Continuing Karim

Our dear friend Karim Manji, one of the founders of plumvillage.org and beloved by many passed away unexpectedly in his sleep on Monday, 3rd February. We honour his life dedicated to sharing mindfulness, spiritual activism and continue his immense contributions to the Plum Village Community.

Karim Manji, co-founder of plumvillage.org and a true spiritual friend to many in our global Sangha

Karim meant so much to many people. His kindness, eloquence, and vision of how to share Thay’s teachings in a way that could be received and applied in the world was a true gift, recognised globally by the monastics and lay community.

Karim is not someone who can be replaced, but his immense contribution has given us a solid foundation from which to grow. While we take our time to integrate the fact that he is no longer here in form, we will continue to connect to his wisdom and carry his heart in all we do.

On the 9th of February we held a memorial ceremony and tea sharing for Karim to let him know how we are continuing him in all his manifestations and be present for his beloved friends and family around the world.

Reflections from the Ceremony

Brother Phap Luu: Something shifts when someone so kind passes on. I felt tears coming when I heard the news, and a deep gratitude for his life.

Karim was an integral part of the team that brought Wake Up Schools to life. He put his whole heart into reviewing the transcripts of Thay’s talks for teachers, and has the lion share of the credit for selecting which bits of those talks went into the Happy Teachers Change the World book.

He had such an intuitive grasp of Thay’s teachings and a sense of how to bridge the gap between their beauty and the wider lay community—especially for teachers. Karim was endlessly fun to work with—always smiling and bringing lightness to the team. His love for puns usually went beyond our capacity to handle them. Puns gave him so much joy, we couldn’t help but share the joy with him.

We had an ongoing collaboration exploring ways of sharing the practice with families, and he drafted a curriculum that forms the basis for much of what we are doing now to bring mindfulness to families. I have deep gratitude for Karim and the beautiful community that he built around him.

Sister True Dedication: Karim trained as a teacher. He used to teach citizenship in the UK: Personal, Social, Health and Economics to teenagers – engaged welfare to teens. He went on to work for an international organisation called Advocates for International Development where he was the Head of Learning and Head of Communications. We can feel his activism both in his teaching and his professional life and in his volunteering here in Plum Village. His work contributed to how to change mindsets. How to educate. How to help our society be a better society. This led to his activism with XR (Extinction Rebellion) and Wake Up London.

Karim was an introvert who loved people. Such a good human to be near. Very comforting, very nonjudgmental, very light. He offered friendship to so many of us. I feel today I am missing a Dharma brother but also a real friend. A really close friend. It’s quite an art to be able to serve, to really understand the community well. To serve The Three Jewels really means serving this vision of collective awakening, and shifting consciousness to create a more healthy and compassionate society.

Karim was a very rare jewel, he brought his intelligence, his patience, his understand of humans and his vision for how to help Plum Village Online Monastery (www.plumvillage.org) be accessible and relevant, with a big and bold vision. The trust we had in Karim and the faith Karim had in these teachings and practices was such a deep meeting of hearts and minds. The insight and the right action that he has brought to our community – I would like just to bear witness to that.

He worked alongside us and he lifted us up. He was a part of the ceremonies when Thay passed. Karim helped us craft our branding and our language to be as open and clean and simple and accessible as we wanted to be. Without Karim’s help we wouldn’t have managed that. I just want to honour the fact that Karim has brought the practice to countless people and he continues in light of The Three Jewels, radiating beautifully. That is a truth to be told.