Thầy and His Supporters in Nonviolent Activism

The Vietnam War and Thầy’s activities for peace at
that time may seem far away, but in fact, when we
read about Thầy and other great peace activists of
that era, we realise that we just need to continue
their work in somewhat different circumstances
today. Racial discrimination still needs activists
to confront it. Climate activists need to make their
voices heard, and so the nonviolent struggle continues. Thầy has said:
People assassinated Mahātmā Gandhi
and Martin Luther King Jr. hoping to
reduce them to nothingness and remove
them forever from this planet, without
any trace left behind. How wrong they
were! They are still there in each one of
us, like immortal statues more vital and
heroic than ever, because they continue
in many different forms.
Without friends on the path, you are very lonely as a peace activist. In Vietnam while calling for
peace, Thầy was opposed by those who had power
in the Buddhist congregation and in the government. At the same time, he was supported by tens
of thousands of young people, university students,
intellectuals, writers, artists, and, from 1965
onwards, the Workers League. Thầy also found
supporters in the West.
In 1966 Thầy returned to the United
States to campaign for an end to the war
in Vietnam. While on tour campaigning
for peace, Thầy had a chance to make the
acquaintance of many people who had
a very open and progressive humanitarian view like Hannes de Graaf and Hebe
Kohlbrugge in Holland, Heinz Kloppenburg and Martin Niemöller in Germany,
Bertrand Russell and Philip Noel Baker
in England, Danilo Dolci and Carlo Levi
in Italy, André Trocmé in Switzerland,
Paul Demiéville and Laurence Schwartz
in France, Thomas Merton, Martin Luther
King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day,
Arthur Miller, Robert Lowel, A. J. Mustee,
and Alfred Hasslar, etc. in the United
States, and Thầy learnt a great deal from
their open and progressive way of looking
that was completely in accord with the
spirit of Buddhism. (Thích Nhất Hạnh in a
letter to his monastic students)
Thầy and His Supporters in
Nonviolent Activism
Sister Chân Đức teaches about Thích Nhất Hạnh’s
lineage as a peace activist through his letters on
the influence of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Father
Daniel Berrigan, Mahātmā Gandhi, and
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
S I S T E R C H Â N Đ ỨC

MARTIN LU THER K I NG J R .
By the summer of 1965, there were 125,000
American soldiers on Vietnamese soil. Thầy and
many leading Vietnamese intellectuals recognized
the urgent need to muster global public opinion
concerning the grievous state of affairs in Vietnam.
Thầy and his colleagues were unanimous that Thầy
write a letter to Martin Luther King Jr., asking for
his support in speaking out to the North American
people about the devastating situation in Vietnam.
Thầy and his friends agreed that four additional
letters should be written. Besides Thầy’s letter
to Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnamese writer,
journalist, and politician Hồ Hữu Tường wrote a
letter to Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher
and political activist. The poet and translator Bủi
Giáng wrote to the most important French lyric
poet of the twentieth century, René Char. The
writer Tâm Ích wrote to the French writer and
politician André Malraux, and the poet, writer,
philosopher, and scholar Phạm Công Thiện wrote
to the North American writer Henry Miller.
In writing to Martin Luther King Jr., Thầy said:
Nobody here wants the war. What is the
war for, then? And whose is the war? Now
in the confrontation of the big powers
occurring in our country, hundreds and
perhaps thousands of Vietnamese peasants and children lose their lives every
day, and our land is unmercifully and
tragically torn by a war which is already
twenty years old. I am sure that since you
have been engaged in one of the hardest
struggles for equality and human rights,
you are among those who understand
fully, and who share with all their hearts,
the indescribable suffering of the Vietnamese people. The world’s greatest
humanists would not remain silent. You
yourself cannot remain silent.1
Martin Luther King Jr. read the letter very carefully and, in 1965, he spoke out against the war and
took part in the International Committee of Conscience on Vietnam.
In May 1966, in Chicago, Thầy met Martin Luther
King Jr. in person for the first time. They spoke for
a long time about the Vietnam War. They then held
a press conference in the Sheraton Hotel for about
three hundred journalists. This was the first time
Thầy had held such a large press conference. At the
beginning of the conference, Martin Luther King Jr.
and Thầy gave out a joint message:
We believe that the Buddhists who have
sacrificed themselves, like the martyrs of
the civil rights movement, do not aim at
the injury of the oppressors, but only at
changing their policies. The enemies of
those struggling for freedom and democracy are not men. They are discrimination, dictatorship, greed, hatred, and
violence, which lie within the hearts of
man. These are the real enemies of man—
not man himself.

