Zen grasp Thich Nhat Hanh provides a public dharma discuss at Siam Paragon in Bangkok.
LightRocket by way of Getty Photographs / Piti A Sahakorn
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — 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's not licensed to talk to media.
A put up 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 world non secular household to take a couple of moments to be nonetheless, to come back again to our aware respiration, 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 the USA to review, educating comparative faith for a time at Princeton and Columbia universities.
For a lot of the the rest of his life, he lived in exile at Plum Village, a retreat heart he based in southern France.
There and in talks and retreats all over the world, he launched Zen Buddhism, at its essence, as peace by means of compassionate listening. Nonetheless and steadfast in his brown robes, he exuded an air of watchful, amused calm, generally sharing a stage with the considerably livelier Tibetan Buddhist chief Dalai Lama.
“The peace we search can't be our private possession. We have to discover an interior peace which makes it doable for us to turn into 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 one among 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 almost 80 years earlier.
Nhat Hanh plunged into anti-war activism after his return to his homeland in 1964 because the Vietnam Conflict 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 U.S. civil rights chief Martin Luther King Jr. in what was a exceptional encounter for each. 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 tough scenario like Vietnam, to make your voice heard is tough. So generally 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. “Jesus Christ died in the identical spirit.”
Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai educational 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 Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, he was very uncovered to younger folks, and his society was in turmoil, in disaster. He was actually in a tough place, between the satan and the deep blue sea — the Communists on the one hand, the CIA alternatively. In such a scenario, 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.
Based on Nhat Hanh, “Buddhism means to be awake — aware of what's occurring in a single’s physique, emotions, thoughts and on the planet. In case you are 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 planet. If it's not engaged, it's not Buddhism.”
Each North and South Vietnam barred Nhat Hanh from returning dwelling after he went overseas in 1966 to marketing campaign in opposition to the battle, leaving him, he mentioned, “like a bee with no beehive.”
He was solely allowed again 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 that they had taken refuge.
Over almost eight a long time, Nhat Hanh’s teachings had been refined into ideas accessible to all.
To climate the storms of life and notice happiness, he recommended all the time a aware “return to the breath,” even whereas doing routine chores like sweeping and washing dishes.
“I attempt to stay each second like that, relaxed, dwelling peacefully within the current second and reply to occasions with compassion,” he instructed Winfrey.
Nhat Hanh moved to Thailand in late 2016 after which returned to Vietnam in late 2018, the place he was receiving conventional drugs therapies for the after-effects of his stroke and loved “strolls” across the temple grounds in his wheelchair, in accordance with the Buddhist on-line e-newsletter LionsRoar.com.
It was a quiet, easy finish to a unprecedented life, one totally in step with his love for taking pleasure from the humblest points of life. “No mud, no lotus,” says one among his many temporary sayings.
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