Free The Novice by Thich Nhat Hanh Page A

it’s clear that Thich Nhat Hanh’s students were following in the footsteps of Quan Am Thi Kinh, never answering violence with violence, not even verbally, because they had such a beautiful teacher who taught them how to behave exactly as Thi Kinh did. In the forty-five years since then, many other sincere and groundbreaking initiatives Thay introduced to renew Buddhism have been savagely attacked; but he continually counseled us to answer with noble silence, understanding, and compassion for those who so seriously misunderstood him and us.
    We humans never seem to learn enough from our tragic past. We keep repeating the same mistakes, and we need Quan Am Thi Kinh manifestations everywhere helping us to learn to practice more patience, endurance, understanding, compassion, and inclusiveness and not to retaliate, even verbally, against those who mistreat us. In this new century and new millennium, the story of dangerous wrong perceptions and violence started up again for 379 monastics ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh who were living in Prajna (Bat Nha) Monastery in the Vietnamese highlands around Bao Loc, Lam Dong Province.
    After thirty-nine years of exile, in 2005 Thay had been invited back to his homeland, where he led a three-month tour of four provinces offering retreats and other events to help people learn how to cultivate mindfulness, understanding, and compassion in their daily lives. More than half of the Vietnamese population at the time had been born while Thay was exiled outside the country. The teachings he offered were so profound and relevant, they moved 125 young women and men to want to follow Thich Nhat Hanh by becoming monastics like him right away.
    The abbot of a temple in Lam Dong Province offered his property to Thay so it could be turned into a monastery for these inspired young people, and very shortly the Prajna Monastery was born. In the beginning this humble temple had a good Buddha Hall and plenty of land, but only a few tin-roof houses for people to live in. Donations from all around the world came in, and we quickly built six large residences to house the hundreds of young men and women aspiring to the monastic life as taught and lived by Thay. Even though the new buildings were large, our monks and nuns slept sixteen to a room. We also built a huge meditation hall to accommodate the thousands of other people who would come to hear Thay speak.
    The practice of these young people inspired others who also wished to live such a beautiful and happy simple life. By the end of 2006 there were 267 monastics residing and training at Prajna Monastery; in 2007 there were 357, and by August 2008 the number had increased to 379. They lived and served their community together joyfully, offering many humanitarian ser vices to poor and hungry children in the area. Projects included setting up homes for children in remote villages of the region and seeing that thousands of preschool-age children were cared for, educated, and given a simple meal while their parents worked all day long as manual laborers, mostly picking tea or coffee.
    Once again, the success of such a dynamic movement of talented and educated young people scared the regime. Most temples around Vietnam were lucky to ordain two or three monastics in a year. How could that old monk Thich Nhat Hanh have gotten up to several hundred monastic disciples in just three and a half years? (Besides the monks and nuns at Prajna, there were another 118 in Hue City at Thay’s home temple Tu Hieu; 116 at Plum Village in France, where Thay resides; 20 at Thay’s new European Institute of Applied Buddhism in Germany; and a few dozen at our U.S. monasteries in New York and California.) So, in 2008, authorities applied heavy pressure to the abbot of Prajna, who originally had invited and welcomed us in, now to turn against and expel us.
    In August 2008 a local police order was issued to the 379 monastics, asserting that they were illegal squatters