We also believe that the struggles
for equality and freedom in Birmingham,
Selma, and Chicago as in Huế, Da
Nang, and Saigon are aimed not at the
domination of one people by another.
They are aimed at self-determination,
peaceful social change, and a better life
for all human beings. And we believe that
only in a world of peace can the work of
construction, of building good societies
everywhere, go forward.
On this occasion, Martin Luther King Jr. again
publicly announced his opposition to the war
in Vietnam. He asked everyone present to listen
deeply to Thầy, who was representing people living under bombs and bullets.
When Thầy said goodbye to Martin Luther King
Jr. before going on to Washington DC, he received a
letter to read on the aeroplane. When Thầy opened
the letter, he read:
Without friends on the path,
you are very lonely as a
peace activist.

Thầy Nhất Hạnh, I love you so much. I
love your country so much. I do not know
how to describe my feelings. I just wanted
to hold you in my arms, but I did not dare
to. I pray that you will realise all that you
long for.
On April 4th, 1968, Thầy read the Heart Sutra
during a Eucharist celebrated in Columbia University by Father Daniel Berrigan. After the ceremony,
they went to listen to a lecture. The lecture was
interrupted by the news that Dr. King had been assassinated. Thầy said years later:
I was devastated. I could not eat; I could
not sleep. I made a deep vow to continue building what he called “the beloved
community,” not only for myself but for
him also. I have done what I promised to
Martin Luther King Jr. and I think that I
have always felt his support.1
The day after the assassination Thầy wrote
a note to Ray Gould, who was a mutual friend of
Thầy and Dr. King. Thầy wrote:
Ray, send me the picture in which you
and I and he were together. I want to see
again the expression of his face when he
told me in summer 1966 when we were in
Chicago:

“I feel compelled to do anything to
help stop this war.” He made so great an
impression on me. This morning I have
the feeling that I cannot bear the loss.1
In the same letter Thầy said he was a little
comforted by the fact that in Geneva, when he met
Martin Luther King Jr. for the last time, Thầy had
said:
Martin, do you know something? The
peasants in Vietnam know all about what
you have been doing to help the poor
people here and to stop the war in Vietnam. They consider you as a bodhisattva.1
This is what Thầy told his students in 2014 about
his friend Father Daniel Berrigan:
He is a Jesuit priest living in New York.
He is very famous and this year is ninetythree years old, a writer, and a poet.
When I met him, it was in 1968 when I
was campaigning for an end to the war
in Vietnam. He was a peace activist. We
became friends and had long discussions
about war and peace. Father Berrigan
came to France and stayed with us for
three months to practise mindfulness. He
practised sitting and walking meditation
and looking deeply. Every day we sat
together to exchange our experience
of the practice. He brought a tape
recorder with him and recorded all the
conversations we had.
When he returned to the US, he wrote a book
authored by Daniel Berrigan and Thích Nhất Hạnh
entitled The Raft is Not the Shore. The raft is the
means to go to the other shore, but it is not the
other shore. This book is still in print, but I do not
know if it has been translated into Vietnamese.
When I first met him, he did not know
about walking meditation. One day I invited him to go for a walk in Central Park,
New York. I said:

“We are not supposed to talk. We just
walk in order to walk.”

Father Berrigan was much taller than
I. His legs were long, so for every one
of his steps I took two. We both started walking together, and two or three
minutes later he had left me ten metres
behind. Seeing I was no longer alongside
him, he stopped and waited. I was not
in a hurry. I walked along slowly at my
own pace. I was determined to do that,
because I knew if I did not stick firmly
to the practice, I should lose myself like
others in this society where everyone is in

a hurry. I was determined to use my steps
and my breath in order not to be swept
away by the North American society.

