Love, Thay

The Vietnamese Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh, who died in 2022 at age 95, was among the most beloved and influential spiritual leaders on the planet. He is credited with introducing—or at least popularizing—mindfulness meditation in the West and coining the term “Engaged Buddhism” to describe the environmental and social activism and peace advocacy for which he was known. Thay—Vietnamese for teacher—as his students called him, had a vast pool of followers of all faiths and no faith who devoured the one hundred or more books he published in English, as well as a sangha of dedicated monks, nuns, and lay disciples spread over eleven monastic communities and more than one thousand practice groups worldwide.

There have been charismatic Buddhist leaders with large followings in the West before, but most communities have faltered after the death of a charismatic leader. So far, despite no designated successor, Thay’s community has remained intact and committed. Devotees have continued to stream to his centers, including Plum Village, his first community in the West, established in southwestern France in 1982 as the seat of the Plum Village tradition. Such is Thay’s influence that even after the massive stroke in 2014 that left him unable to speak or write, books under his name continued to roll out, many from Parallax Press, the publishing house he founded in 1986.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s latest offering from Parallax, In Love and Trust: Letters from a Zen Master, contains a selection of correspondence from the 1960s until 2014, compiled by his monastics and close lay sangha members. Sister Dinh Nghiem, who led the team that translated, edited, and introduced the fifty-nine letters in the book, notes in her foreword that “letter writing became a vital thread connecting Thay to his large monastic family.” In a preface reprinted from an earlier book of his letters, published in Vietnamese, Thay states:

The letters I write are transmissions for you. Transmissions of what? Not of some intellectual knowledge or theory. I am transmitting no other than myself to you. If you know how to receive the transmission, I become you, and you become me. 

He also loved corresponding with lay friends, Sister Dinh Nghiem tells us. He claimed he learned much from their letters about lay life “and about critical social or political circumstances or events.” From his earliest days as a young monk in Vietnam, letter writing was a key part of his engaged social action.

In Love and Trust is, in effect, an epistolary memoir, but we read only Thay’s side of the correspondence. He encouraged the monastics to write him: “In our letters to Thay we could reveal deep joys and deep suffering from our hearts,”  Sister Dinh Nghiem says. Though they never expected a personal reply, he amazed them. Not individually: He wrote the monastics collectively—pages and pages of encouragement, instruction, and, when necessary, admonition. Photocopies distributed to the monastics “remain dear to us,” Sister Dinh Nghiem writes. “We cherish them and keep them safe to this day.”

In Love and Trust is, in effect, an epistolary memoir, but we read only Thay’s side of the correspondence.

Thay valued his letters from lay correspondents too. At one point, he asked Sister Dinh Nghiem to gather them all for safekeeping. In his hermitage, she found letters “everywhere—on tables, chairs.” Considering how busy he was teaching around the world, it’s a wonder he had time to read all those letters, never mind answer them. But answer he did, if not himself, by designating a monastic or lay teacher to address the writer’s concerns. Often, he incorporated his thoughts about their concerns into his dharma talks. “This is why so many people in the audience felt Thay was speaking directly to them about their unique suffering,” Sister Dinh Nghiem explains.

It’s debatable how many readers, apart from the monastics, will see themselves in the letters from In Love and Trust. The first three parts, “Energizing the Heart of Service,” “Nourishing the Mind of Love,” and “Vietnam: A Path of Returning,” contain correspondence addressed to the monks and nuns. Thay’s overarching message is the importance of sangha building and “cultivating siblinghood.” He is ever the benevolent father, but his tone sometimes surprises: Behind the soft voice we know from his public talks and best-selling books lay a dedicated, exacting, occasionally tough taskmaster not about to let the monastic community fall apart or its members become sloppy about practice. In a 1995 letter, he writes, “The harmony among us is the greatest achievement.” In instructions to monastics about to visit the United States in 1997, he warns, “Be aware that the happiness of the sangha is our priority. Do not let the work shatter our harmony and happiness.” That message never wavers. In 2007, he tells them, “Each one of us represents all of us because we are not separate selves but part of one sangha body.” Not that he was all business all the time. Thay had a soft spot for the monks and nuns during the summer retreat at Plum Village, when they were hardworking hosts to hundreds of visitors from as many as fifty countries around the globe: “When you feel tired, please hide yourself somewhere and get some sleep. (Like what I did when I was a novice. It was under the Buddha’s altar.)”

