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The venerable Tick-Not-Hon's life was a startling paradoxical merger of extreme gentleness

with tangible power. This revered Zen monk, teacher, and poet died last week in his native

Vietnam at the age of 95. He was a great teacher of the wonderful practice of walking meditation.

He taught the art of being peace, a way of living to face suffering, fear, and violence inside and

beyond ourselves, and yet to become as he wrote, fresh, solid, and free. These were not lofty,

spiritual ideals for Tick-Not-Hon. He wrote his classic book, The Miracle of Mindfulness,

as a manual for young monks and nuns who were facing death every day during war in their country.

Tick-Not-Hon transmuted what he had experienced of chaos and bloodshed in his own life into an ability

to speak with equal measures, directness, and compassion to the many conflicts and bewilderments

of contemporary life. He led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Talks in 1969,

and Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. I met him in the early years

of this program around the edges of a multi-day lakeside retreat he was leading in Wisconsin.

For the first time in such a gathering, more than 50 people who worked in the criminal justice system

were present about half of them police officers. You'll hear one of them a bit later in this hour.

It is astonishing to re-experience the deep and juring relevance of this monk's teachings

for our world now.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on being. Tick-Not-Hon first came to the world's attention in the 1960s

during the war on his native Vietnam. He forsook monastic isolation to care for the victims of that war

and to work for reconciliation among all the warring parties. He called this engaged Buddhism.

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