Thich Nhat Hanh

He was born in 1926 and became a monk at the age of 16. He later received a tertiary education in the West and taught at Columbia before returning to Vietnam. His tradition was a Vietnamese form of Zen that had adopted several Theravada meditation approaches.

During the Vietnam War between a Communist North and a Capitalist Christian South Vietnamese regime (allied with Western forces – note not West Vietnamese but Western in the global sense) he advocated Buddhism as a third way. He was again at Columbia in this period where he met Martin Luther King, Jr. He influenced King’s attitude to the war and King nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. He was also involved in non-violence movements in the US, generally.

He argued in these so-called ‘non-violence’ movements (that were often havens at the time for angry people) that peace was gotten at moment by moment by means of awareness and that angry actions lead to angry results. Therefore, he taught the angry people that they should always seek the place of compassion in their hearts if they truly sought peace. “Being peace” was the consistent somewhat mystical focus of his message and plans for the movements more so than “aiming for peace” without any internal thought for how that can come from an angry place. He talked of his philosophy of “Interbeing”. The basic idea was that the interconnectedness of all of us stressed in the Buddhist idea of dependent arising meant that we had (and were) a joint-being. So he advocated peace and compassion and said “to be is to interbe”. Non-violence naturally followed from interbeing. The link with Gandhi’s (and Buddhism’s) views of wisdom and compassion is also fairly clear.

The question arises whether the self-immolation practiced by several monks taught by Nhat Hanh as a result of the situation in Vietnam during the war is truly non-violent and/or righteous. Books of Buddhist Ethics usually provide extensive discussions of the issue of Buddhism’s approach to suicide in comparable circumstances. The monks were, of course, meditating and seated in the Lotus position. The Buddhist view of such things is not necessarily like the Western view, as I hope has become clear in the course of these posts. This is however at the extreme end of “Engaged Buddhism”.

There is a Mahayana tradition of self-immolation. See, for example, part 23 of the Lotus Sutra and there is also in some traditions a routine burning of parts of the body as an initiation rite for postulants to the vows of the religious life. The rationale for this latter rite at least is to signify the sincerity of the vow. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested that the self-immolation, too, was a sign of the sincerity of the monks who committed to it as a form of non-violent protest against the war and so was (and is) not comparable to either violence to other beings or mere suicide. The motive was regarded as the issue and the motivation here was the purest of compassion for the people of Vietnam. The monks had also first attempted other forms of action to address the issue including meditation and a letter-writing campaign so they further argued that the suicides and their publicisation were last resorts.

Many Buddhists do have a problem with it (as many Muslims and Christians reject suicide bombings and ‘abortion doctor’ killings for their own reasons). Part of the issue is the violence per se and part is that idea rejected so firmly by Gandhi that religion simply does not belong in politics or social policy to such a potentially revolutionary extent, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama notwithstanding. One may ask: did the ‘tactic’ of self-immolation achieve peace? It certainly produced an effect and that is perhaps more to the point for “Engaged Buddhism” as it was sincerely entered into. The issue may still remain: was that effect positive?

The next issue for Nhat Hanh may have been: is “Engaged Buddhism” what Siddhartha wanted his monks to do? The man himself spent 75 years as an enlightened being speaking mainly with Buddhist religious though, of course, we know he also gave advice to kings in that time. By comparing Buddhism with other religions, we may notice similar changes that may be attributable to modernity but also to the way of Siddhartha.

So any 'changes' may be doctrinally valid as well as modern but there is probably at least an element of modernity? The common theme of ‘modern’ religious observance (since the Christian Reformation at least) is that the rules of observance are to be understood personally rather than merely ‘handed down’ by scholars. So if a scholar says I can’t be a suicide bomber, ‘abortion doctor’ killer or self-immolator, my modern education tells me that I may also have an opinion on how I may observe my religion. I can read the religious texts for myself and in my own way. The Theravada tradition remains the most conservative tradition within Buddhism in this regard though even here this situation is not static. Buddhadasa Bhikkhu is a noted Theravadan activist, for example. Also, within India around the time of partition, quite apart from what Gandhi was doing, Buddhism achieved a large number of new converts as a protest by former Hindus at both the Hindu caste system and Islamic and Christian systems led by a leading ‘untouchable’ politician of the time. Other still earlier examples of modern “Engaged Buddhism” though they didn’t yet have that name were the 19^th Century Japanese lay movement and a 19^th Century movement inspired by a European convert. Not all of these movements are necessarily either right or wrong, however, from a 'true Buddhist' perspective.

So the locus of religious authority is the subject of a fraught debate within Buddhism just as it is in most religions today. Al Qaeda (much of the leadership is Western tertiary-educated) and “Engaged Buddhism” are perhaps the Calvinists and Lutherans of today in their religions dealing with an unprecedentedly educated mass audience. It can further be argued that, in the harsh environment which modernity can provide, it is virtually inevitable that a wide variety of solutions to problems might well urgently and sincerely be preached and earnestly and wholeheartedly be adopted by adherents to a wide variety of the consequent and inevitable sectarian divisions.

Nhat Hanh also met Thomas Merton, the Catholic writer, who apparently took an interest in the war (Merton, though sworn to silence as a Trappist monk, is a well-respected writer on spirituality and may have asked to meet Nhat Hanh - he was given permission from his superiors to meet him). He apparently greatly influenced Merton, who later wrote that monasticism may be a common ground and meeting point between religions. Incidentally, the Dalai Lama also met Merton and later planted a tree near his grave.

