L.M.

“Creamy fog over the lights” by | Adam Ali

out of the blue

New York City places street sign honoring influential Buddhist monk, Thích Nhất Hạnh

NEW YORK (RNS) — The street co-naming honors the life of the Zen master who once lived and studied on the same block of West 109th Street.

Dozens of Buddhist monastics and lay believers huddled together on a busy Upper West Side street corner on a cold, rainy day to bear witness to a historic new street sign placed in their spiritual leader’s honor Friday (April 11). 

Thích Nhất Hạnh Way, located at the corner of Broadway and West 109th streets, was symbolically named in honor of the influential Vietnamese Buddhist monk, who died at age 95 in 2022.

The Zen master, considered the father of mindfulness, lived on the same block in the early 1960s, when he was studying comparative religion and teaching Buddhism at nearby Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University.

Hạnh was exiled from his home country for his opposition to the Vietnam War and his refusal to take a side. In 1967, after meeting with the peace activist, Martin Luther King Jr. nominated Hạnh for a Nobel Peace Prize. Hạnh also published books, meditations and poems targeted toward people of all ages and backgrounds…