Mindfulness Practice Community of Toronto

Our Teacher Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh – Thay (teacher in Vietnamese) as his students call him – is a global spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist, renowned for his powerful teachings and bestselling writings on mindfulness and peace. A gentle, humble monk, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence” when nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

As a young bhikshu (monk) in the early 1950s he was actively engaged in the movement to renew Vietnamese Buddhism. When war came to Vietnam, monks and nuns were confronted with the question of whether to adhere to the contemplative life and stay meditating in the monasteries, or to help those around them suffering under the bombings and turmoil of war. Thay was one of those who chose to do both, and in doing so founded the Engaged Buddhism movement, coining the term in his book “Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire”.

In the early 1960s, he founded the School of Youth and Social Service, a grassroots relief organization of 10,000 volunteers based on the Buddhist principles of non-violence and compassionate action. He also traveled to the U.S. and Europe to make the case for peace and to call for an end to hostilities in Vietnam. As a result of this mission both North and South Vietnam denied him the right to return to Vietnam, and he began a long exile of 39 years.

Exiled from his native Vietnam he has been a pioneer in bringing Buddhism and mindfulness to the West, and establishing an engaged Buddhist community able to face the challenges of our world with equanimity and a deep commitment to peace-making, compassion, and understanding for ourselves and for our global community..

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.”
Under his spiritual leadership Plum Village has grown from a small rural farmstead to what is now the West’s largest and most active Buddhist monastery.

Plum Village welcomes people of all ages, backgrounds, and faiths, where together we can practices the way of peace in an atmosphere of loving-kindness and gratitude for the wonders all around us and within each of us.

Thousands of people have made a commitment to follow Thich Nhat Hanh’s modernized code of universal, global ethics in their daily life, known as “The Five Mindfulness Trainings.” At our retreats, practices such as walking meditation, sitting meditation, eating meditation, total relaxation, working meditation and stopping, smiling, and breathing mindfully, allow us to practice the precepts together and to build our capacity for loving-kindness, understanding and deep listening – skills we desperately need if we want to improve our relationship with ourselves with our loved ones, and with our world.

More recently, our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh founded Wake Up, a worldwide movement of thousands of young people training in these practices of mindful living, and he also launched an international Wake Up Schools program, training teachers to practice mindfulness and to teach mindfulness to young people and their teachers in schools in Europe, America and Asia.

Thay has given us so many opportunities to begin practicing the way of peace with each other, in our families, and in our communities, while always reminding us that there is no path to peace and loving-kindness in our world. Peace and loving-kindness is the path.