the zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, considered the Buddhist monk most influential after the Dalai Lama, died this Saturday at the age of 95 at his home in the Tu Hieu temple, in the Vietnamese town of Hue, where he had moved in 2018 to spend his last years of life.
The Plum Village organization, which manages temples based on his teachings around the world, announced on social networks the death of the monk, who had lost his speech and moved in a wheelchair from the stroke who suffered in 2014.
Thich Nhat Hahn had moved back to his native Vietnam in 2018, after spending most of his life between the United States and France since he first left the country during the war with the US, when he became a symbol of pacifism.
The monk, author of some 70 books on zen teachings sold all over the world, he began to acquire international notoriety in 1966, when he met in the USA with Martin Luther King, which a year later proposed him as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I know of no one who deserves it more than this kind Vietnamese monk. His ideas for peace, if applied, would raise a monument to ecumenism, to universal brotherhood, to humanity“, proclaimed the leader of the fight for civil rights.
Banned by the pro-American government of South Vietnam, was unable to return to his homeland during the war and was also denied entry by the regime in place since the victory of the communist North in 1975.
For decades, the return to his homeland was one of the great desires of the Zen master, until in 2005 received authorization and he was also able to see some of his books on meditation and Buddhism translated into Vietnamese, now sold in bookstores throughout the country.
In 1982 Thay (as his followers knew him) settled in the monasterio Plum Village, which he founded in the south of France and where he lived for more than 30 years, until he moved to Thailand in 2016 after his cardiovascular accident.
Two years later it was moved to the pagoda of Tu Hieu (near the Vietnamese city of Hue), the place where in 1942 he became a monk at the age of 16 and where he ended his life today.
The success of his books and the spiritual retreats he organized with hundreds of followers allowed him to propagate in the West a modernized version of Buddhism that establishes as central pillars the full attention (mindfulness in English) and the inner peace, which linked to practical situations of contemporary life.
The other great pillar of his teachings is that the human being has to “be peace” within himself to overcome negative feelings such as anger, fear and remorse.
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