10/14/2025
“On this mission he did not carry anything with him except his courage, love, and compassion.”
🙌🏼
In his book 'At Home in the World,' Thich Nhat Hanh tells this story about mindfulness in a battle zone:
"In 1968 I went to the United States to call for cessation of the US bombing in Vietnam. In May of that year, the bombing of Saigon had become so fierce that the whole area around the campus of the School of Youth for Social Service had been destroyed. More than ten thousand refugees came to our campus, many of them wounded, and we had to take care of them. We were not at all equipped for this in terms of food, basic hygiene, or medical supplies, and it was very dangerous to travel outside the campus to get provisions. When we had used up our supply of bandages, the young women tore up their long dresses in order to make more bandages.
In this desperate situation, we had to evacuate the seriously wounded from our campus. But to do so, we had to cross the battle zone to bring them to the hospital. We decided to use the five-colored Buddhist flag to replace the Red Cross flag. The monks and nuns put on their sanghatis, their monastic ceremonial robes, and carried out the wounded. The Buddhist flag and the sanghati robes signaled that we were a peaceful group. Fortunately it worked, and we were able to evacuate the patients; otherwise, many would have died.
On the third day of the bombing, panic broke out in our over-crowded campus: there was a rumor that the anti-Communists were going to bomb the school because there were so many Communists among the refugees. When people heard this, many started to collect their belongings and leave, but the bombing was so heavy they were driven back. The Communists and the anti-Communists were fighting at the very edge of our campus. At that moment, Thay Thanh Van, a twenty-five-year-old monk and the school’s director, took a large megaphone and was about to announce that people should not leave when he suddenly asked himself, 'What if the bombing really does take place?' Thousands of people would die, and how could he, a young monk, bear such a responsibility? So he slowly put down the megaphone and did not make the announcement.
Thay Thanh Van realized that he needed to speak to both the warring parties. To do this, he had to crawl across the firing zone in order to avoid being shot by either side. First, he went to the anti-Communists and persuaded the commanding officer to instruct their planes not to bomb the campus filled with refugees. Then he went to the Communist guerrillas, who had set up antiaircraft guns right at the corner of our campus. He asked them not to shoot at enemy planes; otherwise the campus would be bombed in retaliation. Both sides were moved by his request and did as he asked. It was a miracle. On this mission he did not carry anything with him except his courage, love, and compassion.
In a situation like that, you have to be extremely mindful. Sometimes you have to react quickly while remaining calm. If you are angry or suspicious, you cannot do it. You have to be clear-minded. In the context of war, we grew deeper in our practice of nonviolence. Nonviolence is not a set of techniques that you can learn with your intellect. Nonviolent action naturally arises from the compassion, lucidity, and understanding you have within."
