I lost someone last week. Someone I never met in person, but who shaped my life in ways which surpass ordinary influence. His passing is not a surprise. But I am shaken by the loss. I feel the world emptier.

I was 16 when my sister went on a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen master, on one of his rare visits to the UK. She brought back his book Zen Keys. I had barely heard of Buddhism, beyond vague allusions in RE class. But reading that book changed my life. It led to years of Zen training, and the study of Asian philosophy at Cambridge in my twenties.

A collaborator with Martin Luther King, a friend of Thomas Merton and a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, Thich Nhat Hanh was a universally respected teacher and one of the most prominent voices for peace during the Vietnam War. But in my life, he was the man who gave me Buddhism. I have been blessed to learn many Buddhisms over the years, from many voices. But Thich Nhat Hanh is the only one I am inclined to call “my teacher”. Buddhism has his face and his voice in my heart. And despite my intermittent efforts to remove it, there it has stayed.