Thích Nhất Hạnh

Nhất Hạnh was born Nguyễn Xuân Bảo on 11 October 1926, in the ancient capital of Huế in central Vietnam. 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. ==Names applied to him==

Nhất Hạnh had many names in his lifetime. As a boy, he received a formal family name (Nguyễn Đình Lang) to register for school, but was known by his nickname (Bé Em). He received a spiritual name (Điệu Sung) as an aspirant for the monkhood; a lineage name (Trừng Quang) when he formally became a lay Buddhist; and a Dharma name (Phùng Xuân) when he was ordained as a monk. He took the Dharma title Nhất Hạnh when he moved to Saigon in 1949. The Vietnamese name Thích (釋) is from "Thích Ca" or "Thích Già" (釋迦, "of the Shakya clan"). Nhất Hạnh's followers called him ("master; teacher"), or Thầy Nhất Hạnh. Any Vietnamese monk in the Mahayana tradition can be addressed as "thầy", with monks addressed as thầy tu ("monk") and nuns addressed as sư cô ("sister") or sư bà ("elder sister"). He is also known as Thiền Sư Nhất Hạnh ("Zen Master Nhất Hạnh"). ==Education==

At age 16, Nhất Hạnh entered the monastery at Từ Hiếu Temple, where his primary teacher was Zen Master Thanh Quý Chân Thật, who was from the 43rd generation of the Lâm Tế Zen school and the ninth generation of the Liễu Quán school. In 1955, Nhất Hạnh returned to Huế and served as the editor of (Vietnamese Buddhism), the official publication of the General Association of Vietnamese Buddhists () for two years before the publication was suspended as higher-ranking monks disapproved of his writing. He believed that this was due to his opinion that South Vietnam's various Buddhist organisations should unite. In 1956, while he was away teaching in Đà Lạt, his name was expunged from the records of Ấn Quang, effectively disowning him from the temple. In late 1957, Nhất Hạnh decided to go on retreat, and established a monastic "community of resistance" named Phương Bôi, in Đại Lao Forest near Đà Lạt. During this period, he taught at a nearby high school and continued to write, promoting the idea of a humanistic, unified Buddhism. in 1960 to study comparative religion at Princeton University. He studied at the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1961. and also taught as a lecturer at Cornell University. By then he had gained fluency in French, Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, Pali and English, in addition to his native Vietnamese. ==Career==

