What is the hardest thing that you practice?

That is not to allow yourself to be overwhelmed by despair. That is the hardest thing. Because when you are overwhelmed by despair, that is the worst thing that can happen to you. I remember when the war was going on, we did not see the light at the end of the tunnel. It seems that the war will go on and on and on forever. And the young people came and asked, "Dear Thầy, do you think that the war will end soon?" And it's very difficult to answer because you have not seen the light at the end of the tunnel. But if you say, I don't know and then you water the seed of despair in them. So Thầy had to breathe in and out a few times.

And then what Thầy said is that, "Dear friends, the Buddha said that everything is impermanent. The war should be impermanent also. And it should end someday. Let us continue to work for peace." You know that during the war, we young monks and nuns and lay practitioners, we organize the School of Youth for Social Service, like a Peace Corps created by John F. Kennedy. And we go into the war zone and we help the wounded people. We help create refugee centers, we help them to go back to their normal life and we rebuilt the villages that had been bombed.

There is a village called Trà Lộc, not very far from the demilitarized zone, separating north and south. The village of Trà Lộc was bombed, completely destroyed. And our young social workers, including monks and nuns, and lay practitioners, we helped rebuild the village. But it was bombed again and destroyed again. And our social workers warned us and asked whether they should rebuild it. And we said, "Rebuild it." And we rebuilt it. And it was bombed again. Four times. And if we give up, that will create a feeling of despair. That is why we keep rebuilding, rebuilding, rebuilding and rebuilding. So the hardest thing is not to lose your hope, to give up to despair. That is the hardest thing.

And we have gone through two wars like that. And we saw French soldiers came and killed and got killed. We saw young Americans came and killed and got killed. You know that fifty thousand young Americans were killed in Vietnam. And hundreds of thousands of them were wounded. And many had to be cared by psychotherapists and so on. And in a situation of utmost suffering like that, if we don't have a practice, we cannot survive. And we practice in such a way that we can preserve our hope and our compassion.

And when the journalists asked us questions about that, about how you feel about young Americans coming and kill and die in Vietnam. We said that they are victims, we don't hate them. They are victims of a kind of policy that is not very intelligent. a policy based on fear. Fear of the taking over by communists of the whole Southeast Asia. They are victims, they had to come here to kill and to die. You understand? So we are not angry at them.

And In 1966, Thầy was invited to come to America. He had a chance to talk to the American people about the war. There was a very angry young American who stood up and told Thầy this: "You should not be here, you should not go back and fight American imperialism in Vietnam. You have to kill the American soldiers there." And Thầy's answer is that "I thought that the root of the war is here, that is not in Vietnam. The young Americans who came in Vietnam, they are just victims. So I had to come here and tell the American people that this war is not helping Vietnam at all." So without that kind of understanding and compassion, you will lose yourself in anger and hate. And you cannot say things like that and help the American people to understand and to reverse, to change the policy.

There was a peace movement in America opposing the war in Vietnam. As people demanded peace and did not get it, they got very angry. So there was a lot of anger in the peace movement. When Thầy went to America and talked to these groups, Thầy said that, "Well, if you have a lot of anger in you, you cannot achieve peace. You have to be peace before you can do peace. And understanding is very important. You need to know how to write a love letter to your president, to your Congress, and telling them that you do not want the war. And if you write a strong, angry letter, they will not read it." So Thầy was able to speak like that and help somehow to end the war and understand suffering. Help compassion to be born again and you will be free from despair, from anger, and you can help the cause of peace.