Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was one of many world’s most influential Zen masters, spreading messages of mindfulness, compassion and nonviolence, died on Saturday at his residence within the Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam. He was 95.
The demise was announced by Plum Village, his group of monasteries. He suffered a extreme mind hemorrhage in 2014 that left him unable to talk, although he may talk by way of gestures.
A prolific creator, poet, instructor and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam after opposing the warfare within the Sixties and have become a number one voice in a motion he referred to as “engaged Buddhism,” the appliance of Buddhist rules to political and social reform.
Touring broadly on talking excursions in the US and Europe (he was fluent in English and French), Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced tik nyaht hahn) was a significant affect on Western practices of Buddhism, urging the embrace of mindfulness, which his web site describes as “the power of being conscious and awake to the current second.”
In his guide “Peace Is Each Step: The Path of Mindfulness in On a regular basis Life,” he wrote, “If we’re not absolutely ourselves, really within the current second, we miss every thing.”
His following grew as he established dozens of monasteries and apply facilities around the globe. The unique Plum Village, close to Bordeaux in southwest France, is the biggest of his monasteries and receives visits from hundreds of individuals a yr.
In 2018, he returned residence to Hue, in central Vietnam, to dwell out his final days on the Tu Hieu Temple, the place he had change into a novice as a young person.
Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the concept of demise. “Delivery and demise are solely notions,” he wrote in his guide “No Loss of life, No Concern.” “They don’t seem to be actual.”
He added: “The Buddha taught that there is no such thing as a beginning; there is no such thing as a demise; there is no such thing as a coming; there is no such thing as a going; there is no such thing as a similar; there is no such thing as a totally different; there is no such thing as a everlasting self; there is no such thing as a annihilation. We solely assume there may be.”
That understanding, he wrote, can liberate individuals from worry and permit them to “get pleasure from life and admire it in a brand new method.”
His reference to the US started within the early Sixties, when he studied at Princeton College and later lectured at Cornell and Columbia. He influenced the American peace motion, urging the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to oppose the Vietnam Battle.
Dr. King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, however the prize was not awarded to anybody that yr.
“I don’t personally know of anybody extra worthy than this light monk from Vietnam,” Dr. King wrote to the Nobel Institute in Norway. “His concepts for peace, if utilized, would construct a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
Thich Nhat Hanh was born Nguyen Xuan Bao in Hue on Oct. 11, 1926. He joined a Zen monastery at 16 and studied Buddhism there as a novice. Upon his ordination in 1949, he assumed the Dharma identify Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich is an honorary household identify utilized by Vietnamese monks and nuns. To his followers he was often called Thay, or instructor.
Within the early Sixties, he based Youth for Social Companies, a grass-roots aid group in what was then South Vietnam. It rebuilt bombed villages, arrange faculties, established medical facilities and reunited households left homeless by the warfare.
Thich Nhat Hanh started writing and talking out towards the warfare and in 1964 revealed a poem referred to as “Condemnation” in a Buddhist weekly. It reads partly:
Whoever is listening, be my witness:
I can’t settle for this warfare.
I by no means may I by no means will.
I have to say this a thousand instances earlier than I’m killed.
I’m just like the fowl who dies for the sake of its mate,
dripping blood from its damaged beak and crying out:
“Beware! Flip round and face your actual enemies
— ambition, violence hatred and greed.”
The poem earned him the label “antiwar poet,” and he was denounced as a pro-Communist propagandist.
Thich Nhat Hanh took up residence in France when the South Vietnamese authorities denied him permission to return from overseas after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973.
He was unable to return to Vietnam till 2005, when the Communist authorities allowed him to show, apply and journey all through the nation. His antiwar activism continued, and in a chat in Hanoi in 2008 he stated the Iraq warfare had resulted from worry and misunderstanding wherein violence ate up itself.
“We all know very nicely that airplanes, weapons and bombs can’t take away improper perceptions,” he stated. “Solely loving speech and compassionate listening can assist individuals right improper perceptions. However our leaders are usually not educated in that self-discipline, and so they rely solely on the armed forces to take away terrorism.”
In 2013, on one in every of his many visits to facilities of affect within the West, he spoke at Google’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, bringing his message of quiet contemplation to the forefront of the high-energy digital age.
“Now we have the sensation that we’re overwhelmed by data,” he advised the assembled employees. “We don’t want that a lot data.”
And he stated: “Don’t attempt to discover the answer together with your pondering thoughts. Nonthinking is the key of success. And that’s the reason the time when we’re not working, that point could be very productive, if we all know the right way to concentrate on the second.”