After that Father Berrigan came to
France to practise and learnt how to walk
slowly in meditation correctly.
In 1968 Father Daniel Berrigan, along with his
brother Father Philip Berrigan and other Catholics,
was imprisoned for burning draft files in protest at
the war in Vietnam. When criticised for this action
Father Daniel said: “It is better to burn paper than
children.”
In 1980, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, along with
six others, began the Ploughshares Movement to
demonstrate against nuclear weapons, inspired by
the words of the prophets. After hammering nuclear missiles and submarines into ploughshares and
using their own blood to pour on documents and
weapons, they faced many years of imprisonment.
There is a deep connection between spirituality and activism. Thầy often spoke of mindfulness
as holiness or the equivalent of the Holy Spirit.
When put on trial for trespassing, entering security
areas, or doing damage to property, members of
the Ploughshares Movement would talk of being
led by the Holy Spirit.
Ploughshares activist Art Laffin said, “People
who have been involved in ploughshares actions
have undertaken a process of intense spiritual
preparation, nonviolence training, and community formation and have given careful consideration
to the risks involved.”2
In 1974 Father Daniel said of his visit to Thầy
and the community in Sceaux: “I was being healed
of America, of the Western Church, of the Jesuits,
of the wounds of war, of the disease of making it, of
my race in time against time.”3 For his peace activism, Father Berrigan received severe criticism from
his own church.
In 2010 Thầy told of a dream he had had about
Father Berrigan. A letter of birthday greetings was
sent to Father Berrigan recounting the content of
the dream. Thầy did not write the letter himself,
but recounted the dream to his attendant, who
wrote the letter:
In a dream Thầy saw his friend Father
Daniel Berrigan. Sitting next to this courageous priest, Thầy recognized that he was
worthy of all respect and reverence. Thầy
suggested that the community touch
the earth before him…. Suddenly Thầy
saw that he was sitting alone with Father
Berrigan and he opened his arms to embrace Thầy. Thầy also opened his arms to
embrace his friend in the true spirit of the
Plum Village practice of hugging meditation. At first there was only happiness
and the peace of brotherhood, but soon
an unsettled energy arose in Thầy… the
energy of sadness, pain, and loneliness.
Thầy felt clearly that the other person was
receiving this energy and responding to
it.… Waking up, Thầy knew the dream
had helped his own well-being, because
he’d had the opportunity to recognize
and share his sadness and pain with a
dear friend who had the capacity to touch
and understand that sadness and pain,
having gone through similar difficulties,
sadness, and loneliness. Thầy thinks that
in our lives, those with whom we can
“The enemies of those
struggling for freedom and
democracy are not men.
They are discrimination,
dictatorship, greed, hatred,
and violence, which lie
within the hearts of man.
These are the real enemies
of man—not man himself.”
— MARTIN LU THER K I NG J R . A ND
THÍCH N HẤT HẠNH

share like this are few, even within our
own tradition.4
M A HĀTMĀ GAN DHI
Thầy often referred to Mahātmā Gandhi in his
teachings, especially in his teachings about the
Mindfulness Trainings:
Mahātmā Gandhi lived like a monk in
terms of food, clothing, and sex. If he
didn’t live as a monk, he would not have
enough energy to lead such a sacred
struggle (against the British Empire).
Mahātmā Gandhi said to his wife, “In this
struggle, I need to have enough energy,
so we must forgo having sexual relations.” And Mrs. Gandhi said, “I understand, please follow your path.”5
Thầy spoke of Gandhi in relation to the First of
The Five Mindfulness Trainings and the Second of
The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. Gandhi said:
“In my search after truth I have discarded many
ideas and learned many new things.” Thầy said
the Mahātmā had the spirit of non-attachment to
views and, although he was not a Buddhist, was
never caught in what he already knew. Gandhi also
said: “Old as, I am in age I have no feeling that I
have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth
will stop at the dissolution of the flesh.”
One time the Mahātmā said to Jawaharlal
Nehru, who often differed from Gandhi in his point
of view: “Resist me always when my suggestion
does not appeal to your head or heart. I shall not
love you the less for that resistance.”
With regard to the Second of The Five Mindfulness Trainings, Thầy also quoted Gandhi:
Our ancestors set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a
mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich or unhappy
because he is poor. Observing all this our
ancestors dissuaded us from luxury and
pleasures. The mind is a restless bird; the
more it gets, the more it wants and still
remains unsatisfied.
When referring to The Simile of the Saw Sutta
(MN 21), Thầy said:
In this sutta the Buddha says that if we
can master our body, our mind and our
anger, even if someone saws our limbs
into pieces we can still remain sovereign
of ourselves. We see that that person
is just the victim of their ignorance and
hatred. This is an example of extreme
nonviolence, like when Mahātmā Gandhi
launched the nonviolent movement
to resist the violence of the British
government and to struggle for the
independence of India. People in that
movement were beaten and killed, but
they remained peaceful and did not
return violence for violence.
Thầy often referred to the words of the
Mahātmā: “My life is my message,” and said that the
Mahātmā did the things that he taught. If we do not
do what we teach, our teachings have no meaning.
In November 1962, while staying in New York,
there was a night Thầy could not sleep. In the middle of the night, he rose and read what Bonhoeffer
had written during his final days in the prison of a
concentration camp. Bonhoeffer’s peace, compassion, and courage deeply moved Thầy:
[The account] of the final days of
Bonhoeffer’s life helped me suddenly
to wake up to a sky full of bright stars
that is there in everyone. I felt strangely
happy, and knew that I had the ability
to withstand. Bonhoeffer was the drop
that made my cup full to the brim, the
last condition, the light breeze that made
the ripe fruit fall. After experiencing such
a night, I will never complain about life

