Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen master and political reformer, dies at 95

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was one of many world’s most influential Zen masters, spreading messages of mindfulness, compassion and non-violence, died Saturday at his dwelling within the Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam. He was 95.

The loss of life was introduced 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 means of gestures.

A prolific creator, poet, trainer and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam after opposing the struggle within the Nineteen Sixties and have become a number one voice in a motion he referred to as “engaged Buddhism,” the appliance of Buddhist ideas to political and social reform.

Travelling 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 serious affect on Western practices of Buddhism, urging the embrace of mindfulness, which his web site describes as “the vitality of being conscious and awake to the current second.”

In his ebook “Peace Is Each Step: The Path of Mindfulness in On a regular basis Life,” he wrote, “If we aren't totally ourselves, actually within the current second, we miss all the things.”

His following grew as he established dozens of monasteries and observe centres world wide. The unique Plum Village, close to Bordeaux in southwest France, is the biggest of his monasteries and receives visits from 1000's of individuals a 12 months.

In 2018, he returned dwelling 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 youngster.

Thich Nhat Hanh dismissed the concept of loss of life. “Beginning and loss of life are solely notions,” he wrote in his ebook “No Loss of life, No Concern.” “They aren't actual.”

He added, “The Buddha taught that there isn't a start; there isn't a loss of life; there isn't a coming; there isn't a going; there isn't a similar; there isn't a totally different; there isn't a everlasting self; there isn't a annihilation. We solely assume there may be.”

That understanding, he wrote, can liberate individuals from worry and permit them to “take pleasure in life and admire it in a brand new means.”

His reference to the US started within the early Nineteen Sixties, when he studied at Princeton College and later lectured at Cornell and Columbia. He influenced the American peace motion, urging Martin Luther King Jr. to oppose the Vietnam Warfare.

King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, however the prize was not awarded to anybody that 12 months.

“I don't personally know of anybody extra worthy than this light monk from Vietnam,” 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 known as Thay, or trainer.

Within the early Nineteen Sixties, he based Youth for Social Companies, a grassroots reduction group in what was then South Vietnam. It rebuilt bombed villages, arrange colleges, established medical centres and reunited households left homeless by the struggle.

Thich Nhat Hanh started writing and talking out in opposition to the struggle and in 1964 printed a poem referred to as “Condemnation” in a Buddhist weekly. It reads partly:

Whoever is listening, be my witness:

I can not settle for this struggle.

I by no means may I by no means will.

I need 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 “anti-war 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, observe and journey all through the nation. His anti-war activism continued, and in a chat in Hanoi in 2008, he mentioned the Iraq Warfare had resulted from worry and misunderstanding during which violence consumed itself.

“We all know very properly that airplanes, weapons and bombs can not take away fallacious perceptions,” he mentioned. “Solely loving speech and compassionate listening might help individuals appropriate fallacious perceptions. However our leaders will not be educated in that self-discipline, they usually rely solely on the armed forces to take away terrorism.”

In 2013, on considered one of his many visits to centres 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 info,” he advised the assembled employees. “We don’t want that a lot info.”

And he mentioned, “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 aren't working, that point will be very productive, if we all know the right way to concentrate on the second.”