How to Focus

The Mindfulness Essentials have appeared on the NPR Bestseller list, the Washington Post Bestseller list, the San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller list, the Boston Globe Bestseller list, the LA Times Bestseller List and the extended New York Times Bestseller List. “The monk who taught the world mindfulness.”—TIME “Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal inner peace and peace on earth.”—His Holiness the Dalai Lama“Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Thich Nhat Hanh was a world-renowned spiritual teacher and peace activist. Born in Vietnam in 1926, he became a Zen Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen. Over seven decades of teaching, he published more than 100 books, which have sold more than four million copies in the United States alone. Exiled from Vietnam in 1966 for promoting peace, his teachings on Buddhism as a path to social and political transformation are responsible for bringing the mindfulness movement to Western culture. He established the international Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism in France, now the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and the heart of a growing community of mindfulness practice centers around the world. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 95 at his root temple, Tu Hieu, in Hue, Vietnam.