Remembering Thich Nhat Hanh

It’s been a bittersweet week since the death of our beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on January 22. His community in Vietnam and all the practice centers around the world have just completed daily services, meditations and celebrations remembering his life. I am also remembering him this week.

I first encountered Thay’s teachings in the 1990s when I moved to California to work on my PhD. I had never met Buddhists before but found that I enjoyed sitting with them and learning Buddhist meditation. Thay’s teachings on mindfulness and engaged Buddhism made such an impression on me that he was the subject of my dissertation called “Engaged Spirituality.”

Watching the ceremonies throughout this past week, I was impressed by the worldwide outpouring of love and deep sadness at the passing of this humble monk. I know that he was just a teenager when he made his way to the monastery in Vietnam to state his intention to become a monk. Look what he accomplished in the 80 years since! How inspiring to all of us that we may have humble beginnings but can truly make something beautiful and meaningful out of our life when we follow the path of our heart.

But Thay’s path was not easy at all. He came of age during the Vietnam War. At that time the way of the Buddhist monk was to sit in meditation in the monastery, but something inside him led him to believe that this path was incomplete. Can you imagine how he must have been received when he told his superiors that he wanted to create a group to leave the monastery and do social service work on behalf of those suffering because of the War?

That is what he decided to do, but he had to break with his own monastic community in order to take up this difficult path. He instructed his disciples to re-build whole villages again and again, every time they were destroyed. He colluded with unscrupulous boat captains to evacuate people from the island, sometimes with disastrous results. By the late 1960s he was exiled from his homeland and would not be allowed to return until just a few years ago.

Because he could no longer be a son of Vietnam, he became a monk for the whole world, writing over 100 books in English and many more in Vietnamese and French.

Here is one of my favorite passages from Peace is Every Step:

“We can realize peace right in the present moment with our look, our smile, our words, and our actions. Peace work is not a means. Each step we make should be peace. Each step we make should be joy. Each step we make should be happiness. If we are determined we can do it. We don’t need the future. We can smile and relax. Everything we want is right here in the present moment.”

With palms together, I bow in deep gratitude to my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. May his work continue in our smiles, words and actions.