Path Toward Peace: Cultivating Clarity, Compassion and Courage in Political Life

The 2011 Capps-Emerson Lecture featuring The Most Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh

USIP’s Religion and Peacemaking program, the Faith and Politics Institute, and The Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life were pleased to host Vietnamese Zen Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh for the Annual Walter Capps-Bill Emerson Memorial Lecture.

The Most Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the best known and most respected Zen Buddhist teachers in the world today. He is known for his courageous peace and human rights activism, for which Martin Luther King, Jr. nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. Living in Vietnam during the war, Nhat Hanh organized a youth-driven relief organization based on Buddhist principles of non-violence and compassion, and so helped give shape to the emerging Engaged Buddhism movement.

Throughout his life, Thich Nhat Hanh has continued to write and organize in support of global peace. His approach, grounded in Buddhism, has combined practical work to reduce global violence with spiritual practices to promote mindful living in the present, which is, according to Nhat Hanh, the foundation for creating peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh offered a lecture entitled "Path Toward Peace: Cultivating Clarity, Compassion and Courage in Political Life."

The Religion and Peacemaking Program at USIP conducts research, identifies best practices, and develops new peacebuilding tools for religious leaders and organizations in conflict zones.