting several days in tribute to him as well as commemorative ceremonies held both there, at Tu Hieu, and at other locations such as the Deer Park monastery.

Bibliography

Barclay, Eliza. “Thich Nhat Hanh’s Final Mindfulness Lesson: How to Die Peacefully.” Vox, 11 Oct. 2019, www.vox.com/2019/3/11/18196457/thich-nhat-hanh-health-mindfulness-plum-village. Accessed 5 Oct. 2020.

Fitzpatric, Liam. “The Monk Who Taught the World Mindfulness Awaits the End of This Life.” Time, 24 Jan. 2019, time.com/5511729/monk-mindfulness-art-of-dying/. Accessed 5 Oct. 2020.

“The Life Story of Thich Nhat Hanh.” Plum Village, plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/biography/. Accessed 5 Oct. 2020.

Mydans, Seth. "Thich Nhat Hanh, Monk, Zen Master and Activist, Dies at 95." The New York Times, 21 Jan. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/world/asia/thich-nhat-hanh-dead.html. Accessed 8 Mar. 2022.

Paddock, Richard C. “Thich Nhat Hanh, Preacher of Mindfulness, Has Come Home to Vietnam.” The New York Times, 16 May 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/world/asia/thich-nhat-hanh-vietnam.html. Accessed 5 Oct. 2020.