again.… Life is miraculous, even in its
suffering. Without suffering, life would
not be possible.
Bonhoeffer said that when he was put on trial
by the Nazis and in prison he learned that there
is a great difference between a theologian and a
Christian.
Thanks to Bonhoeffer’s extraordinary virtue and courage, Thầy recognized the presence
of bodhisattvas on the Earth and not just in the
sutras. For the whole of the following month, Thầy
meditated on the bodhisattvas in the Lotus and
Perfected Wisdom Sutras. Thầy saw that bodhisattvas were people whom we could encounter
in this life and they included the young people in
Vietnam whom Thầy was guiding.
Thầy has said that people like Martin Luther
King Jr. and Gandhi are Mahasattvas, great bodhisattvas, while we are Hinasattvas, little bodhisattvas. Great bodhisattvas and little bodhisattvas
inter-are. The great bodhisattvas encourage and
inspire the little bodhisattvas on the path of nonviolent resistance. As little bodhisattvas, we know
that hatred can never put an end to hatred, and
so we vow in our daily lives to remember the lives
of these great bodhisattvas. In this way, we shall
have the courage to go ahead in the great global
nonviolent struggle.
1 Tăng thân Làng Mai, Đi gặp mùa xuân: Hành trạng Thiền
sư Thích Nhất Hạnh, (Hà Nội: Thái Hà, 2022)
2 Art Laffin, 2019, “A History of the Plowshares Movement
– a talk by Art Laffin, October 22, 2019,” The Nuclear
Resister. https://www.nukeresister.org/2019/11/02/ahistory-of-the-plowshares-movement-a-talk-by-artlaffin-october-22-2019/
3 Jim Forest, Eyes of Compassion, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books,
2021)
4 Marc Andrus, Brothers in the Beloved Community,
(Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2021)
5 Thích Nhất Hạnh, 2010, “Attadanda Sutta (Part IV),”
Thích Nhất Hạnh Dharma Talks. https://tnhaudio.
org/2010/05/09/attadanda-sutta-part-iv/
Sister Chân Đức (Sister Annabel), True Virtue (pronouns
she/her), has been a disciple of Thầy since 1986. She
became the first Western European woman to be ordained as a nun by Thầy in 1988 in India. She received
the Lamp Transmission to become a Dharma teacher in
1990 and served as Director of Practice at Plum Village.
She is the former abbess of the Green Mountain Dharma
Center in the US. Sister Chân Đức has been on the board
of directors for the Plum Village Community of Engaged
Buddhism since 1998. She was the senior editor of The
Mindfulness Bell from 2001 to 2020. She was appointed Dean of Practice in the European Institute of applied
Buddhism from 2008-2019. She is a much-loved senior
Dharma teacher and has travelled widely to lead meditation retreats, including in her ancestral land of England.
She inspires many with her unique teaching style. Sister
Chân Đức is now living in Plum Village, France.