We honor the life of the courageous Vietnamese Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh this week in our meditation practices at Indy Community Yoga. He passed away at midnight, January 22, 2022 at his home temple, Từ Hiếu, in Huế, Vietnam at the age of 95. Our readings after our weekday meditation practices (7am and 4:30pm ET Monday-Friday) will come from “Fragrant Palm Leaves”, selections from his journals from his time in the US from 1962-1966. This past Sunday, we began practice by listening to a recording of a chanting of his 2014 reinterpretation of the Heart Sutra.

When he arrived in the US in 1962 as a visiting scholar, he was 35 years old. He had already survived life as a French colonial subject in his own country, Japanese occupation during the Second World War, the successful repulsion of France’s 8-year attempt to recolonize Vietnam by force, the US-led partitioning of Vietnam into North and South in 1954, and the brutality of the US-installed and -backed dictator of South Vietnam. When the US sent ground troops in 1965, he was not shy about telling the architects of the war in the Cabinet and the Senate of the cruel and self-defeating effects of their careless policies on the rural Vietnamese population. This, as well as his friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led to his denouncement by American media, being watched by the CIA, and being barred re-entry into South Vietnam. This exile would continue beyond the Communist victory in 1975, for 39 years total. He stayed in France during this period, where he and his friends established Plum Village and a few affilate centers in the US. He was allowed to return to Vietnam for the first time in 2005.

He pioneered the introduction and adaptation of Buddhist mindfulness teachings to European and American audiences. He knew that if people could face what is true and see their connections to everything around them, they would stop doing things that harm others. He devoted his life to making Buddhism accessible to people. We practice meditation and community care in our sangha with this same spirit, this same hope. I hope we get to sit together soon.