Activism in Vietnam 1963–1966 In 1963, after the military overthrow of the minority Catholic regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem, Nhất Hạnh returned to South Vietnam on 16 December 1963, at the request of Thich Tri Quang, the monk most prominent in protesting the religious discrimination of Diem, to help restructure the administration of Vietnamese Buddhism. Nhất Hạnh also edited the weekly journal (Sound of the Rising Tide), the UBCV's official publication. He continually advocated peace and reconciliation, notably calling in September 1964, soon after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, for a peace settlement, and referring to the Viet Cong as brothers. The South Vietnamese government subsequently closed the journal. and the spiritual head of Từ Hiếu and associated monasteries. Vạn Hạnh Buddhist University On 13 March 1964, Nhất Hạnh and the monks at An Quang Pagoda founded the Institute of Higher Buddhist Studies (), with the UBCV's support and endorsement. He left for the U.S. shortly afterwards and was not allowed to return, leaving Sister Chân Không in charge of the SYSS. Chân Không was central to the foundation and many of the activities of the SYSS, which organized medical, educational and agricultural facilities in rural Vietnam during the war. Nhất Hạnh was initially given substantial autonomy to run the SYSS, which was initially part of Vạn Hạnh University. In April 1966, the Vạn Hạnh Students' Union under the presidency of Phượng issued a "Call for Peace". Vice Chancellor Thích Minh Châu dissolved the students' union and removed the SYSS from the university's auspices. and the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. Nhất Hạnh established the Order of Interbeing from a selection of six SYSS board members, three men and three women, who took a vow to practice the Fourteen Precepts of Engaged Buddhism. He added a seventh member in 1981. On several occasions, Nhất Hạnh explained to Westerners that Thích Quảng Đức and other Vietnamese Buddhist monks who self-immolated during the Vietnam war did not perform acts of suicide; rather, their acts were, in his words, aimed "at moving the hearts of the oppressors, and at calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese." By 2017, the group had grown to include thousands known to recite the Fourteen Precepts. Nhất Hạnh returned to the U.S. in 1966 to lead a symposium in Vietnamese Buddhism at Cornell University and continue his work for peace. When the South Vietnamese regime threatened to block Nhất Hạnh's reentry to the country, Merton wrote an essay of solidarity, "Nhat Hanh is my Brother". During this time, he also undertook a widely publicized five-day fast. Additionally, he translated reports of human rights violations from Vietnamese into English and compiled them into a document he presented to the United Nations. In 1965 he wrote Martin Luther King Jr. a letter titled "In Search of the Enemy of Man". During his 1966 stay in the U.S., Nhất Hạnh met King and urged him to publicly denounce the Vietnam War. In 1967, due in large part to Nhất Hạnh, King gave the speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" at Riverside Church in New York City, his first to publicly question U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Later that year, King nominated Nhất Hạnh for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize. In his nomination, King said, "I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity". King also called Nhất Hạnh "an apostle of peace and nonviolence". King named the candidate he had chosen to nominate with a "strong request" to the prize committee, in sharp violation of Nobel traditions and protocol. The committee did not make an award that year. For refusing to take sides in the war, Nhất Hạnh was exiled by both the North and South Vietnamese governments. He received asylum in France and moved to the Paris suburbs, living with other Vietnamese refugees. In an interview for On Being, he said that The Miracle of Mindfulness was "written for our social workers, first, in Vietnam, because they were living in a situation where the danger of dying was there every day. So out of compassion, out of a willingness to help them to continue their work, The Miracle of Mindfulness was written as a practice manual. And after that, many friends in the West, they think that it is helpful for them, so we allow it to be translated into English." The book was originally titled The Miracle of Being Awake, as in 1975 "mindfulness" was barely recognized in English. eventually stopping under pressure from the governments of Thailand and Singapore. Recounting his experience years later, Nhất Hạnh said he was in Singapore attending a conference on religion and peace when he discovered the plight of the suffering of the boat people: Please Call Me by My True Names, Nhất Hạnh's best-known poem, was written in 1978 during his efforts to assist the boat people. Plum Village is the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and America, with over 200 monastics and over 10,000 visitors a year. The Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism (formerly the Unified Buddhist Church) and its sister organization in France, the Congrégation Bouddhique Zen Village des Pruniers, are the legally recognized governing bodies of Plum Village in France. Expanded practice centres in California By 2019, Nhất Hạnh had built a network of monasteries and retreat centres in several countries, including France, the U.S., Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. Additional practice centres and associated organizations Nhất Hạnh and the Order of Interbeing established in the US include Blue Cliff Monastery in Pine Bush, New York; the Community of Mindful Living in Berkeley, California; Parallax Press; Deer Park Monastery (Tu Viện Lộc Uyển), established in 2000 (The Maple Forest Monastery (Tu Viện Rừng Phong) and Green Mountain Dharma Center (Ðạo Tràng Thanh Sơn) in Vermont closed in 2007 and moved to the Blue Cliff Monastery in Pine Bush.) The monasteries, open to the public during much of the year, provide ongoing retreats for laypeople, while the Order of Interbeing holds retreats for specific groups of laypeople, such as families, teenagers, military veterans, the entertainment industry, members of Congress, law enforcement officers and people of colour. According to the Thích Nhất Hạnh Foundation, the charitable organization that serves as the Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism's fundraising arm, as of 2017 the monastic order Nhất Hạnh established comprises over 750 monastics in 9 monasteries worldwide. Nhất Hạnh established two monasteries in Vietnam, at the original Từ Hiếu Temple near Huế and at Prajna Temple in the central highlands. Writings Nhất Hạnh has published over 130 books, including more than 100 in English, which as of January 2019 had sold over five million copies worldwide. His books, which cover topics including spiritual guides and Buddhist texts, teachings on mindfulness, poetry, story collections, a biography of the Buddha, and scholarly essays on Zen practice, During his long exile, Nhất Hạnh's books were often smuggled into Vietnam, where they had been banned. Later activism In 2014, major Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed called for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by 2020. Nhất Hạnh was represented by Chân Không. Nhất Hạnh was known to refrain from consuming animal products as a means of nonviolence toward animals. Christiana Figueres has said that Nhất Hạnh helped her overcome a personal crisis and develop the deep listening and empathy required to facilitate the Paris Agreement on climate change. ==Relations with Vietnamese governments==

