Cosmic Consciousness

Tradition : Plum Village

Buddhist Lineage : Shakyamuni, Linji School, Plum Village

Organsiation : Order of Interbeing – worldwide community of monastics and lay people

• Thích Nhất Hạnh is the forty-second heir of the Linji school of Zen Buddhism in Vietnam. 

• The Order of Interbeing was founded within the Linji School of Dhyana Buddhism by Thích Nhất Hạnh 

• The Plum Village Tradition is a school of Buddhism founded by Thích Nhất Hạnh.

Thich Nhat Hanh  was born 11 October 1926 in Huế, Thừa Thiên, Annam, French Indochina and was the fifth of six children. He was given the name Nguyen Dinh Lang, which was later changed to Nguyen Xuan Bao.

His father was an official with the French administration and his mother was a homemaker.

Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet and teacher. He founded the Plum Village movement consisting of monastics in 9 monasteries and Sangha communities of practice worldwide. An important component of this tradition is the Order of Interbeing, which is a social network of monastics and lay people who have undertaken the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings.

At the age of sixteen, he entered Tu Hieu Temple, in Hue city, as a novice monk and was ordinated in 1949, assuming the Dharma name Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich is an honorary family name used by Vietnamese monks and nuns. To his followers he was known as Thay, or teacher.

In the early 1960s, he founded Youth for Social Services, a grass-roots relief organisation in what was then South Vietnam. It rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools, established medical centres and reunited families left homeless by the war.

He travelled to the United States to teach Comparative Religion at Princeton University and the following year went on to teach and research Buddhism at Columbia University. 

On May 1st, 1966 at Tu Hieu Temple, Thich Nhat Hanh received the ‘lamp transmission’ from Master Chan That, becoming a dharma teacher of the Lieu Quan Dharma Line in the 42nd generation of the Lam Te Dhyana school. In the same year, he established the Order of Interbeing, a new order based on the traditional Buddhist Bodhisattva precepts.

Later in 1966, he traveled once more to the U.S. and Europe to make the case for peace and to call for an end to hostilities in Vietnam. He took up residence in France when the South Vietnamese government denied him permission to return from abroad after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. He was unable to return to Vietnam until 2005. 

Nhất Hạnh began teaching mindfulness in the mid-1970s. He continued to teach, lecture and write on the art of mindfulness and ‘living peace’ and was a lecturer and researcher in Buddhism at the University of Sorbonne, Paris.

In 1975 he established the Sweet Potato community near Paris, and in 1982, moved to a much larger site in the south west of France, soon to be known as “Plum Village.”

He died at his residence in Từ Hiếu Temple, Vietnam on 22 January 2022, at age 95

His key teaching is that, through mindfulness, we can learn to live happily in the present moment—the only way to truly develop peace, both in one’s self and in the world.

We know very well that airplanes, guns and bombs cannot remove wrong perceptions. Only loving speech and compassionate listening can help people correct wrong perceptions. But our leaders are not trained in that discipline, and they only rely on the armed forces to remove terrorism.

Thich Nat Hanh

About Thich Nat Hanh HERE

About The Order of Interbeing HERE

History of the Order of Interbeing HERE

Practise of the Order of Interbeing HERE

About Plum Village HERE, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

Plum Village Mindfulness Practise HERE