Thich Nhat Hanh was a firm believer in Ahimsa which literally means nonviolence. Nhat Hanh preferred to call it harmlessness in order to extend its meaning beyond nonviolent action to nonviolent words and sentiments. He acknowledges the fact that no one including himself can be completely nonviolent; in order for a human being to live he must end some life in order to survive. He did however think that we must try to be as nonviolent as possible. In order to achieve this he believed that we must consciously work on our state of being so that we will be most inclined to act nonviolently. He said that the key to this was love. Only by removing all of our hatred for people who harm us will we be able to help them and in turn help ourselves. Gandhi had almost exactly the same view on this subject. He wrote, "Ahimsa is not the crude thing it has been made out to appear. Not to hurt any living thing is no doubt a part of Ahimsa. But it is its least expression. The principle of himsa is hurt by every evil thought, by undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill to anybody."

Nhat Hanh said that we must never define people as enemies. He said, "When we look deep into our anger, we see that the person we call our enemy is also suffering. As soon as we see that we have the capacity of accepting and having compassion for him... When we are able to love our enemy, he or she is no longer our enemy. The idea of `enemy' vanishes and is replaced by the notion of someone suffering a great deal who needs our compassion." Gandhi also believed that we must treat people who we disagree with with love. If we were to harbor any resentment towards them we would be acting in violation to the principles of ahimsa and it would only brew more hatred and violence. This corresponds to a view central to both Gandhi and Nhat Hanh that means and ends are one in the same. Nhat Hanh said, "If we work for peace out of anger we will never succeed. Peace is not an end, it can never come about through non-peaceful means."

Nhat Hanh and Gandhi both believed that love was a much more effective way of achieving immediate results than most people realize. They were conscious of the fact that if a person approaches someone who needs to change with love that they will be much more likely to listen to their proposal for change than if they approach them out of anger, condemning them for what they have done or left undone. Nhat Hanh wrote, "We know how to write strong letters of protest, but we must also learn to write love letters to our President and Representatives, demonstrating the kind of understanding and using the kind language they will appreciate. If we don't, our letters may end up in the trash and help no one. To love is to understand."

This brings us to another critical point of Nhat Hanh's belief that in order to prevent violence we must make an extreme effort to understand where our opponents are coming from. He believed that only violence could come about out of misunderstanding. In order to do this he stresses the importance of being a good listener. We need to hear what the people are actually saying and not just hear what we want to hear. On top of this we must be constantly thinking and trying to achieve the highest level of understanding possible because when this is done it will minimize the amount of misunderstanding and violence.

Nhat Hanh believed that part of not condemning people for their violent actions is to realize that we are partly to blame. He said, "If we look deeply we will observe that the roots of war are in the unmindful ways we have been living. We have not sown enough seeds of peace and understanding in ourselves and others, therefore we are co-responsible." This goes back to the point he made about working on ones state of being first and then helping others. When conflict arises there is always going to be some form of violence involved. What we must do is make a consistent, conscious effort to prevent conflict from arising in the first place.

Both Gandhi and Nhat Hanh believed that self-suffering was an important part of nonviolent action. They both acknowledged that love was not claiming, but giving; giving involves suffering. Gandhi said, "Love never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents, never revenges itself."

By willfully inflicting suffering on ones self, one can gain the sympathy of his oppressor there by causing him to take more seriously what the suffering person is trying to convey. Gandhi used this method when he was denied a spinning wheel in his jail cell. He said he would not eat until he was allowed to spin. The authorities realizing that spinning was so important to Gandhi that he would resort to doing this sympathized with him and allowed him to spin. In Vietnam, people took this to a whole new level. Many Buddhist monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen sacrificed themselves for peace by burning themselves to death. This action was not suicide as many Westerners would call it; it was intended only to call the worlds attention to the suffering that these people were enduring. They did not kill themselves out of despair or lack of will to live, but that their action may win the hearts of the oppressors so that their people would have to suffer no more.

Nhat Hanh said that nonviolent action techniques are not something that one can write universal manual for. He said, "If you are alert and creative, you will know what to do and what not to do. The basic requisite is that you have the essence, the substance of nonviolence and compassion in yourself. Then everything you do will be in the direction of nonviolence." Many Vietnamese students shaved their heads and refused to fight in the war in protest of the war. Many of them were imprisoned and some were killed. The students issued the following statement, "Now, in the presence of our dear friends who's bodies are lying here, we solemnly proclaim that we cannot consider you who killed them to be our enemies. Our arms are open wide; we are ready to embrace your ideas and advice to help us continue our nonviolent ways of working for the people of Vietnam."

Nhat Hanh gives a vivid illustration of how much more devastating war is than we realize. He said that in the Gulf War the Americans were no better than Saddam Hussein because they resorted to the same means, violence, that Hussein did. He points out that beyond the tragedy of 100,000 Iraqi deaths and a couple of hundred American deaths there are the victims of every soldier trained to fight in that war. He said, "Visualize 500,000 allied soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia, waiting for the order to invade Iraq, jumping and screaming as they plunge their bayonets into sand bags that represent Iraqi soldiers. You cannot plunge a bayonet into a person without first transforming yourself into a beast. On the other side, one million Iraqi soldiers were practicing the same. One and a half million soldiers were practicing violence, hatred, and fear, and the American public supported them to do so."Gandhi also violence only brews more violence. In the case of the Gulf War we have created a million and a half violent people. Gandhi would agree that this was a great tragedy.

As we have seen there are a great number of similarities between Thich Nhat Hanh and Gandhi. Their beliefs in non violence and love are almost one in the same. They both worked to end the suffering of their native people and in doing so tried to help the world. Most of all they have both left us with material to educate us so that we may not make the same mistakes they made and witnessed. It would be wise for people all over the world to study the works of these two men so that the seeds of love may be planted and grow vigorously on the earth so that we may all live in a better place.