Sooner than Martin Luther King Jr. was once killed, he requested a number of of his pals to proceed his lifestyles’s paintings construction what he known as “beloved community.” Some of the folks he invited was once the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, poet and mindfulness instructor Thich Nhat Hanh.
My new ebook, “On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World,” is encouraged by way of King and Hanh’s friendship. Those two males bonded over the shared perception that how we display up for every different issues, as does how we suggest for social trade. In his sermon “Loving Your Enemies” King introduced, “Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Hanh taught: There’s no option to peace, peace is the way in which.“
On the middle of loved group is correct democracy. To be brokers of trade who don’t upload to the struggling of the arena, folks will have to discover ways to develop into extra loving and non violent folks.
‘The real enemies of man’
Hanh was once born in 1926 in central Vietnam. As a tender Buddhist monk residing in a country faced by way of colonialism, struggle and warfare, he evolved the doctrine of ”engaged Buddhism,“ premised at the trust that running to alleviate struggling on the planet is enlightenment.
Throughout the mid-Nineteen Sixties, amid the Vietnam Battle – Vietnamese name it the “American Battle” – Hanh based the College of Formative years for Social Products and services to apply engaged Buddhism and assist the ones suffering from the bombs dropping rain on their properties.
On June 1, 1965, Hanh wrote a letter to King to boost consciousness of the struggling of the Vietnamese folks. He additionally was hoping to right kind some commonplace misconceptions about Buddhism.
His overarching level was once that Buddhists in Vietnam didn’t hate American citizens. In reality, they didn’t hate any individual. Their function was once merely to deliver an finish to warfare – and an finish to the delusions that ended in warfare. “Their enemies are not man. They are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred and discrimination which lie within the heart of man,” he wrote. “These are the real enemies of man – not man himself.”
Hanh refused to take a facet all over the warfare. He stood for peace. His peace activism earned him a 39-year banishment from his hometown.
Proceeding King’s dream
Marc Andrus, creator of the 2021 ebook “Brothers in the Beloved Community,” notes that King and Hanh met in particular person two times: as soon as in Chicago, on Would possibly 31, 1966, and a 2d time in Would possibly 1967, on the Global Council of Church buildings Peace on Earth Convention in Geneva, Switzerland. In Geneva, King shared his figuring out of the loved group with Hanh, inviting him to take part in its building.
In between those two conferences, King nominated Hanh for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize, writing in his nomination letter, “I know Thich Nhat Hanh, and am privileged to call him my friend.” No award was once for the reason that 12 months, on the other hand, possibly to protest King’s option to make his nomination letter public. Nominations have been normally non-public, however King used his to name out the injustice of the Vietnam Battle.
Construction ‘beloved community’
Within the years after King’s homicide, a part of Hanh’s lifestyles paintings was once dedicated to pleasing King’s dream and construction the “beloved community.”
Liked group isn’t an abstraction. This can be a loose-knit world group composed of a large number of smaller, native communities dedicated to training peace, nonviolence, freedom, love and justice. Rising from King’s activism and Hanh’s engaged Buddhism, those communities also are dedicated to social trade.
In 1982, Hanh and his pupil Sister Chan Khong established the Plum Village monastery in southern France. Within the years since, the Plum Village group has based dozens of monasteries world wide, together with 3 in the USA: Blue Cliff in upstate New York, Deer Park out of doors San Diego, and Magnolia Grove in Mississippi.
Hanh’s lay scholars have established 1000’s of smaller Plum Village sanghas – communities – in North The us and Europe. Those monasteries and sanghas function apply facilities the place folks discover ways to embrace the beliefs of loved group of their mindfulness apply and day by day lives.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s gravesite out of doors Hue, Vietnam.
Jeremy Engels, CC BY
For the reason that time of the Buddha, folks dedicated to the trail of mindfulness have agreed to are living by way of numerous “precepts.” Those precepts, normally numbering 5, supply an ethical basis for motion. Masses of 1000’s of folks attending Plum Village retreats have agreed to are living by way of the up to date, secular model of the precepts that Hanh and his group wrote known as the 5 Mindfulness Trainings. Those come with: reverence for lifestyles, true happiness, real love, loving speech and deep listening, and nourishment and therapeutic.
The 5 Mindfulness Trainings are written to supply folks with a sensible trail to construction a shared lifestyles based totally in love, compassion, pleasure and peace: the kind of lifestyles that each King and Hanh envisioned for all.
As Hanh instructed the worldwide Plum Village group in a 2020 letter titled Mountain climbing In combination the Hill of the Century: “We have continued that aspiration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and every day, our practice is to generate brotherhood and sisterhood, to cultivate joy and the capacity to help people. This is a concrete way to realize and continue that dream.”
On MLK Day, their friendship and writings are a reminder that democracy rests at the talent of electorate to be provide for every different, to acknowledge their interconnectedness, to embrace loving kindness and to disagree with out resorting to violence.
