Talk:Thích Nhất Hạnh

Names for the subject

The article has two areas that cover the various names the subject was known as throughout his lifetime. There are a lot of names, more than I have encountered in any other Wikipedia biography. The first area is a paragraph in the Early life section, and the second area is under an entirely separate heading “Names applied to him”. It would improve readability to combine these sections under a single heading by moving the paragraph out of early life. Cedar777 (talk) 03:34, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Cedar777, agreed. I'd place the name section right after Early life. -SusanLesch (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

The sections were combined but I’ll add, this one remains quite complicated. NYT, WaPo, and the book by Taylor list one birth name whereas recent coverage from AP News still lists another. I put a hidden note for editors in the article about this but perhaps it is necessary to list both of the birth names in early life . . . ? It’s a mystery to me how one individual can have two different birth names reported by news agencies. Kind Regards, Cedar777 (talk) 15:54, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Cedar777 SusanLesch Since I am partly responsible for this issue of names, let me explain. I was given an early draft of the Thich Nhat Hanh biography that is currently on the Plum Village web site. In this draft, but not in the current version on the web site, the document states:

Thích Nhất Hạnh (pronounced Tik - N'yat - Haan), is a religious name (or “Dharma title”) that our teacher has gone by since his early twenties, and the name by which he is known worldwide to millions as a writer, teacher, poet, and peace activist. It is not his only name. As a boy, he received a formal family name (Nguyễn Đình Lang) to register for school, but was known by his nickname (Bé Em). When he first entered the temple he received a spiritual name as an aspirant for the monkhood (Điệu Sung); when he received the Five Precepts and formally became a lay Buddhist he received a Lineage name (Trừng Quang); and when he ordained as a monk he received a Dharma name (Phùng Xuân). When he later needed to register himself legally, he did so with the name Nguyễn Xuân Bảo. He took a new Dharma title (Nhất Hạnh) when he moved to Saigon from Hue in 1949. In the great political turbulence and upheaval of Vietnam in the 1950s and '60s, he used Nhất Hạnh and over a dozen other pen names for his articles and books. For simplicity and ease of reading, this biography refers to Thích Nhất Hạnh simply as Thầy. It is the informal Vietnamese word for “teacher” and the name by which he is known to his students. Vellino (talk) 17:09, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

@Vellino The part of the article: "In this Vietnamese name, the surname is Thích. In accordance with Vietnamese custom, this person should be referred to by the given name, Nhất Hạnh." is wrong and should either be deleted or corrected. "Thích" is the title for Monks in Vietnamese, not his surname. "Nhát Hạnh" is not his given name, as you outlined in your answer. 2A02:2454:991C:9300:58CD:CEF1:EFED:9D18 (talk) 21:25, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

References

Largest Monastic Order

I'm intrigued by this statement from the introduction - "He was the founder of the largest monastic order in the West." Does this mean the largest monastic order of any religion or the largest Buddhist order? What exactly does "the West" refer to and would that exclude the monks of his order who are located in East Asia? I think clarification & a citation would be helpful here. Alexandriensis (talk) 22:17, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Certainly relevant questions you have raised, Alexandriensis. Neither of the cited sources mentioned anything along those lines (Oprah's intro/interview nor the Halifax source). The last paragraph of the lede had a number of problems. I made an effort to resolve some of the matters and have the lede more accuratly reflect the RS content in the body. So many sources mention the MLK Nobel Prize nomination that it was better suited to the lede than the passing mention of veganism w/ only one source. There may be discussion of deep ecology waranting the wiki link but it has also been removed until there is better sourcing identified in the article. There is still a claim in the body (at the end of the Plum Village section) along the lines of the problematic statement that you observed: Plum Village is the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and America, with over 200 monastics and over 10,000 visitors a year.[citation needed] There must be some mention of this outside of Plum Village itself. It needs at least a primary source, better yet a secondary source. Cedar777 (talk) 23:43, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

It means "from among the *Buddhist* monastic orders that are not Asian, this one is the largest" - clearly there are non-Buddhist monastic orders that are larger, e.g. the Trappist order that has 3000+ monastics. The Thich Nhat Hahn Foundation 2019 Annual Report states that there are 576 monks and nuns in this order.

