Thich Nhat Hanh

Thích Nhất Hạnh, born Nguyễn Xuân Bảo on 11 October 1926 in Huế, Vietnam, was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, author, poet, and teacher. Known to many followers as Thầy, meaning teacher, he became widely known as the “father of mindfulness” and was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism. His life stretched across war, exile, and the growth of Buddhism outside Asia, and his teaching joined meditation with social action.

He grew up in central Vietnam as the fifth of six children. As a young boy, he felt joy on seeing a drawing of a peaceful Buddha seated on the grass. On a school trip to a mountain, he heard of a hermit who sat quietly to become peaceful like the Buddha, and he later found and drank from a natural well that left him feeling completely satisfied. He later described that experience as leading him toward life as a Buddhist monk. At 16, he entered the monastery at Từ Hiếu Temple, where Zen Master Thanh Quý Chân Thật was his primary teacher.

Nhất Hạnh studied Vietnamese traditions of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism and learned Chinese, English, and French. He attended Báo Quốc Buddhist Academy, then left in 1950, dissatisfied with its lack of philosophy, literature, and foreign languages. In Saigon he was ordained as a monk in 1951, supported himself by selling books and poetry, and studied literature, philosophy, psychology, and science at Saigon University, earning a degree in French and Vietnamese Literature. In 1955 he returned to Huế and served for two years as editor of Phật Giáo Việt Nam, the official publication of the General Association of Vietnamese Buddhists.

His thought was shaped by study, monastic practice, writing, and conflict with both religious and secular authorities. He promoted a humanistic, unified Buddhism and established a monastic “community of resistance” called Phương Bôi in Đại Lao Forest near Đà Lạt. From 1959 to 1961, he taught short courses on Buddhism at Saigon temples, though some classes were stopped because of disapproval of his teachings. He later accepted a Fulbright Fellowship to study comparative religion at Princeton University, studied at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1961, and in 1962 was appointed lecturer in Buddhism at Columbia University. He also taught at Cornell University.

In the mid-1960s, Nhất Hạnh co-founded the School of Youth for Social Services and created the Order of Interbeing. He coined the term “engaged Buddhism” in his book Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire. In 1966 he was exiled from South Vietnam after opposing the war and refusing to take sides. The next year, Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Nhất Hạnh later established dozens of monasteries and practice centers, including Plum Village Monastery, founded in 1982 in southwest France near Thénac, where he lived for many years while traveling internationally to give retreats and talks.

Nhất Hạnh taught deep listening as a nonviolent response to conflict and urged awareness of the interconnected environments that sustain and promote peace. After 39 years of exile, he was permitted to visit Vietnam in 2005. In 2018 he returned to Từ Hiếu Temple, his “root temple” near Huế, and lived there until his death on 22 January 2022 at age 95. His words still speak plainly to people because they bring peace back to ordinary acts: “Life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk so that every step brings us to the here and now.”