Nhất Hạnh's relationship with the government of Vietnam varied over the years. He stayed away from politics, but did not support the South Vietnamese government's policies of Catholicization. He questioned American involvement, putting him at odds with the Saigon leadership, Nhất Hạnh arrived on 12 January after 39 years in exile. Despite the controversy, Nhất Hạnh returned to Vietnam in 2007, while the heads of the UBCV, Thich Huyen Quang and Thich Quang Do, remained under house arrest. The UBCV called his visit a betrayal, symbolizing his willingness to work with his co-religionists' oppressors. Võ Văn Ái, a UBCV spokesman, said, "I believe Thích Nhất Hạnh's trip is manipulated by the Hanoi government to hide its repression of the Unified Buddhist Church and create a false impression of religious freedom in Vietnam." During the 2007 visit, Nhất Hạnh suggested ending government control of religion to President Nguyen Minh Triet. A provincial police officer later spoke to a reporter about this incident, accusing Nhất Hạnh of breaking Vietnamese law. The officer said, "[Nhất Hạnh] should focus on Buddhism and keep out of politics." Nhất Hạnh's followers say that during a sacred ceremony at Plum Village Monastery in 2006, Nghi received a transmission from Nhất Hạnh and agreed to let them occupy Bat Nha. During this time, thousands of people came to the center to practice, and Nhất Hạnh ordained more than 500 monks and nuns at the monastery. "Senior monks were dragged like animals out of their rooms, then left sitting in the rain until police dragged them to the taxis where 'black society' bad guys pushed them into cars," a villager said in a phone interview. Two senior monks had their IDs taken and were put under house arrest without charges in their home towns. Monastics responded with chanting, but continued to be persecuted by the government. ==Religious approach and influence ==

, Sangharakshita, and Nhất Hạnh (l-r) in Berlin, 1992 Engaged Buddhism Nhất Hạnh combined a variety of teachings of Early Buddhist schools, Mahayana, Zen, and ideas from Western psychology to teach mindfulness of breathing and the four foundations of mindfulness, offering a modern perspective on meditation practice. Nhất Hạnh has also been a leader in the Engaged Buddhism movement), promoting the individual's active role in creating change. He credited the 13th-century Vietnamese Emperor Trần Nhân Tông with originating the concept. Trần Nhân Tông abdicated his throne to become a monk and founded the Vietnamese Buddhist school of the Bamboo Forest tradition. He also called it Applied Buddhism in later years to emphasize its practical nature. Mindfulness trainings Nhất Hạnh rephrased the five precepts for lay Buddhists as "mindfulness trainings", which were traditionally written in terms of refraining from negative activities, such as committing to taking positive action to prevent or minimize others' negative actions. For example, instead of merely refraining from stealing, Nhất Hạnh wrote, "prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth" by, for example, taking action against unfair practices or unsafe workplaces. According to Plum Village, Manifesto 2000, introduced by UNESCO, was largely inspired by their five mindfulness trainings. In keeping with the northern tradition of Bodhisattva precepts, Nhất Hạnh wrote the fourteen mindfulness trainings for the Order of Interbeing based on the ten deeds. He also updated the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya for Plum Village monastics while keeping its number of rules, 250 for monks and 348 for nuns. Interbeing Nhất Hạnh developed the English term "interbeing" by combining the prefix "inter-" with the verb "to be" to denote the interconnection of all phenomena. This was inspired by the Chinese word 相即 in Master Fa Zang's "Golden Lion Chapter", a Huayan summary of the Avatamsaka Sutra. Some scholars believed it was a presentation of the Prajnaparamita, which "is often said to provide a philosophical foundation" for Zen. Nhất Hạnh was also known for expressing deep teachings through simple phrases or parables. "The sun my heart", for instance, was an insight of meditation on the interdependence of all things. He used "no mud no lotus" to illustrate the interrelationship between awakening and afflictions, well-being and ill-being. "A cloud never dies", on the other hand, is a contemplation of phenomena beyond birth and death. To teach non-duality, he often told the story of his left and right hand. His meditation on aimlessness (apranihita) was told through the story of a river. The relationship between waves and water explained the Dharma Realm of Unobstructed Interpenetration of Truth and Phenomena. New translations of the Heart Sutra Nhất Hạnh completed new English and Vietnamese translations of the Heart Sutra in September 2014. In a letter to his students, , the Netherlands, 2006 The Father of Mindfulness Called "the Father of Mindfulness", According to James Shaheen, the editor of the American Buddhist magazine Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, "In the West, he's an icon. I can't think of a Western Buddhist who does not know of Thich Nhất Hạnh." J. Mark G. Williams of Oxford University and the Oxford Mindfulness Centre has said, "What he was able to do was to communicate the essentials of Buddhist wisdom and make it accessible to people all over the world, and build that bridge between the modern world of psychological science and the modern healthcare system and these ancient wisdom practices – and then he continued to do that in his teaching." As of 2019, it was reported that mindfulness as espoused by Nhất Hạnh had become the theoretical underpinning of a $1.1 billion industry in the U.S. One survey determined that 35% of employers used mindfulness in practices in the workplace. According to Buddhism scholar Sallie B. King, Nhất Hạnh was "extremely skilled at expressing their teachings in the language of a kind of universal spirituality rather than a specifically Buddhist terminology. The language of this universal spirituality is the same as the basic values that they see expressed in other religions as well". ==Final years==

