Buddhist and Prophet of Peace Thich Nhat Hanh Celebrates Birthday
Peace advocate and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh celebrates a birthday this week.
Hanh turns 92 on Thursday, Oct. 11. Nhat Hanh has spent his life using Buddhist teachings to work for peace and social change.
He was born in the city of Hue in Vietnam in 1926. A dedicated Buddhist from an early age, Nhat Hanh entered a monastery near Hue at the age of 16. He was ordained as a monk in 1949.
In 1961, Nhat Hanh started to teach comparative religion in America at Princeton University and he later taught Buddhism at Columbia University. In 1963, he returned to Vietnam to join the peace efforts in that country. He also taught literature and Buddhist psychology at Van Hanh Buddhist University. At a meeting in 1965, Van Hanh students issued a “Call for Peace Statement.” It said: “it’s time for the north and south Vietnam to find a way to stop the war and help all Vietnamese people live peacefully with mutual respect.”
He returned to the United States in 1966 and led a Buddhist symposium at Cornell University. Nhat Hanh continued to work for peace, and it was during his 1966 stay that he contacted Dr. Martin Luther King and encouraged him to denounce the Vietnam War. One year later, in 1967, King gave a speech on the war at Riverside Church in New York City, his first to question our involvement in the war. Later that year, King nominated Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize. He said: “I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of (the prize) than the gentle monk. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.” The fact that King made a recommendation for a nomination broke Nobel’s protocol and a Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded in that year. Nhat Hanh was awarded the Courage of Conscious Award from the Peace Abbey Foundation in 1991.
After his Nobel nomination, Nhat Hanh moved to France and became chairmen of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace Delegation. When the Vietnamese Army took control of the southern portion of the country in 1975, he was denied permission to return to the country. However, Nhat Hanh was later allowed to return to Vietnam in 2005 and 2007.
Over the years, he has continued to be active in the peace movement and has also become a leader in what’s known at the Engaged Buddhism movement, a movement to connect the Buddhist practice of mindfulness with social action. Nhat Hanh coined the term Engaged Buddhism in the 1967 book “Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea Fire.”
In his 1988 book “Being Peace,” he expounded on his teachings on the subject of peace. Nhat Hanh thought that in order to attain peace we must be peace. He thought each and every one us must awaken to ethereal part of us where peace resides – our Buddha nature. In “Being Peace” Nhat Hanh states: “if we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.”
