The Novice: A remarkable story of love and truth - Softcover

"One of our most treasured spiritual teachers tells a story that will touch your heart. So beautiful." (Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love)

"Thich Nhat Hanh has given us a luminous book. The Novice is both instructive and haunting. Its heroine holds a lantern for all seekers." (Julia Cameron, author of The Artist's Way)

"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." (Martin Luther King, Jr., in nominating Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize)

"Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal, inner peace and peace on earth." (His Holiness the Dalai Lama)

"Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha." (Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)

A devoted student and diligent worker at the Dharma Cloud Temple monastery, Kinh Tam is not who he appears to be. And yet the novice's true identity cannot be revealed without Kinh paying a terrible price.

To continue on the path to enlightenment, Kinh must suffer false accusations, physical hardship and public humiliation without complaint. With absolute grace, astounding compassion and unwavering resolve, the novice perseveres in the face of every challenge. Ultimately, Kinh Tam's moving fate will transform lives and offer hope for us all.

In these pages, Zen master, poet and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh retells an ancient Vietnamese folk tale, sharing Kinh's story as a teaching and proposing a real way of being in the the world that is utterly relevant now, in the twenty-first century.