Poet and Peace Activist Thích Nhất Hạnh was born on October 11, 1926 in Central Vietnam. Born as Nguyen Xuan Bao, his father, Nguyễn Đình Phúc, from Thành Trung village in Thừa Thiên, Huế, was an official with the French administration. His mother, Trần Thị Dĩ, was a homemaker from Gio Linh district.
Nhất Hạnh was the fifth of their six children. Until he was five, he lived with his large extended family at his grandmother's home. He recalled feeling joy at age seven or eight after he saw a drawing of a peaceful Buddha, sitting on the grass. On a school trip, he visited a mountain where a hermit lived who was said to sit quietly day and night to become peaceful like the Buddha. They explored the area, and he found a natural well, which he drank from and felt completely satisfied. It was this experience that led him to want to become a Buddhist monk.
At age 12, he expressed an interest in training to become a monk, which his parents, cautious at first, eventually let him pursue at age 16 and he joined the Từ Hiếu Temple at age 16 and took the name Thích Nhất Hạnh when he was ordained in 1949 as modern Vietnam's founding revolutionary Ho Chi Minh led efforts to liberate the Southeast Asian country from its French colonial rulers.
Thích Nhất Hạnh (affectionately known as Thầy, which means “teacher”) is deservedly recognized not only as one of the great Buddhists of our time, but also as one of the great contemplatives of any spiritual tradition. Thầy, distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and suffering into easily grasped guidance over a lifetime dedicated to working for peace.
From the early days of his monastic life, Thích Nhất Hạnh believed that spirituality must be actively engaged in relieving suffering in society. In the 1960s, as war raged in Vietnam, he founded youth relief teams, schools, and a new Buddhist order dedicated to social service.
Thầy, who spoke seven languages in1961 went to the United States to study, teaching comparative religion for a time at Princeton and Columbia universities.
Thầy,plunged into anti-war activism after his return to his homeland in 1964 as the Vietnam War was escalating. In June 1965 he wrote a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to explain why monks were setting themselves on fire. He stated that it was very difficult to make their voices heard against the war, and burning oneself was done out of a deep desire to help others notice their suffering.
He emphasized that self-immolation in this context was rooted in love and the wish to protect people, differentiating it completely from personal despair or suicide. In 1966, he met the U.S. civil rights leader in what was a remarkable encounter for both. Thầy told King he was a “Bodhisattva,” or enlightened being, for his efforts to promote social justice and famously persuaded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War by sharing a simple truth: “Men are not our enemies. If we kill men, with whom shall we live?”.
In 1967, King gave a famous speech at Riverside Church boldly articulating his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Thích Nhất Hạnh taught that working for peace is not a matter of anger or blame, but of love in action. “We should not walk ‘for’ peace. We should be peace as we walk,”
The monk’s efforts to promote reconciliation between the U.S.-backed South and communist North Vietnam so impressed King that a year later he nominated Thầy for the Nobel Peace Prize saying "I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam," His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”“However, no prize would be awarded that year.
Thay’s peace plan urging America to stop bombing and to offer reconstruction aid without ideological strings, resulted in the government of South Vietnam declaring him a traitor and banned him from returning. After the Communists seized control of the South in 1975, he was again refused permission to enter Vietnam. His principled anti-war stance had made him an enemy of both sides, leaving him, he said, “like a bee without a beehive.”
In exile, Thay settled in the south of France and established the Plum Village Monastery, which would be his new home for decades, and remains the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and America.
.There and in talks and retreats around the world he introduced Zen Buddhism, at its essence, as peace through compassionate listening.There, he also founded the Order of Inter-being, which espouses “engaged Buddhism” grounded in the insight that mindfulness and compassion should translate into concrete action to build peace and well-being in the world.
I happen to share this ethos of compassionate engagement: which emphasizes “social cohesion and collective action” to address challenges and “building the new world within the shell of the old” through cooperation.
Thầy showed that true happiness requires us not only to be peaceful within, but also to act peacefully without – to serve others, promote justice, and heal the wounds of society.
Thay spoke out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying, “We know very well that airplanes, guns and bombs cannot remove wrong perceptions. Only loving speech and compassionate listening can help people correct wrong perceptions. But our leaders are not trained in that discipline, and they rely only on the armed forces to remove terrorism.”
He encouraged us to address the root causes of violence and cultivate peace in our hearts. Thay brought together Israelis and Palestinians for peacebuilding retreats at Plum Village, continuing his lifelong commitment to ending conflict. Throughout his writings, interviews, and speeches he continued to draw connections between the personal and the collective, promoting mindfulness not merely as a tool for self-help but as a necessary precondition for avoiding war and climate catastrophe.
