Letters from Thich Nhat Hanh

Explore the Zen Master’s open letters on community-building and current affairs, including remarkable messages to Martin Luther King Jr., President G.W. Bush, and to a young man on Death Row in the U.S.

Letter to a Prisoner

On March 12, Thay received a letter from Zachary Crow, who is supporting a young man called Daniel on Death Row in Jackson, Georgia in the USA. Together, Zachary and Daniel have been practising…

Bat Nha: a Koan

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s compassionate response to the persecution of his students in Vietnam “The koan “Bat Nha” is everyone’s koan; it is the koan of every individual and every community. The koan…

Bat Nha: Rekindling the Sacred Fire

Thay’s letter to the Bat Nha Monastics, continued. Blue Cliff MonasteryOctober 21, 2009 Yesterday, in the Great Harmony Meditation Hall of Blue Cliff Monastery, there was an ordination ceremony for two young people, one…

Bat Nha: Diamond Body

Blue Cliff, October 7th, 2009 To my Bat Nha Children, I write “my Bat Nha children” and not “my children in Bat Nha” as I had done before, because even though you are not…

Seeing Thay in the Sangha

This letter was written by Thay in 2009, after he was urgently hospitalized with a serious lung infection, in the middle of a 3-month U.S. Tour. About 900 people had gathered in at the…

Thay Misses The Sangha

Dear Friends and Co-practitioners at the Retreat One Buddha is Not Enough, Estes Park, CO. My dear friends, I am writing to you from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. I know the Sangha…

The Mountain Cliff Robe

European Institute of Applied Buddhism Waldbroel, Germany 2009 Last night while sleeping here Thầy had a dream. He saw that he was climbing a mountain with the Buddha and with little Hải Triều Âm…

Sitting Still, Imperturbable

Sitting Still Hut, Upper Hamlet, Plum Village July 20, 2009 To my students in Bat Nha, Tu Hieu and everywhere, Thay is sitting at “Sitting Still Hut,” in the Upper Hamlet of Plum Village…

The Toadskin Hut and Paths of Legend

Thay wrote this end-of-year letter addressed to all of his students about the Toadskin Hut, the hermit of Still Sitting Hut, walking meditation paths that have become legendary, and the new young Dharma Teachers in…

Comments on Tibet

When the Plum Village delegation led by Thich Nhat Hanh landed in Rome in March 2008 for fourteen days of public talks, retreats, and other events, the demonstration by 600 Tibetan monks on the occasion of…

Giving back to our motherland

Writing from exile in Paris in 1974, Thay wrote these words of encouragement and inspiration to his social workers back in Vietnam, dreaming of creating a village and practice center together.

A Proposal for Peace: 1 June, 1966

Published in Thich Nhat Hanh, Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (1993) This statement was read at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 1966, and reprinted in the Congressional Record…

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What is Mindfulness

Thich Nhat Hanh January 15, 2020

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