The conference at Hanoi's proud new National Convention Center included formal workshops on a variety of issues addressed by Nhat Hanh and his monastic representatives. But because the world continues to suffer from "the scourge of war," and perhaps because the conference was for the first time in Vietnam, the issues of war, conflict and healing were foremost.

In his opening address, Bikkhu Bohdi, a Pali sutras authority from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, made the connection between world peace and Buddhism, saying, "No doubt meditation and moral principles contribute to peace, since war begins in the minds of men." Or, as Nhat Hanh put it in his keynote address, "The roots of war and conflict are in us!"

He proposed "the idea of engagement," he told us, in his first published article. in 1954. (Engaged Buddhism, with its mindfulness training and emphasis on precepts, is a worldly practice, not a philosophy.) It was, as he put it, "a time of great confusion" in Vietnam. (The French colonialists, defeated at Dien Bien Phu, were exiting and the Americans, covert sponsors of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime, were entering.) As war formed in the minds of McNamara, Rusk, Bundy, the joint chiefs, the Kremlin, Mao, and others, the Vietnam Buddhists countered, in so many words: Leave Vietnam alone! more>>