4e. Thích Nhất Hạnh and Mindfulness

Thích Nhất Hạnh (born 1926) is a Zen Buddhist monk from Vietnam. Next to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, he is probably the best known Buddhist teacher in the western world. If you have done any kind of mindfulness training, for mental health, stress reduction, or meditation, it is probably derived from the thought and practice of Thay (how he is referred to, pronounced Tay). Much of mindfulness practice is very westernized, but it derives from ideas and practices that emerged specifically in response to war.

I won't go into a lot of detail regarding Buddhist philosophy at this point, other than to say the ideals of compassion, nonviolence, and empathy are central to this religious system of thought. The original Buddha (lived c. 400 BCE) advocated nonviolence and intervened in conflicts amongst rulers of his day. An important aspect of Buddhist thought is that it connects personal, inner peace to peace between individuals and nations. This is quite different from western thought.

The peace movement concepts here are very different from those described earlier in the module. Buddhist peacemaking approaches are:

• soft and non-confrontational;
• involve methods of persuasion and compromise;
• include meditation and mindful breathing;
• display a lack of animosity towards the enemy/oppressor; and
• emphasize inter-relatedness amongst humans and non-human living beings.

Thích Nhất Hạnh coined the phrase ‘engaged Buddhism’ in the 1960s. He developed a whole movement of thought and action that is essentially about engagement with issues of the world through social action based on Buddhist thought. Thay wanted to reinvigorate Buddhism so that it could be a motivator in the struggle against repression and for peace in his country.

We tend to think about the anti-Vietnam war peace movement as all about protests in the United States and the western world. But there was an important, anti-war movement in Vietnam as well. Much of this was led by Buddhist monks and followers who were protesting the American war on their country, but also the suppression of Buddhists by the French Catholic regime of the day. In many regards, it was much riskier to be part of a peace movement in Vietnam than in North America at the time. Thay reflects on that time in the interview transcript "Lack of understanding makes us victims."

Thay founded the Order of Interbeing in 1964, based on his ideas of peace through mindfulness. Through mindfulness, he said, we can learn to live in the present moment instead of in the past or in the future. In a very brief nutshell, engaged Buddhism offered that one could promote peace through acknowledgement of the suffering of one’s enemy, compassion for the enemy, and mindful breathing that allowed one to focus on that compassion in the present moment.

What do you think about his approach to conflict? Might mindfulness work in interpersonal or interstate conflict? I think the ideas of Gene Sharp and Thích Nhất Hạnh are very different; it would be interesting to see them debate. While Thay believed violence and conflict could be overcome with compassion towards the enemy, Sharp did not think nonviolent struggle would melt the hearts of the opponents,¹ but rather, nonviolent action could upset power imbalances that exist between oppressed and oppressor.

Thích Nhất Hạnh developed fourteen principles of mindfulness, some of which are focused on personal, inner peace, but others are very political in nature – about nonviolence; respect for life; respect for freedom of thought; against fanaticism; against suffering; dissolving anger, for example. Like Tolstoy, Thay advocated a vegetarian diet because of his emphasis on nonviolence towards all living things.

Here are just two of the fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. You can find the rest at Plum Village: The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings.

Thích Nhất Hạnh was exiled from Vietnam in 1966 and not allowed to return until 2005. As the Oprah interview reveals, while in the U.S. Thay met with American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and converted him to an anti-war stance. King then nominated Thay for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.

In 1982 Thích Nhất Hạnh founded Plum Village in France, a place where his thought has been developed and applied; the Village brings together war veterans from both sides of the Vietnam War as well as Israeli and Palestinian youth. He returned to Vietnam in 2007 and led a mass chanting ceremony to remember the seven million people who died in the American war in Vietnam.

 

Stop and Ask

What are the aims/goals, methods/tactics, ideology/philosophy, and symbols of this movement?

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