This is also documented in the Plum Village Tradition.

"The West" means "where the main monastery[ies] are located not-in-Asia". In the case of the Plum Village Tradition, from among the 10 world-wide monasteries in the Plum Village tradition, the TNH Foundation distributes its support \at the roughly the same rate per monastic across monasteries. Plum Village (France) receives 56%, Deer Park (USA, CA) 20%, Blue Cliff (USA, NY) 12%, Magnolia Grove (USA, MS) 10%. The only monastery (Thai Plum Village) listed in this annual report that is not in either Europe, the USA or Australia receives less than 1% of these revenues.

So "the West" means that the "root" monastery (in this case Plum Village) is in the west and most of the monastics in all the other monasteries are also located in the west. You can't start counting nationalities of monastics, though. I know one monastic that has a African American father (vietnam vet) and a vietnamese mother, and is a dual citizen. Others are Vietnamese Boat people who were naturalized American and many more are European and American.

The only rival Buddhist monastic order in terms of size are the western disciples of the Thai monk Ajahn Chah. The Thai Forest Tradition in the west has monasteries in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Counting the monastics in that order is complicated by the fact that, until very recently, they didn't (strictly speaking) have an order of nuns. Women were ordained in that tradition but they were not Bikhunis (ordained with equivalent precepts).

So in the Thai Forest Tradition, there are thousands of monastics but most of them are located in and practice in Thailand. A small fraction of them are located in the west. Amaravati Buddhist Monastery is the largest of these western monasteries and has about 50 resident monastics. Plum Village has about 300.

Vellino (talk) 04:06, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Vellino, while the annual report, a primary source, is interesting and worth reviewing, there is also this secondary source: Handbook of Ethical Foundations of Mindfulness(edited by Steven Stanley, Ronald E. Purser, Nirbhay N. Singh) which also mentions a similar claim that it makes clear to attribute to the Plum Village website. Cedar777 (talk) 08:46, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

References

Evalutation of Article - Feedback

After conducting a brief evaluation on this article titled "Thích Nhât Hanh" I have concluded that this information provided is up to date, preceded with an extensive list of references. Although I have concluded that some articles referenced are moderately biased, there are plenty of references that seemingly come from a reliable source. As for the layout and content of this Wikipage, it is well written with a common layout that most biographies have which start with an "early life" section while ending with "death". The content is also detailed and includes a multitude of internal Wikilinks to further support the given information. To my knowledge, all referenced main external links are fully functional except the following: (The following external links result in a "404 error not found" or access denied indicating the webpage has been removed from the databases server. The "archived" external link for the following are accessible.)

Ben, Stocking (22 September 2006). "Tensions rise as police question monk's followers"

"Nomination Process"

Knibbe, Guido (2020). "Meeting Life in Plum Village – Engaging With Precarity and Progress in a Meditation Center"

Duerr, Maia (26 March 2010). "An Introduction to Engaged Buddhism".

Many users have also left suggestions and edits that has contributed to the version history, making it an unbiased Wikipage with purely factual evidence. I would suggest an edit be to made to remove the external links from the Wikipage or be replaced with a existing & functional website. Pattycakekwan888 (talk) 05:06, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The only pron I've ever heard in US English is /ˈtɪk ˈnɑːt ˈhɑːn/ TIK NAHT HAHN, which follows the pattern of "foreign A" = /ɑː/ and helps to avoid æ-tensing in the last word. Does anyone use /ˈtɪk ˈnjʌt ˈhʌn/ TIK NYUT HUN in English? Sol505000 (talk) 18:53, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

@Sol505000 Just because English speaking people don't know how to pronounce the Vietnamese name, that wrong pronunciation shouldn't be further promoted on Wikipedia. Please inform them how to pronounce the name correctly: Tik Nyut Hang for English speakers. There is no Hun, it's just wrong.