In November 2014, Nhất Hạnh experienced a severe brain hemorrhage and was hospitalized. After months of rehabilitation, he was released from the stroke rehabilitation clinic at Bordeaux Segalen University. In July 2015, he flew to San Francisco to speed his recovery with an aggressive rehabilitation program at UCSF Medical Center. He returned to France in January 2016. After spending 2016 in France, Nhất Hạnh travelled to the Thai Plum Village. He continued to see both Eastern and Western specialists while in Thailand, Death Nhất Hạnh died at his residence in Từ Hiếu Temple on 22 January 2022, at age 95, as a result of complications from his stroke seven years earlier. His death was widely mourned by various Buddhist groups in and outside Vietnam. The Dalai Lama, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the U.S. State Department also issued words of condolence. His five-day funeral, that culminated with his cremation on 29 January. In a 2015 book, Nhất Hạnh described what he wanted for the disposition of his remains, in part to illustrate how he believes that he "continues" on in his teachings: At the conclusion of the 49-day mourning period, Nhất Hạnh's ashes were portioned and scattered in Từ Hiếu Temple and temples associated with Plum Village. ==Bibliography==

Nobel laureate Martin Luther King Jr. nominated Nhất Hạnh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. Nhất Hạnh was awarded the Courage of Conscience award in 1991. Nhất Hạnh received 2015's Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award. In November 2017, the Education University of Hong Kong conferred an honorary doctorate upon Nhất Hạnh for his "lifelong contributions to the promotion of mindfulness, peace and happiness across the world". As he was unable to attend the ceremony in Hong Kong, a simple ceremony was held on 29 August 2017, in Thailand, where John Lee Chi-kin, vice-president (academic) of EdUHK, presented the honorary degree certificate and academic gown to Nhất Hạnh on the university's behalf. ==In popular culture==

Films Nhất Hạnh has been featured in many films, including: • The Power of Forgiveness, shown at the Dawn Breakers International Film Festival • Walk with Me, a documentary directed by Marc James Francis and Max Pugh, and supported by director Alejandro González Iñárritu. Filmed over three years, Walk with Me focuses on the Plum Village monastics' daily life and rites, with Benedict Cumberbatch narrating passages from Fragrant Palm Leaves in voiceover. The film was released in 2017, premiering at SXSW Festival. • A Cloud Never Dies: a biographical documentary produced by Pugh and Francis and narrated by Peter Coyote. Graphic novel Along with Alfred Hassler and Chân Không, Nhất Hạnh is the subject of the 2013 graphic novel The Secret of the 5 Powers. Music Track 11 on Djo's 2025 album The Crux Deluxe is titled "Thich Nhat Hanh". ==See also==