Thich Nhat Hanh, the Monk Who Stood Against Vietnam War

The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, who preached “engaged Buddhism”, passed away this month.

By Swati Chawla

An old Buddhist monk – ailing, long exiled, unable to speak – returned home to live out his last days, remaining in readiness to “transition”. We always ‘inter- are’, he taught. There is no birth, no death. No single moment when we come about from nothingness, nor a moment when we cease to be. Sangha members in the tradition he founded wish each other a continuation day instead of birthdays.

Five years after suffering a stroke that rendered him mute, Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh went back to his root monastery at the Tu Hieu Pagoda in the former imperial capital of Hue, Vietnam, in November 2018. He had taken his vows there at the age of 16, becoming a monk against his parents’ wishes.

Exiled by South Vietnam in the 1960s for his peace efforts during the Vietnam War, he spent almost four decades away from home, establishing the monastic community called Plum Village near Bordeaux in southwest France in 1982.

‘Going Forth Into Homelessness’

Homelessness itself was par for the course; it was part of his religious training and discipline. Embracing monastic life within Buddhism involves a vow to “go forth into homelessness” – a severing of ties with one’s natal home, material possessions, and relationships.

The novice leaves home as the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, himself had left his palace, and takes refuge in the ‘Three Jewels’ – the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. However, this is not merely an ascetic’s retreat, and neither is it a nihilistic rejection of the material world. A symbiotic reciprocity between householders and monastics is written into the warp and weft of a Buddhist community.

Do Not Kill Man, Even in Man’s Name’

While teaching at Princeton and Columbia universities in the 1960s, Nhat Hanh made the acquaintance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Exhorting the King to denounce the war that had already raged on for 20 years, Nhat Hanh spoke of the self-immolations of monks and nuns in Vietnam “calling the attention of the world to the suffering endured then by the Vietnamese”.

In a letter dated 1 June 1965, he argued for moving beyond the oppressor-oppressed binary: “I believe with all my heart that the monks who burned themselves did not aim at the death of the oppressors but only at a change in their policy … I also believe with all my being that the struggle for equality and freedom you lead in Birmingham, Alabama ... is not aimed at the whites but only at intolerance, hatred and discrimination … Do not kill man, even in man’s name.”

He appealed for peace to the United Nations, members of the U.S. Congress, and American President Lyndon Johnson. “The world’s greatest humanists would not remain silent. You yourself cannot remain silent,” Nhat Hanh urged MLK, who subsequently took a stand against the War in 1967.

Between Homelessness and Homecoming

The same year, MLK recommended Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize. In a letter to the Nobel committee as a former awardee himself, King said, “Thich Nhat Hanh today is virtually homeless and stateless. If he were to return to Vietnam, which he passionately wishes to do, his life would be in great peril. He is the victim of a particularly brutal exile because he proposes to carry his advocacy of peace to his own people. What a tragic commentary this is on the existing situation in Vietnam and those who perpetuate it.”

A tragic commentary on our times indeed, that the two most famous Buddhist leaders in the contemporary world spent a large part of their lives in exile. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, 86, has been living in India since 1959. Unlike Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama has never returned to his homeland of Tibet.

Both have offered a vision of hope and a re-imagination of what it means to have a home and a community. The Dalai Lama often jokes that six decades of eating daal bhaat have made him a son of India, and in tracing a philosophical and spiritual lineage from the Nalanda masters, he has recast exile as a return to the birthplace of Buddhism. Nhat Hanh preached that happiness was available in the present moment, and said that his address was “here and now”.