Thich Nhat Hanh, 1926-2022, Zen master, b. Hue, Vietnam, as Nguyen Xuan Bao. At age 16, he began Buddhist training, completing his studies at Bao Quoc Institute (1947-49). On his ordination, he took the name Thich Nhat Hanh ("One Action"). He served as editor in chief of Vietnamese Buddhism (1956-58), the country's leading Buddhist journal. He traveled on a Fulbright Fellowship to study at Princeton (1961) and Columbia (1962) universities, then returned to Vietnam in 1964, becoming an outspoken advocate for peace and ecology. A year later, he founded the School of Youth for Social Service (SYSS) to bring aid to villagers suffering during the Vietnam War. He called this movement "Engaged Buddhism" because it emphasized both social service and religious belief. With the Vietnamese government becoming increasingly hostile to Buddhism, he began a long period traveling to the U.S. and Europe to call for peace, meeting on his first lecture tour in 1966 with leading American anti-war activists and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He attended the Paris Peace Talks (1968-73) representing Vietnam's Buddhist Peace Delegation, and taught Buddhism at the Sorbonne. In 1982, he created the first Plum Village in southwest France, which has become the largest Buddhist retreat center in the world; it became a monastic center in 1988. Other centers were opened in the 1990s in the U.S. and Europe. In 2005, he returned to live in Vietnam, living at the Bat Nha Monastery, but it was shut down by the government in 2009. He suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2014 just after his 89th birthday, losing the ability to speak. He spent his final days in Vietnam at the original temple where he first trained. He authored over 100 texts on Buddhist thought and practice.
See his Peace is Here (1992), Zen Keys: A Guide to the Zen Practice (1994), The Miracle of Mindfulness (1999), The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings (1999), Creating True Peace (2004), At Home in the World (2016)
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Buddhism: Biographies
