Exiled from Vietnam for his peace work during the war, Thich Nhat Hanh — or Thay, as students called him — brought a profoundly gentle form of Zen to the West. He coined “interbeing” to translate the interdependent arising of all things, and wrote over a hundred books in simple language that reached readers across every tradition and none.
His practice: walk slowly; breathe consciously; smile; know that this moment has everything. “The present moment,” he wrote, “is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments.”