The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology

In The World We Have peace activist and venerable Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh offers a dramatic vision of the future of our planet facing multiple crises.

Thich Nhat Hanh finds answers to the critical problems of our time in the Buddhist teaching of the impermanence. He demonstrates how this teaching can offer inner peace and help us use our collective wisdom and capability to restore the Earth's balance.

Mixing inspiring insights with practical strategies, Thich Nhat Hanh cites projects that the Plum Village monastic community has undertaken that can serve as models for any community. Both his "No Car Day," observed once a week, and the "Earth Peace Treaty Commitment Sheet" can positively change our impact on the Earth.

Above all, Thich Nhat Hanh shows how acceptance of the problems is that first critical step toward a deeper understanding of the best way to care for our Earth.

The World We Have includes Thich Nhat Hanh’s speech at UNESCO from October 2006 introducing his proposal for a global "No Car Day."

Foreword by Alan Weisman, author of Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future.

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.