When Fear Looms, Be Still and Know
Letter From Our Executive Director
July 2025
With all of the conflict and turmoil of the present moment, I often find myself wishing Thay were still physically present so he could offer us his deep wisdom, spiritual leadership, and inner strength.
2024 Annual Highlights
How I long to sit again in the meditation hall and see my teacher look out at everyone with his gentle smile and calm demeanor, to feel my inner peace arise as I watch the slow and mindful way he walks and speaks. For decades after my first visit to Plum Village France as a teenager, Thay’s gentle voice helped me to better understand how to embrace and transform my suffering.
While Thay is gone in body, war, political upheaval, and other forms of great uncertainty remain very much with us today. It can be easy under these circumstances to lose confidence and hope. But the truth is that Thay is still very much with us, within each of us who has ever benefited from his teachings. And we can turn to him any time for help and support.
In the Plum Village tradition of Buddhism, at the conclusion of the two-year mourning period (known as Đại Tường in Vietnamese), a great teacher is honored as an ancestor. The Ceremony of Transformation to Ancestor, held earlier this year by his monastics, recognized Thay as the fifth patriarch of Từ Hiếu Temple–his root temple in Vietnam–and the founder of the Plum Village Sangha.
“Everything inside and around us wants to reflect itself in us,” Thay writes in The Heart of Understanding. “We don’t have to go anywhere to obtain the truth. We only need to be still and things will reveal themselves in the still water of our heart.”
Or as one of Thay’s calligraphies says: “Be Still and Know.”
Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation Executive Director Denise Nguyen
I hope that as you read our annual sharing about the many Dharma fruits your gifts to the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation make possible, you are finding ways to slow down, be still, and draw peace and courage from this beautiful tradition begun by our dear teacher.
In deep gratitude,
Denise Nguyen
Executive Director
The Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation
