nhat hanh: Thich Nhat Hanh, influential Zen Buddhist monk, dies at 95

HANOI: Thich Nhat Hanh, the revered Zen Buddhist monk who helped pioneer the idea of mindfulness within the West and socially engaged Buddhism within the East, has died. He was 95.
The dying was confirmed by a monk at Tu Hieu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, who mentioned that Nhat Hanh, referred to as Thay to his followers, died at midnight on Saturday. The monk declined to be named as a result of he isn’t approved to talk to media.
A publish on Nhat Hanh’s verified Twitter web page attributed to The Worldwide Plum Village Group of Engaged Buddhism additionally confirmed the information, saying, “We invite our beloved international religious household to take just a few moments to be nonetheless, to return again to our aware respiratory, as we collectively maintain Thay in our hearts.” Born as Nguyen Xuan Bao in 1926 and ordained at age 16, Nhat Hanh distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and struggling into simply grasped steering over a lifetime devoted to working for peace.
In 1961 he went to america to check, educating comparative faith for a time at Princeton and Columbia universities.
For many of the the rest of his life, he lived in exile at Plum Village, a retreat centre he based in southern France.
There and in talks and retreats world wide, he launched Zen Buddhism, at its essence, as peace via compassionate listening. Nonetheless and steadfast in his brown robes, he exuded an air of watchful, amused calm, typically sharing a stage with the Dalai Lama.
“The peace we search can’t be our private possession. We have to discover an interior peace which makes it attainable for us to grow to be one with those that undergo, and to do one thing to assist our brothers and sisters, which is to say, ourselves,” Nhat Hanh wrote in considered one of his dozens of books, ‘The Solar My Coronary heart’.
Surviving a stroke in 2014 that left him unable to talk, he returned to Vietnam in October 2018, spending his closing years on the Tu Hieu Pagoda, the monastery the place he was ordained practically 80 years earlier.
Nhat Hanh plunged into anti-war activism after his return to his homeland in 1964 because the Vietnam Warfare was escalating. There, he based the Order of Inter-being, which espouses “engaged Buddhism” devoted to nonviolence, mindfulness and social service.
In 1966, he met the US civil rights chief Martin Luther King Jr. Nhat Hanh instructed King he was a ‘Bodhisattva’, or enlightened being, for his efforts to advertise social justice.
The monk’s efforts to advertise reconciliation between the U.S.-backed South and communist North Vietnam so impressed King {that a} yr later he nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his exchanges with King, Nhat Hanh defined one of many uncommon controversies in his lengthy lifetime of advocating for peace — over the immolations of some Vietnamese monks and nuns to protest the battle.
“I mentioned this was not suicide, as a result of in a troublesome state of affairs like Vietnam, to make your voice heard is troublesome. So typically now we have to burn ourselves alive to ensure that our voice to be heard so that’s an act of compassion that you simply do this, the act of affection and never of despair,” he mentioned in an interview with U.S. discuss present host Oprah Winfrey.
Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai tutorial who embraced Nhat Hanh’s concept of socially engaged Buddhism, mentioned the Zen grasp had “suffered greater than most monks and had been concerned extra for social justice”.
“In Vietnam within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, he was very uncovered to younger individuals, and his society was in turmoil, in disaster. He was actually in a troublesome place, between the satan and the deep blue sea — the Communists on the one hand, the CIA however. In such a state of affairs, he has been very trustworthy — as an activist, as a contemplative monk, as a poet, and as a transparent author,” Sivaraksa was quoted as saying.
In line with Nhat Hanh, “Buddhism means to be awake — aware of what’s taking place in a single’s physique, emotions, thoughts and on the earth. If you’re awake, you can’t do in any other case than act compassionately to assist relieve struggling you see round you. So Buddhism should be engaged on the earth. If it isn’t engaged, it isn’t Buddhism.”
Each North and South Vietnam barred Nhat Hanh from returning after he went overseas in 1966 to marketing campaign towards the battle, leaving him, he mentioned, “like a bee with no beehive”.
He was allowed into the nation in 2005, when the communist-ruled authorities welcomed him again within the first of a number of visits. Nhat Hanh remained based mostly in southern France.
The dramatic homecoming appeared to sign an easing of controls on faith. Nhat Hanh’s followers had been invited by the abbot of Bat Nha to settle at his mountain monastery, the place they remained for a number of years till relations with the authorities started to bitter over Nhat Hanh’s requires an finish to authorities management over faith.
By late 2009 to early 2010, Nhat Hanh’s followers had been evicted from the monastery and from one other temple the place they’d taken refuge.
To climate the storms of life and notice happiness, he counselled at all times a aware “return to the breath, even whereas doing routine chores like sweeping and washing dishes.
Nhat Hanh moved to Thailand in late 2016 after which returned to Vietnam in late 2018, the place he was receiving conventional medication remedies for the after-effects of his stroke and loved strolls across the temple grounds in his wheelchair, based on the Buddhist on-line publication LionsRoar.com.
It was a quiet, easy finish to a rare life, one solely consistent with his love for taking pleasure from the humblest features of life. “No mud, no lotus,” says considered one of his many temporary sayings.