For lay readers curious to know what Thay taught the monastics and how it differed from what he taught them, In Love and Trust offers a peek behind the monastery walls. But anyone looking for intimate revelations about his relationships with friends and colleagues should skip directly to Part IV, “A Practice of Peace: Letter Writing as Engaged Action.” Here we can browse warmly personal letters to fellow peace activists like Trappist monk Thomas Merton, Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, and Raphael Gould, who Thay wrote to immediately after the assassination of their mutual friend Martin Luther King, Jr. (In case you’ve forgotten, Thay persuaded King to denounce the war in Vietnam; King, a Nobel laureate in 1964, reciprocated by nominating Thay for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He didn’t win; no prize was given that year.)

Thich Nhat Hanh’s world, as revealed in these pages, is the antithesis of the mean-spirited and scary one most of us live in now.

One endearing aspect of the letters in this section is that many—along with a few in Part I—are printed with a facsimile of Thay’s original handwritten version, rendered in his tiny, neat hand. The letters to “Tom” Merton and “Father Dan” Berrigan are touching in their openness and simplicity, as is his letter of encouragement to a prisoner on death row. (Among the activities of the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation is a prison pen pal program.) Thay’s epistolary activism was far-reaching: In one letter he urges the CEO of the Kentucky Fried Chicken company to use methods that are “more humane both for the chickens and for the humans who handle them,” and in a letter to then President George W. Bush during the 2006 Middle East crisis he suggests, “I think that if you could allow yourself to cry like I did this morning, you would also feel much better. It is our brothers that we kill over there.” (No word if President Bush responded.)

The charm of Part III, “Vietnam: A Path for Returning,” is less obvious. Some of the letters focus on a subject dear to Thay: the School of Youth for Social Service (SYSS) that he cofounded in 1965 to help rural communities in Vietnam affected by the war rebuild and provide essential services. One missive is, dare one say, stultifying: a thirteen-page disquisition on three types of commune in Israel and how they might serve as a model for community building in Vietnam. Of more interest are letters about his visits to Vietnam after the Communist government finally allowed him to return in 2005, ending thirty-nine years in exile. Thay writes about reconnecting with his root temple, Tu Huen, where he was abbot and later lived out his final years. And there are letters of support to the monks in Bat Nha and Prajna monasteries after reprisals from the government; the abrupt shuttering of Bat Nha prompted a lesson on the true meaning of home. “Bat Nha is not outside of us, but in our hearts,” Thay writes. “If you can wake up, your present place of residence will become a Bat Nha.” He cites his own experience in exile: “Thay did not dry up, and Thay did not die. It was because Thay carried the sangha in his heart.” (A peculiar—and distancing—tic throughout the book is his frequent use of the third person in referring to himself.)

Thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh’s charisma and the well-organized network he left behind, his legacy seems assured. Still, considering In Love and Trust, it’s tempting to ask: If we’re not Thay’s disciples, why would we want to read his advice to his monastics? What do we have to learn? Well, for one thing, how to get along with one another. Not a bad lesson in these fractious times. Thich Nhat Hanh’s world, as revealed in these pages, is the antithesis of the mean-spirited and scary one most of us live in now. Even if few of his lay readers will ever spend more than a weekend retreat or two in any Buddhist community, mindfulness, kindness, and caring for others are lessons that bear repeating again and again. Thich Nhat Hanh may be gone, but in his letters, the beloved master’s inspiring and hope-filled voice lives on.