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27723 |
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Date: January 22, 2022 at 03:47:47
From: Dan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Thich Nhat Hanh, influential Zen Buddhist monk, dies at 95 |
URL: Thich Nhat Hanh, influential Zen Buddhist monk, dies at 95 |
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Nhat Hanh distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and
suffering into easily grasped guidance over a lifetime
dedicated to working for peace
HANOI, Vietnam — Thich Nhat Hanh, the revered Zen
Buddhist monk who helped pioneer the concept of
mindfulness in the West and socially engaged Buddhism in
the East, has died. He was 95.
A post on Nhat Hanh’s verified Twitter page attributed
to The International Plum Village Community of Engaged
Buddhism confirmed the news. The post said Nhat Hanh,
known as Thay to his followers, died at midnight
Saturday.
“We invite our beloved global spiritual family to take a
few moments to be still, to come back to our mindful
breathing, as we together hold Thay in our hearts," the
post said.
Born as Nguyen Xuan Bao in 1926 and ordained at age 16,
Nhat Hanh distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and
suffering into easily grasped guidance over a lifetime
dedicated to working for peace. In 1961 he went to the
United States to study, teaching comparative religion
for a time at Princeton and Columbia universities.
For most of the remainder of his life he lived in exile
at Plum Village, a retreat center he founded in southern
France.
There and in talks and retreats around the world, he
introduced Zen Buddhism, at its essence, as peace
through compassionate listening. Still and steadfast in
his brown robes, he exuded an air of watchful, amused
calm, sometimes sharing a stage with the somewhat
livelier Tibetan Buddhist leader Dalai Lama.
“The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We
need to find an inner peace which makes it possible for
us to become one with those who suffer, and to do
something to help our brothers and sisters, which is to
say, ourselves,” Nhat Hanh wrote in one of his dozens of
books, “The Sun My Heart.”
Surviving a stroke in 2014 that left him unable to
speak, he returned to Vietnam in October 2018, spending
his final years at the Tu Hieu Pagoda, the monastery
where he was ordained nearly 80 years earlier.
Nhat Hanh plunged into anti-war activism after his
return to his homeland in 1964 as the Vietnam War was
escalating. There, he founded the Order of Inter-being,
which espouses “engaged Buddhism” dedicated to
nonviolence, mindfulness and social service.
In 1966, he met the U.S. civil rights leader Martin
Luther King Jr. in what was a remarkable encounter for
both. Nhat Hanh told King he was a “Bodhisattva,” or
enlightened being, for his efforts to promote social
justice.
The monk’s efforts to promote reconciliation between the
U.S.-backed South and communist North Vietnam so
impressed King that a year later he nominated Nhat Hanh
for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In his exchanges with King, Nhat Hanh explained one of
the rare controversies in his long life of advocating
for peace — over the immolations of some Vietnamese
monks and nuns to protest the war.
“I said this was not suicide, because in a difficult
situation like Vietnam, to make your voice heard is
difficult. So sometimes we have to burn ourselves alive
in order for our voice to be heard so that is an act of
compassion that you do that, the act of love and not of
despair,” he said in an interview with U.S. talk show
host Oprah Winfrey. “Jesus Christ died in the same
spirit.”
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Responses:
[27738] [27725] [27740] [27724] |
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27738 |
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Date: February 05, 2022 at 09:01:39
From: SoCalCarol, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Thich Nhat Hanh, influential Zen Buddhist monk, dies at 95 |
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An amazingly gifted human, one of our finest. It is our loss, but his
words will continue.
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Responses:
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27725 |
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Date: January 22, 2022 at 06:22:51
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Thich Nhat Hanh, influential Zen Buddhist monk, dies at 95 |
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The golden heaven realms shining so deeply as his essence
returns... May all the Living Love he blessed others with
so powerfully return to him now, to accompany him wherever
his journeys may lead...
How I'd love to see this precious soul's smile as he is
shown all the beauty he wrought here... ;)
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Responses:
[27740] |
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27740 |
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Date: February 06, 2022 at 16:38:50
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Call Me By My True Names/Thich Nhat Hanh |
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Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
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I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
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I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the
river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in
time to eat the mayfly.
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I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in
silence, feeds itself on the frog.
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I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.
,
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a
sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing
and loving.
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I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in
my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to,
my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
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My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in
all walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the
four oceans.
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Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
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Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
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Responses:
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27724 |
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Date: January 22, 2022 at 03:48:55
From: Dan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: remainder of the article at the link above(NT) |
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Responses:
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