A Cloud Never Dies

In 2005, following a year of preparation and negotiations that coincided with Vietnam’s application to enter the World Trade Organization, the communist government of Vietnam finally granted Thay permission to return home after 39 years of exile. He was accompanied by a large delegation of over 200 monastic and lay followers, and greeted by crowds at the airport. 

Thay gave public talks and retreats in a strictly controlled format, and a number of his books were finally allowed to be legally published in Vietnam. Despite tight controls and limits on publicity, crowds of thousands attended Thay’s days of mindfulness and retreats. As he had done in capitals around the world, he  met with political leaders and offered concrete proposals to support ethics, prosperity, and progress in civil society, education, and international relations. 

Hundreds of young Vietnamese asked to ordain as his monastic students, and from 2005 were welcomed at Bat Nha Monastery, a large new temple in the Central Highlands, built close to the land of Phuong Boi. 

Thay returned to Vietnam in 2007 to lead a series of giant requiem masses for those who had died in the war, and in 2008 to offer a keynote speech at the international Wesak celebrations in Hanoi. On each occasion he met the country’s political leaders. For example, in 2008, he had an official meeting with the President of Vietnam, Nguyen Minh Triet.

In these encounters, as on his visits to Capitol Hill, the Parliament of India, Westminster in London, and Stormont in Northern Ireland, Thay offered concrete recommendations to support ethics, prosperity, and progress in civil society, education, and international relations.

From 2005 to 2008, Bat Nha Monastery grew rapidly. It soon had over 400 young monks and nuns ordained in Thay’s tradition, and hundreds of young visitors every month. Bat Nha Monastery even made an impact in popular culture, becoming an iconic spiritual refuge for the young generation: a popular TV series even had its lead character visit for a mindfulness retreat in one episode.

But the favorable conditions did not last long. The communist government considered its rapid growth a threat, and took measures to shut it down. After months of harassment, the monastics were forcibly dispersed on September 27, 2009. Monks and nuns sought sanctuary in the few temples willing to take the risk of sheltering them. Although the loss of Bat Nha was painful for Thay, one consequence was that hundreds of his monastic disciples were granted visas to spread his teachings outside of Vietnam, making it possible to found new monasteries in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia.

With his courage to speak boldly on some of the toughest contemporary issues, and to teach concrete mindfulness practices as a way out, Thay became a sought-after speaker in both East and West. 

In 2006, TIME magazine named him one of Sixty Heroes of Asia. And In 2008, he was invited to make an official visit to India as a “distinguished guest” of the Government of India. He gave lectures and retreats, a speech to the national Parliament, met with Sonia Gandhi, President of the Indian National Congress, and was guest editor of The Times of India for Mahatma Gandhi’s Memorial Day. He was invited to address the World Parliament of Religions in 2009, and Thai politicians at the University of Mahidol in Bangkok in 2010. 

He was invited back to address the U.S. Congress for a second time in 2011, and in 2012 to speak at the UK Parliament in Westminster, the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont, and the French Senate in Paris. After his public speech in Dublin, The Irish Times dubbed him “The Father of Mindfulness.” in a 10 April, 2012 article.

In 2014, the Vatican sent an official envoy to Plum Village to invite Thay to Rome to represent Buddhism for a global declaration of all faiths against slavery and human trafficking. 

When President Barack Obama visited Vietnam, he quoted Thay’s teachings on reconciliation in a major speech delivered at the National Convention Center in Hanoi on 24 May, 2016, “We learned a lesson taught by the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, who said, “In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.” In this way, the very war that had divided us became a source for healing.”

Over his decades of teaching, Thay has defied categorisation as a teacher of Zen, Pure Land, or Theravada Buddhism, preferring to say that he was “presenting the teachings of Early Buddhism in a Mahayana spirit,” or “taking Mahayana Buddhism to bathe in the waters of Early Buddhism.”

From 2008 onwards, Thay’s influence in Asia bloomed, especially among the young, who were drawn to his new style of Buddhism, free from dogma, ritual, and superstition. In 2013, over 10,000 people attended his public talk in Busan, South Korea; and 12,000 people attended his talk in Hong Kong, where he also led special training sessions for teachers and health professionals. 

