Stephen Pradarelli encounters Thầy while supporting the naming of Thích Nhất Hạnh Way in New York.
“Hey,” a man riding his bike past West 109th Street and Broadway in Manhattan asked, smiling, “y’all making a movie?”
Two large, tripod-mounted video cameras were trained on a podium bearing New York City’s official seal, and a couple of other videographers with large cameras on their shoulders roamed the area. A growing crowd of lay friends,
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Stephen Pradarelli encounters Thầy while supporting the naming of Thích Nhất Hạnh Way in New York.
“Hey,” a man riding his bike past West 109th Street and Broadway in Manhattan asked, smiling, “y’all making a movie?”
Two large, tripod-mounted video cameras were trained on a podium bearing New York City’s official seal, and a couple of other videographers with large cameras on their shoulders roamed the area. A growing crowd of lay friends, city officials, plus monks and nuns from Blue Cliff and Deer Park monasteries, cheerful and expectant despite chilly temperatures and an occasional sprinkle of rain, was gathering around the cordoned area.
They weren’t there to be in a film, but to celebrate the naming of Thích Nhất Hạnh Way. The street isn’t far from Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary, where Thầy taught in the early 1960s, sowing the seeds of Buddhism and mindfulness practice in the West.
As the communications director for the Thích Nhất Hạnh Foundation, I had the privilege of being a part of this historic moment on April 11, 2025. Sitting on my rain jacket on the wet pavement in front of the podium, I felt uplifted by the energy of the gathering as I live streamed the remarks made by our monastics and others over social media.
I smiled to myself as speaker after speaker recognized Thầy’s ceaseless work for peace and calm, while morning traffic rumbled along Broadway—horns honking, police sirens whooping—just beyond the gathering. The irony wasn’t lost on Shaun Abreu, District 7 representative on the New York City Council and an early advocate for the street co-naming:
New Yorkers are not necessarily known for peace and stillness, but Thích Nhất Hạnh had a message for people like us. He knew that we can’t build a better world if we’re angry all the time, if we lose sight of each other’s humanity. By putting his name right here in the heart of it all, we’re creating a moment of pause, a breath, a reminder that peace isn’t found in retreating from the world—it’s found in how we choose to walk through it.
The presence of two people added to the joy of the moment for me: my daughter, Emma, who lives in Brooklyn and works at Columbia University-affiliated Barnard College, and a colleague, Bình Hà, the foundation’s giving engagement manager. Bình had traveled from her home in Michigan to take part in the day’s events.
I’ve worked at the foundation for a little more than three years, and this was the first time Emma could get a glimpse into her dad’s job and meet some of the monks and nuns with whom I work. After the ceremony and the street sign unveiling, Emma and I joined the walking meditation to Union Theological Seminary, passing through a beautiful exhibit of Thầy’s calligraphy in The Burke Library.
The day was scheduled to conclude with eating meditation, a short program of remarks, chanting, and singing in Union’s James Chapel. But Emma had to step outside to take a call, and by the time we arrived, all of the vegan box lunches were gone, most of the seats were taken, and the monastics on stage had already begun the meditation.
We managed to find a couple of seats up front and sat quietly—and hungrily (we hadn’t eaten anything since early that morning—while everyone ate their lunches. Then someone tapped me lightly on the shoulder. I turned to see an older woman with a beautiful smile offering me the apple from her lunch (I later learned she was a good lay friend of Deer Park Monastery who had traveled from California to attend the street co-naming ceremony). I bowed, smiled, and accepted her beautiful, and welcome, gift.
For the next fifteen minutes or so, Emma and I took turns taking a bite from the apple, passing it back and forth, chewing slowly and mindfully, sharing sips from my water bottle, and smiling at the beauty of this practice handed down by Thầy:
The practice of Zen is to eat, breathe, cook, carry water, and scrub the toilet—to infuse every act of body, speech, and mind—with mindfulness, to illuminate every leaf and pebble, every heap of garbage, every path that leads to our mind’s return home.
—Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Miracle of Mindfulness
It was incredibly touching to be surrounded by so many people who are carrying on Thầy’s work in one of the busiest cities of the world, to sit in a building where Thầy once taught (and perhaps meditated, perhaps began dreaming up his plans for what would become Plum Village), to receive the gift of a delicious apple and be able to share it mindfully with my daughter, and to listen, later, to the monks and nuns sing Namo Avalokiteshvaraya, the Chant of Compassion, and hear their voices rise like incense smoke to the vaulted ceilings of the chapel.
In that place, in that moment between the historic and ultimate dimensions Thầy often talked about, I couldn’t help but remember something Anh-Huong Nguyen, Thầy’s niece and a lay Dharma teacher, had said earlier at the street co-naming ceremony:
My heart is so full, it’s hard to put what I’m feeling into words. I hear Thầy saying ‘this is a happy moment.’ And I deeply and strongly feel Thầy is here with us.
Photos courtesy of Stephen Pradarelli
Editor’s Note:
Read more about this historic event and see more photos on the Plum Village website.
