Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, Poet & Peace Activist, Passes Away. Rahul Gandhi Offers Condolence

Thich Nhat Hanh was a pioneer of Buddhism in the West and was known as the ‘Father of Mindfulness’ who rose to prominence as an opponent during the Vietnam War.

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh | Photo: AFP

New Delhi: Poet and peace activist, Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh passed away on Saturday at the age of 95. He rose to prominence as an opponent during the Vietnam War. The news of his passing away was posted on Twitter through his official account. 

"The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism announces that our beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh passed away peacefully at Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, Vietnam, at 00:00hrs on 22nd January, 2022, at the age of 95," read the tweet. 

Nguyen Xuan Bao, born in 1926 ordained as the Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh during the time when modern Vietnam’s founding revolutionary, Ho Chi Minh was leading efforts to liberate the country from the French colonialists. 

Hanh was a man of words who spoke in a strong yet gentle tone. 

"You learn how to suffer. If you know how to suffer, you suffer much, much less. And then you know how to make good use of suffering to create joy and happiness," he had said in a 2013 lecture.

He was a pioneer of Buddhism in the West and was known as the ‘Father of Mindfulness’. He had formed the “Plum Village” monastery in France where he often spoke to his corporate and international followers about the practice of mindfulness - identifying and distancing oneself from certain thoughts without judgement.

A multilingual who knew seven languages, Hanh was a lecturer at Princeton and Columbia University in the early 1960s in the US. He came back to Vietnam IN 1963 and joined the escalating Buddhist opposition against the US-Vietnam War. 

After spending his adult life in exile in the US, he came back to the central city of Hue — his birthplace — in Vietnam, after suffering a stroke in 2014. 

Senior Congress leader offered his tribute to the monk. Taking to Twitter Gandhi wrote, “My condolences to the followers of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, the Father of mindfulness. His gentle words on peace, gratitude and non-violence will ring true forever.”

"The art of happiness and the art of suffering always go together". - Thich Nhat Hanh