Thích Nhất Hạnh

Born Nguyễn Xuân Bảo on 11 October 1926, he became a Thiền Buddhist monk and by the mid-1960s had co-founded the School of Youth for Social Services and created the Order of Interbeing. His opposition to the Vietnam War and refusal to take sides got him exiled from South Vietnam in 1966; a year later Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize. He coined the term "engaged Buddhism" in his book Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire and spent decades teaching that deep listening could dissolve conflict. In 1982 he founded the Plum Village Monastery in southwest France near Thénac, wh…