Today, Plum Village Practice Center in Thailand — the main hub of his community in Asia — has grown to over 200 monastics, who travel to lead retreats in Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan. At his centers, he has stripped away many rituals, formalities, and esoteric observances to restore the living essence of Buddhist meditation practice. In so doing he has gone beyond simply teaching “Mahayana Zen” Buddhism, per se, to teaching a modern, renewed, revitalized Buddhism and meditation practice in harmony with the spirit of the Buddha’s original teachings.

It was in the East that Thay’s simple and elegant calligraphies were first celebrated, with a huge exhibition at the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery in November 2010, and subsequent exhibitions in Taiwan (2011) and Bangkok (2013). 

Thay’s calligraphies began as inspiring phrases to remind his students to be mindful in daily life, with phrases like “Breathe, you are alive” or “Smile to the Cloud in your Tea.” Today they are sought-after works of art, and have been published in book form. It is estimated that Thay created more than 10,000 calligraphies for his students in his lifetime.

Thay’s quotes on Early Buddhism are drawn from a 17 February, 2017  Shambhala Sun  interview with Melvin McLeod published under the title: “Love and Liberation: An interview with Thich Nhat Hanh” (“presenting the teachings…”); “bathe in the waters of Source Buddhism” the 37th tenet of the 40 Tenets of the Plum Village Tradition. 

The information on Thay’s calligraphy is drawn from his book This Moment is Full of Wonders: The Zen Calligraphy of Thich Nhat Hanh (2015).

In June 2014, as Thay’s health was weakening, he led a 21-day retreat entitled “What Happens When We Are Alive? What Happens When We Die?” in which he presented his insights on the art of living and dying.

It was a time of explosive popularity of secular mindfulness, during which even the US military were turning to mindfulness professionals — and even some of Thay’s own lay Dharma Teacher disciples — to train soldiers to improve their performance.

 When asked whether teachers should train the military or not, Thay explained that wherever his students teach, they should offer the complete teaching, including ethics, and never dilute or de-naturalize the practice, or use it for unethical ends. “Mindfulness,” he explained, “is a path, not a tool.”

True to the spirit of his heritage in the meditation schools of Master Tang Hoi and Master Linji, Thay has never sought to hold a title or position, nor has he ever courted the limelight. And yet this simple, gentle monk has touched the hearts and changed the lives of countless people. 

According to Jeff Wilson’s book, Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture (2014), Thay has been “the most important figure in Western Buddhism… in terms of direct influence through number of students taught and the degree to which terms and concepts he has coined or emphasized (“engaged Buddhism,” “interbeing,” “mindfulness,” etc.) impact the very language of contemporary Western Buddhism itself.”

In a 2016 academic survey of ‘The Buddhist World,’ conducted by John Powers, Thay was selected as one of the ten most influential, distinctive, or representative leaders in Buddhist history, given his influence on contemporary global Buddhism.

Thay’s mindfulness practices and model of retreats — developed from his own challenges and insights — have been taken up by hundreds of thousands of people, on every continent and from every walk of life. He has sold over three million books in the U.S. alone, and tens of millions worldwide.

In an extraordinary teaching career spanning 65 years, Thay has revitalized Buddhism for the twenty-first century, and transformed Buddhism from a devotional or scholarly pursuit into a living practice that can continue to renew itself. He lived through the turbulent fallout of colonialism, militarization, and globalisation, and consistently offered a Buddhist response appropriate to the times. He has integrated ancient Buddhist wisdom with elements from Western psychology, science, ecology, ethics, and education, to address the deep roots of fear, violence, oppression, injustice, and environmental destruction — and offered a way forward for the human family to touch peace, reconciliation, and true happiness.

In 2017, Union Theological Seminary in New York launched a course in his honor (Thich Nhat Hanh Program for Engaged Buddhism), exploring Buddhist engagement with issues of peacebuilding, climate change, racism, violence, incarceration and inter-faith collaboration.

This biography is from the Extended Biography edited by Sister True Dedication and Su Co Dinh Nghiem, and has been further adapted for the Deer Park Monastery website.