As you may already know, Vietnamese Zen master, poet and peace activist Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh passed away earlier this week at the age of 95. 

It would be difficult to overstate the tremendous impact Thich Nhat Hanh had on modern Buddhism. Known affectionately as “Thây” by his students and community, he was a living embodiment of the Buddha’s teachings whose commitment to peace and justice through nonviolent action gave birth to what we know today at “Engaged Buddhism.” His prolific spiritual teachings (from popular, accessible works to nuanced translations of classical Buddhist texts), his innovative spirit of creativity (he taught songs and hugging meditation), his direct work for peace and justice, and his deep compassion touched millions. 

So powerful was his work, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for the Noble Peace Prize after they met in 1966. As a colleague of mine, Maia Duerr, wrote in her recent blog: 

 “On the collective level, he infused our world with the possibility that peace could actually be lived, not just talked about, and that the practice of mindfulness was a medicine that could be applied to some of the deepest wounds of this world: militarism, poverty, addiction, and more… He had a unique way of directly addressing the daily needs and challenges of so many of us: veterans of war, school teachers, healthcare workers, activists, artists, just to name a few.”

I had the privilege of practicing with Thây on several occasions in the late 90s. It was Thây’s rendering of the Buddhist fourth ethical precept that first inspired me to take on the deep practice of Right Speech:

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.

The gift of his presence and his profound teachings are still with us, available in our true home: the here and now. Below are a few quotes from his teaching. For more of his teaching and recommended books, see my full post here.

Warmly,

Oren

–––––

On peace work:

“When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world. With that smile that you produce in yourself, with the conscious breathing you establish within yourself, you begin to work for peace in the world. To smile is not to smile only for yourself; the world will change because of your smile. When you practice sitting meditation, if you establish serenity and happiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. If you do not give yourself peace, how can you share it with others? If you do not begin your peace work with yourself, where will you go to begin it? To sit, to smile, to look at things and really see them, these are the basis of peace work.”

On walking meditation:

“Walk like a free person, free from the past and free from the future. The true miracle is not to walk on water, but to alk on planet earth… When you walk, kiss the earth with your feet.”

On interconnectedness:

“If you are a poet you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the tress cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. If we look even more deeply, we can see the sunshine, the logger who cut the tree, the wheat that became his bread, and the logger’s father and mother. Without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist. In fact, we cannot point to one thing that is not here—time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat, the mind. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. So we can say that the cloud and the paper ‘inter-are.’ We cannot just be by ourselves alone; we have to inter-be with every other thing.”