In my previous article, I shared how I first encountered the unexpected and deeply human story of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s first love while reading his book Cultivating the Mind of Love. At the age of 24, he was already a monk when he met a 20-year-old nun at the Temple of Complete Awakening in the highlands of Vietnam. He fell in love with her at first sight—an experience so sudden and intense that he struggled to understand what his feelings meant.
As they spent time together, they discovered not only a deep affection for one another but also that they shared the same ideals of renewing Buddhism in Vietnam. Yet they were caught between love and monastic aspiration. Thích Nhất Hạnh described their experience as being swept away by a storm of love.
Despite the intensity of their feelings, his practice seemed to protect them. They eventually separated, with Thích Nhất Hạnh encouraging the nun to continue her studies in Hanoi. Their farewell was deeply painful, and the brief embrace they shared became their first and last physical contact.
After parting, they exchanged letters in which Thích Nhất Hạnh expressed his love and support. When the nun returned to Hue in 1954, he continued to write to her, but received no response.
In 1956, when he traveled to Hue and expected to meet her, he discovered that she had never received his letters and did not even know that he was there.
At that point, the story seemed to end with unanswered questions. Yet Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote that “there is no difference between this love story and the sutras of the Buddha.” In this article, we will look more closely at what he meant.
Three stories before his first love
To help us understand this love story, Thích Nhất Hạnh shared three stories from before he met the nun.
The first took place when he was nine years old. A magazine used an image of the Buddha sitting peacefully on the grass for its cover. When he saw it, he immediately knew that he wanted to be peaceful and happy like the Buddha.
The second took place when he was 11 years old. During a conversation about their future, his brother said that he wanted to become a monk. Hearing this, Thích Nhất Hạnh realized that he, too, was drawn to the monastic life, partly because of the image of the Buddha he had seen on the magazine cover.
The third took place about six months later, when his class went on a field trip to a mountain where a hermit was said to live. He had heard that a hermit was someone who devoted his life to becoming peaceful and happy like a Buddha, so he was eager to meet him.
However, the hermit was not there when they arrived. He therefore continued up the mountain alone while the others stopped for lunch. Instead, he discovered a beautiful well and drank its clear, sparkling water. The experience left him feeling completely fulfilled, as if he had encountered the hermit himself.
Four years after his brother became a monk, he followed the same path, realizing the aspiration he had held since childhood.
These three stories reveal that his monastic aspiration was quietly nurtured from childhood through his early encounter with the image of the Buddha, his brother’s decision to become a monk, and his experience at the well. They were all rooted in his desire to be peaceful and happy like the Buddha.
The roots of his first love
To see how these stories connect to Thích Nhất Hạnh’s first love, let us look more closely at what drew him to the nun. He described her this way:
There was a great peace in her, the fruit of sincere practice, which was not present in others. She had been practicing in her nunnery in Hue, and she appeared as peaceful as the Buddha sitting on the grass.
This directly echoes his encounter with the Buddha image on the magazine cover at the age of nine. He described her presence with striking simplicity: “Her behavior as a nun was perfect—the way she moved, the way she looked, the way she spoke.” Her way of being resonated deeply with his ideal of monastic life.
He even compared her to Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion: “She looked like Quan Yin—calm, compassionate, and beautiful.” He also saw in her the very path he wished to walk: “She represented everything I loved—my ideal of compassion, loving kindness, bringing Buddhism into society, and realizing peace and reconciliation.”
What drew him to the nun, then, was how she embodied the ideals that had been taking shape in him since childhood.
The “non-self” nature of his first love
At this point, we can see that those earlier experiences shaped what Thích Nhất Hạnh saw in the nun. The fact that she was a nun was essential to both their meeting and his love for her. Without it, this love story would not have happened. As he explained:
If I had not seen the image of the Buddha on the magazine, our meeting would not have been possible. If she had not been a nun, I would not have loved her. . . . My visit to the hermit, tasting the pure water of his well, was also part of our first meeting. The moment I saw her, I recognized in her everything I cherished.
In other words, his first love did not happen suddenly; it can be traced back to everything that had come before. These included the Buddha image, his brother becoming a monk, his experience of drinking from the well, and the fact that she was a nun. All these were part of the nun.
This is Thích Nhất Hạnh’s teaching of interbeing, which states that the “self” is made of non-self elements. (For more on this teaching, see my previous article, “Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Teaching of Interbeing.”) He further explained:
If the drawing had not been there, if the well had not been there, if my brother had not become a monk, how could I have seen my first love? She is made of the “non-she” elements that came from the stream of my life, from even before I was born.
His first love, therefore, was not separate from the many people, experiences, and conditions that had shaped his life. These “non-she” elements came together the moment he saw in her what he had long cherished.
First love is not really the first
Thích Nhất Hạnh fell in love with the nun at first sight. However, if the many “non-she” elements that came before were necessary for this love to happen, then their first meeting was not really their first. As Thích Nhất Hạnh said, “When I met her, it was not exactly the first time we had met. Otherwise, how could it have happened so easily?”
He thus questioned the very idea of a “first” love:
The expression “first love” is misleading, so I went “upstream” to tell you other stories. . . . My ancestors had already met her. My “first” love has always been there. She has no beginning.
By going “upstream,” he was looking beyond the moment he met the nun to the many conditions that had come before. He also said that he himself was “made only of ‘non-me’ elements—the hermit, the Buddha, my mother, my brother, and her.”
These “non-me” and “non-she” elements had been meeting long before he saw her. His love did not begin at their first meeting; it was a continuation of all the conditions that had shaped who they were.
The first love story as a Dharma teaching
With the insight of interbeing and non-self, Thích Nhất Hạnh showed that this is not just a love story between a monk and a nun, but a teaching about how love arises from countless conditions long before two people meet—and how seeing this can be transformative. He recalled:
She has no beginning. The moment I understood that, she became transformed into something much more powerful. That seed of deep love is in every one of us.
That is why he wrote:
There is no difference between this love story and the sutras of the Buddha. Hearing the love story can help you understand the Dharma, and hearing the Dharma can help you understand the love story.
In the next article, we will explore other aspects of this love story and how they can deepen our understanding of the Dharma.
References
Thích Nhất Hạnh. 2008. Cultivating the Mind of Love. Berkeley, California: Parallax Press.
Related features from BDG
Thích Nhất Hạnh’s First Love Story, Part 1
Thích Nhất Hạnh’s First Love Story, Part 3
