Thich Nhat Hanh (1926 to 2022) was a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, poet and peace activist, a leading teacher of mindfulness in the West and a pioneer of “engaged Buddhism”, spiritual practice turned towards the suffering of the world. He coined the word “interbeing” for the interconnection of all things, and his Love Letter to the Earth (2012), listed among the further reading in the Therapeutic Shamanism books, asks us to stop seeing the Earth as mere “environment”. His teaching on mindfulness and on the aliveness of the Earth can be set beside Therapeutic Shamanism’s, which comes from a different, animist, tradition.
Who was Thich Nhat Hanh? #
A Zen monk whose life spanned war, exile and a worldwide community. He was born Nguyễn Xuân Bảo in Huế, in central Vietnam, in 1926, and was ordained at sixteen.1 During the Vietnam War he worked for peace and against the war, and in 1966 he was barred from returning home; his exile lasted thirty-nine years. Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. In 1982 he founded Plum Village, a monastery and practice centre in the Dordogne in southern France, which became the heart of a worldwide community, and he wrote more than 130 books, among them The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975). After a severe stroke in 2014 he could no longer speak. He returned to Vietnam in 2018 to live at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, where he died in January 2022, aged 95.2
What is engaged Buddhism? #
Buddhist practice that does not stay in the meditation hall but turns towards the suffering of the world, through nonviolence, social service and work for peace. Thich Nhat Hanh is widely seen as one of its pioneers. He founded a Buddhist order, the Order of Interbeing, in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, in the middle of the war, to bring mindfulness, nonviolence and service together.3 See Is spirituality separate from politics?
What is interbeing? #
A word he made up, from “inter-” and “to be”, for the interconnection of all things, in which nothing exists on its own, apart from everything else. He cites the Avatamsaka Sutra and the Huayan teacher Fazang as sources for the teaching, but the English word was his own. It also gave its name to the Buddhist order he founded, the Order of Interbeing.4
What does Love Letter to the Earth say? #
That the Earth is not a backdrop to our lives but something we are part of, and that she is alive. “The earth is not just the environment we live in,” he writes; we are made of her elements, and “We are the earth and we are always carrying her within us.” Seeing that connection, we can see that the Earth is truly alive, and fall completely in love with her.5 The book appears in the bibliographies of The Shamanic Journey, Rewilding Yourself and Finding Your Deep Soul.6
How does his teaching connect with Therapeutic Shamanism? #
In at least three places, each seen from its own side. The first is mindfulness. In Therapeutic Shamanism anything that helps cultivate the Aware SelfAware Self. The Witness: not a part of the self but a capacity for awareness, cultivated by hollowing-out, that can watch the flow of thoughts without being caught in them. More about this helps with hollowing-outHollowing-out. The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer, the getting out of the way that lets a journey happen, and that includes any mindfulness-based meditation; even a few minutes a day helps shamanic work.7 See What is hollowing-out? and How is journeying different from meditation, and can the two work together?
The second is separation. Thich Nhat Hanh asks us to stop treating the Earth as something outside ourselves. Separation is at the centre of Therapeutic Shamanism’s account too. Modern people have fallen almost entirely into an experience of life as separateness, where hunter-gatherers seem to have lived a sense of self and a sense of interconnectedness side by side.8
The third is the Earth herself. For people who live shamanically, everything is connected and part of Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this, and everything is alive and sacred; the Earth is indeed our Mother.9 In animism everything is alive and conscious, and part of one big family of beings.10 See What are the Sacred Masculine and Sacred Feminine, Father Sky and Mother Earth?
Was Thich Nhat Hanh an animist? #
No. He was a Zen Buddhist monk, and his teaching stands within Buddhism; where it overlaps with animism, as in seeing the Earth as truly alive, that is a meeting of ideas, not a sign that he belonged to the animist tradition. The differences are real too. Therapeutic Shamanism is a shamanic practice within animism, built on journeying to the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer and the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer and on relationships with the other-than-human Peoples as individual beings, which is not the path of Buddhist meditation. See What is the relationship between animism and shamanism? and Who is Joan Halifax?