No one would come up with the idea to give the American and the foreign pronunciation for an American person in a foreign Wikipedia article. 2A02:2454:991C:9300:58CD:CEF1:EFED:9D18 (talk) 21:20, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I would recommend to add an audio recording of a native speaker, so everyone can easily understand and learn how to pronounce the name correctly. 2A02:2454:991C:9300:58CD:CEF1:EFED:9D18 (talk) 21:28, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

We have both the English and the Vietnamese IPA's in the article. TIK NAHT HAHN seems to be an established pronunciation. Per MOS:DUALPRON, When a foreign name has a set English pronunciation (or pronunciations), include both the English and foreign-language pronunciations; the English transcription must always be first. If the native name is different from the English name, the native transcription must appear after the native name. This is no different from the cited example of English /nɪˈkiːtə ˈkrʊʃtʃɛf/ as compared to the original Russian pronunciation [nʲɪˈkʲitə xrʊˈɕːɵf], very far away from how the English-speaking natives say it (particularly the surname). As far as I'm aware, nobody says khruu-SHOF, nevermind khruush-SHOF.

Regarding the last word, whether you say HAHN, HUN, HAHNG, HUNG or HINE it's still going to be wrong. The Vietnamese pronunciation has [aj] followed by [ŋ], a non-starter for English speakers. You can't have a final /aɪŋ/ in English. And, assuming that Thich Nhat Hanh spoke the Hue dialect, his own pronunciation would be different still (very roughly TUUT NYUK HENG), judging by the IPA - and that's all ignoring the tones which are essential in Vietnamese.

The native recording is there, but it's not a Hue recording. Sol505000 (talk) 01:00, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

@Sol505000 Unfortunately, you don't know Vietnamese, but still, you try to teach others about it. Vietnamese has a standard pronunciation which is the Hà Nội accent. It doesn't matter where Thích Nhát Hạnh came from or what dialect he used. There's only one correct Vietnamese pronunciation of his name. It's not correct and confusing for readers to find a Vietnamese pronunciation and a dialect in this article, since the article is about a person and not about Vietnamese dialects.

As an example: In an article about a South German person, would you give the standard German pronunciation of their name and the South German pronunciation, claiming that would be the correct pronunciation, because the person used that dialect?

It makes no sense to claim that English speakers cannot pronounce the name. I am native in Vietnamese and taught many people easily how to pronounce it. In fact his name only includes sounds that are easy for English speakers. There are sounds in other Vietnamese names that are indeed very difficult to learn at first. But still, any language in the world can be learned by any person who is able to speak. So please don't make such claims about words that obviously you don't know yourself.

Unfortunately, in my Wikipedia app I could not open the recording. That's why I proposed to add it. 2A00:20:B288:A8BC:2692:CCC1:CF55:944F (talk) 14:14, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

See [1] and tell me whether any of those speakers use a pronunciation different from /ˈtɪk ˈnɑːt ˈhɑːn/. IPA transcriptions are supposed to be descriptive (describing actual usage), not prescriptive (describing pronunciations perceived as 'correct' by e.g. native speakers of other languages). Sol505000 (talk) 15:25, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

@Sol505000 Some people are open to learn from others and improve their knowledge. Others just have fixed opinions and like to tell others what is right and wrong.

This discussion was about the pronunciation of the name of a certain person, but any knowledge I offered you was only dismissed or ignored.

Sorry, to waste my time on you. 2A02:2454:991C:9300:58CD:CEF1:EFED:9D18 (talk) 16:14, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Judging by how you keep ignoring MOS:DUALPRON (When a foreign name has a set English pronunciation (or pronunciations), include both the English and foreign-language pronunciations; the English transcription must always be first. If the native name is different from the English name, the native transcription must appear after the native name.), the one not open to learn seems to be you. Sol505000 (talk) 17:04, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

A-class reassessment here

The WP:BIO's A-class review page is defunct. I am starting a reassessment due to the lack of citations and such. 48JCL 12:23, 30 June 2024 (UTC)