“Something quite wonderful is happening here, Dorothy,” Austin said Knowles told her. “This is exactly the place where this sort of event should happen.”
Thich Nhat Hanh said he believes that those wishing to help others must first help themselves.
“As social activists, we have to take care of ourselves,” he said. “Do not water the negative seeds of consciousness within—water the positive seeds.”
Buddhist teachings rely on “mindfulness” as a means of finding energy for compassion, a central tenet of the religion.
“Often, we are not really alive because we are not present in the here and now,” Thich Nhat Hanh told the audience.
He emphasized that becoming mindful was a way to promote “insight,” “understanding” and “love.”
Thich Nhat Hanh first became known for his efforts to promote reconciliation in the Vietnam War.
In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam,” King wrote in a letter to the Nobel Institute. “His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
Thich Nhat Hanh has published over 100 books, including the best-seller Living Buddha, Living Christ, an exploration of parallels between the teachings of Buddhism and Christianity.
In 1969, Thich Nhat Hanh established the Unified Buddhist Church, which serves as an umbrella for monasteries and practice centers worldwide.
In 1982, he founded Plum Village, a practice center and monastery in southwest France. He resides there when he is not on tour.
Thich Nhat Hanh was invited to speak at Harvard at the request of the Harvard Buddhist Community, a student organization at the Harvard Divinity School.
Christopher T. Bell, co-chair of the Harvard Buddhist Community and a second-year graduate student at the Divinity School, approached Austin after hearing that Thich Nhat Hanh would be in the Boston area this week.
“I knew that the church was open to that kind of thing,” Bell said, noting that the Dalai Lama was planning to come Harvard this year.
Though Memorial Church has never previously held a Buddhist event of this magnitude, the church has hosted several other talks by practicing Buddhists, including a visit last year by Joseph Goldstein, co-founder of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., and a planned visit by prominent female Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodron, author of When Things Fall Apart.
Austin said she believes Memorial Church should have a role in promoting Buddhist-Christian dialogue.
“The message is that peace, love and compassion are central to the teachings of Buddha and of Christ, and people of both faiths are engaged in this kind of practice,” she said. “We turn to these teachings from deep within our monastic traditions to give us instruction, practice and a path to practice peace.”
—Staff writer J. Hale Russell can be reached at jrussell@fas.harvard.edu.