Today Thich Nhat Hanh lives in France where he runs an order and community that he founded called “the Order of Interbeing”. He was once expelled by the Communist government of Vietnam but was allowed to return to attend a conference recently to be a keynote speaker and has apparently returned since.

The ‘Discovery’ of Buddhism

When Buddhism was first ‘discovered’ in China (by Europeans), it was thought to possibly be indigenous. Works of Indian Buddhism weren’t discovered by Europeans until around the 1820s. When Europeans finally discovered Buddhism, it also took some time to dawn on them that Siddhartha was an actual historical figure. It was discovered soon after the great predictions of Schopenhauer that I mentioned in the last post and almost immediately had a significant impact in the US.

When, in the 19^th Century, the wealthy Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friend and protégé, the creative Henry David Thoreau, led a Romantic movement in the US called the New England Transcendentalists they could by then draw on Buddhism as one of the Indian viewpoints that were then so in vogue among Romantic movements. They firstly rejected in a rather Sramana and Buddhist style the American idea that it was somehow virtuous to be wealthy. Their main direct influence, though, was a translation by Jones from the Sanskrit of The Laws of Manu (not a Buddhist work).

Thoreau in particular enjoyed the wilderness and is also linked to the so-called 'National Parks movement' that led (as a first major success) to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park as the first National Park. He is possibly the most cited writer of all time due to his many talents and has inspired many a scholar to study Sanskrit (because it interested him). The Transcendentalists produced the first translation of the Lotus Sutra into English, which was, of course, a famous Buddhist work (along with being the first to translate various Hindu texts).

While it was not seen by Romantics as proper to control the East (as the Eastern ideas themselves revealed), the East certainly was still considered ‘the Other’ and examined especially with a view to what Eastern ideas could do for the West (perhaps not surprisingly still the most important thing from the point of view of the Westerners). It was a potential source for Western spiritual re-birth. The idea of what came to be called the Perennial Philosophy school was that perhaps India still possessed a key to universal truths possibly once also held in the West.

In a time of French interest in the Indian subcontinent inspired by the work of Baron Admiral Guy-Victor Duperré, Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron searched for the ancient works of Zoroastrianism in this connection (and found the ancient Hindu Upanishad scriptures translated from the Sanskrit into Persian instead, which he, in turn, translated into Latin). His work was the origin of the theosophy movement begun by Perennial Philosophers, Madame Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, who later professed to be Buddhists. I will discuss their link to Gandhi and thus to “Engaged Buddhism” in the next post.

So the West has been primed by the important Romantic movements of the last two centuries to have a special interest in Sanskrit writings and Buddhism (“Engaged Buddhism” at that). The activist movements of the 1960s (including the “Engaged Buddhists” and others that I consider in the next posts) that continue to have influence today were clearly sympathetic to these earlier movements. Thus, a long history of cultural ‘priming’ is potentially ready to yet bear more fruit.

More on Mahayana

It is, in fact, a common thing to openly follow more than one religion (including Mahayana) in East Asia. Theravadans may also follow Buddhism and other religions, though it tends to be more clandestine (so other rites are less likely to be openly practiced in the Buddhist temple). Early Jesuit missionaries in China found the idea of professing a combination of faiths especially difficult to get their heads around.

So we have in some Mahayana communities three yanas (vehicles (or ways)): the monk or nun way, the hermit way (pratyekabuddhayana) and the layperson way to be a good Buddhist. Walpola Rahula discusses these roles in this and Theravada contexts in his Zen and the Taming of the Bull. Many of Siddhartha’s immediate disciples chose the Arhat path open to them (I’ve mentioned in an earlier post how much easier it would be expected to be for them given his proximity to their lives – Christian and Muslim traditionists tend to have a similar view of people whose lives were directly touched in incarnate human terms by their respective main religious paragons). Rahula acknowledges (in agreement with what I wrote in an earlier post) that Theravadans honour the Bodhisattva way without according it the precedence over the other two that Mahayana Buddhism does.

In Mahayana theology, Arhathood tends not to be regarded as the end, in any event, as it is often seen as merely permitting a rest stage perhaps leading to a better re-birth but a re-birth all the same. This is clearly not the Theravada view. Their belief is that an Arhat is a “never-returner” by definition having attained nirvana.

The Lotus Sutra has another analogy that again attempts to explain the difference. Suppose we are together in the middle of a vast desert with Siddhartha (this desert is meant to be an analogy for the much-hated samsara of both Theravadan and Mahayana tradition). Then, out of compassion, Siddhartha causes a mirage so that we believe the end to the desert is near. In his compassion, then, he created this mirage (Arhathood) in order that we might be encouraged and strive to reach the end. Once we reach the mirage we will (perhaps unhappily) realise that it is a mirage but by then we will actually be much closer to the end of the desert and have more strength to get out of it than if there had been no mirage produced. So Buddha is not beyond telling at least one ‘white’ lie it seems, if the means can be justified by this most ultimate end: ultimate liberation. The sutra directly teaches that there is only one way out of the desert and that is Buddhahood (so Siddhartha, by ‘providing’ that sutra, at least makes good on his promise to unmask the mirage in the end).

The American Theravadan Jack Kornfield once joked “whether there are one or three, all vehicles will be towed away”.