Thay also spoke out about the urgency of addressing climate change, writing, “There’s a revolution that needs to happen and it starts from inside each one of us. We need to wake up and fall in love with Earth. Our personal and collective happiness and survival depends on it.”
Thay wrote over a 100 books on peace. Some of his best-known are "Peace is in Every Step," "Being Peace," "The Miracle of Mindfulness," and "Living Buddha, Living Christ" In a majestic body of works and public appearances spanning decades, Thầy spoke in gentle yet powerful tones of the need to "walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet."
Thay is also remembered as being the father of mindfulness which has been hugely successful in the West.The energy of being fully present and aware in each moment. He often guided people in the simple practice of mindful breathing to return to the “here and now,” where life is actually available. “Breathing in, I calm my body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is the only moment,” he wrote. This gentle exercise encapsulates an entire philosophy: through conscious breathing and smiling to life, we generate peace within ourselves. Thay promoted mindfulness not merely as a tool for self-help but as a necessary precondition for avoiding war and climate catastrophe.
In his book, “Living Buddha, Living Christ”, Thay wrote that “mindfulness, the capacity to be here, to witness deeply everything that happens in the present moment, is the beginning of enlightenment”. He also described practices of mindfulness as lighting the “lamps with us” to gain a deeper understanding of our worlds so that we can work towards enlightenment.
Thay wrote that the seeds of mindfulness are in all of us, just as “Buddha nature” described in Buddhism or “Kingdom of God within our hearts” in Christianity.
In the book, “Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire”, one chapter contains a letter that Thay wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965. Thay pointed to “intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, …hatred and discrimination which lie in the heart of” people, as the real enemies ".
Thay was referring to the notion that people have parts which may be marked by intolerance and discrimination against others, which are the enemies, not the individual human beings. Thay highlighted that we need to look at parts of ourselves that are intolerant of others and attempt to heal these parts.
"You learn how to suffer. If you know how to suffer, you suffer much, much less. And then you know how to make good use of suffering to create joy and happiness," he said in a 2013 lecture. "The art of happiness and the art of suffering always go together."
Sadly capitalism has quickly appropriated the practice of mindfulness this technique of meditation, converting it into another instrument of multiplying profits.
This suggests that meditation techniques in themselves do not automatically entail developing more ethical or empathetic attitudes. To my mind, in contemporary Western culture, where almost everyone practices this or that, it needs to be repeated ad nauseam that without deep, hard and continuous work on one’s egotistical limitations, spiritual practices can only be superficial.
Thay was only allowed back into the country in 2005, when the communist-ruled government welcomed him back in the first of several visits. Nhat Hanh remained based in southern France.
The dramatic homecoming seemed to signal an easing of controls on religion. Thầy's followers were invited by the abbot of Bat Nha to settle at his mountain monastery, where they remained for several years until relations with the authorities began to sour over Thầy's calls for an end to government control over religion. By late 2009 to early 2010, Thầy's followers were evicted from the monastery and from another temple where they had taken refuge.
Thầy suffered a stroke in 2014 that left him unable to speak and returned to Vietnam to live out his final days in the central city of Hue, the ancient capital and his place of birth, after spending much of his adult life in exile.
Thầy passed away peacefully at Tu Hieu Temple on 22nd January, 2022, at the age of 95, surrounded by his followers. Per his wishes, his funeral was a silent one, with solemn guests following his teachings of quiet reflection.His five-day funeral, which began on the day of his death, had a seven-day wake that culminated with his cremation on 29 January.
Born in the throes of colonialism and war, Thích Nhất Hạnh was extraordinary in his insight and ability to bring the dharma to the modern world. He showed us how to live with clarity of purpose even when all seems lost.
Thầy’s life was a testament to the power of consciousness: even after a severe stroke late in life, he continued to emanate peaceful presence in his silence, teaching by example that being is sometimes more powerful than words or action. Visionary yet practical, compassionate yet bold, the spirit of Thích Nhất Hạnh lives on in every initiative for peace and well-being. Happy 100th Birthday Thích Nhất Hạn.
"Hope is important, because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear," "If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. "If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here."
-Thich Nhat Hanh
"Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see."
- Thích Nhất Hạn .
Kiss The Earth -Thich Nhat Hanh
Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Bring the Earth your love and happiness.
The Earth will be safe
when we feel safe in ourselves.
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