Plum Village and prophetic witness
How Quakers overcame empire and became the first religion to forbid members from participating in slavery. How Plum Village thrives outside of capitalism.
Cosmos moment: Full moon. Sun slow (clock ahead of sun).
Quakers: seeking peace, open to turmoil
Since the dawn of empire, lovers of god have come into conflict with lovers of wealth. This conflict can range from uncomfortable to unbearable, depending on the delusion and the depravity of the lovers of wealth, who support empire to protect their wealth and status.
Quakers, a relatively new Christian sect formed around 1650 in England, are experts at navigating the god vs empire divide. They even have a name for it: prophetic witness.
“As Quakers, we’re called to notice how prophetic witness influences our lives. What is prophetic witness? It’s the idea that the spirit may inspire us to recognize an injustice, or to seek what is good, just, true, or somehow right, before the world completely or clearly perceives it.
As a lover of god in the U.S. empire, I often feel out of place, recognizing injustice where others see none, like a Quaker. Part of Quaker tradition from the beginning, their prophetic witness is alive and well today. These excerpts come from an article in the July 2025 edition of Befriending Creation, a newsletter of Quaker Earthcare Witness.
“Those who give voice to prophetic witness channel the work of the spirit within the world. They are not perfect. We do not see them as saints, or as more than human. As Quakers, we can all hope to see ourselves joyfully carrying forward their tradition of courageous openness to continuing revelation.
We say courageous because prophetic witness calls us to move against the grain. So, we encounter disturbances to our individual, internal sense of peace — between active Quakers and the outside world; and within Quaker communities.
It might seem paradoxical for peacemakers to upset the status quo. But if the status quo includes injustice or unjust oppression and false peace, we are called to make true peace. Martin King distinguished these two kinds of peace in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, critiquing “the white moderate” who preferred order to justice, and “a negative peace, which is the absence of tension,” over and above “a positive peace, which is the presence of justice.” Quakers get it.
“Quakers, of course, seek peace. Yet our commitment to nonviolence does not insulate us from conflict and pain in spiritual work. On the contrary, our openness to spirit may infuse our lives with turmoil. Lives that speak — lives of integrity, lives synchronized with the energy of spiritual revelation — are tumultuous adventures. Prophetic witness that begins as a ‘still, small, voice’ can become an unsettling roar.”
The prophetic witness of Benjamin Lay, often despised by other Quakers, proved effective over time.
The sign reads:
An early advocate for the immediate abolition of slavery. Lay, a Quaker and a dwarf, wrote a scathing attack on Quaker slaveholders, who in turn disowned him. His dramatic public protests and his boycott of all items produced by slave labor later inspired Quakers to become the first religious group to abolish slavery within their own ranks in 1776. He lived in a local cave. His grave was marked at the Quaker cemetery nearby in 2018.
Empire is good at infiltrating institutionalized religion. Slavery was part of Christendom for centuries, including a slave ship named Jesus. The prophetic witness of Quakers helped them overcome empire’s corrupting influence.
Today, they continue to prioritize fidelity to god over personal comfort. “Quaker committee projects spotlight the real-life challenges that prophetic witness confronts in the world, and test our resolve to transcend our own resistance to change.” Long live prophetic witness!
The fourfold sangha: alternative to capitalism
The first alternative we looked at was a communal company as exemplified by the Bruderhof, a Christian community, through their two businesses. Plum Village, a Buddhist community which I first experienced at Blue Cliff Monastery, offers another alternative to capitalism: the fourfold assembly.
Buddhist history records among the final words of the Buddha an intention to ensure, before he dies, that the dharma – the Buddha’s teachings – could be embodied by four types of people: monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen. Convinced that he has accomplished this task, he is able to die in peace.
Interdependence and generosity
Plum Village cofounded in France by Thich Nhat Hanh and Sister Chan Kong while exiled from Viet Nam, is an excellent example of a fourfold sangha. The essential arrangement is interdependence: the religious members (monks and nuns) provide — from their wisdom — instruction and guidance to the lay members; the lay members provide — from their wealth — material support for the monks and nuns.
Just last week, the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation newsletter included links to their annual report and to news of Deerpark Monastery in southern California starting a new school.
Here some excerpts from the annual report:
Of our $6.7 million in income in 2024, more than 91% consisted of generous contributions from donors like you. Of those contributions, 67% were restricted to a specific monastery or project, while 33% were available to be used for our community’s most urgent needs. These unrestricted gifts are more important than ever, providing flexible funding for our monasteries and for critical infrastructure functions.
This dependence on generosity is neither accidental nor casual. As a monthly donor explains ...
“In Buddhism, dāna [genoristy] is the first perfection — it is how we begin the path. It says: this matters enough to sustain. I give monthly because I want to ensure these teachings endure — not just for me, but for generations to come. ...” ~Meena Srinivasan (True Seal of Peace), Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation & Parallax Press Working Board member, California, USA
The donors are not the only ones practicing generosity. The monks and nuns give generously of their time, their skill, and their wisdom. They receive no pay and they own no private property. In fact, they give their lives to the well-being of their community. “No one has greater love [nor stronger commitment] than to lay down his own life for his friends,” says Jesus. By that measure, these Buddhists are great Christians.
Teaching in the spirit of service, embodiment, community
How will a new elementary school, run by a fourfold sangha, work? Here is the excerpt from Deerpark Monastery’s announcement:
The Applied Ethics program, carefully developed by Thầy [Thich Nhat Hanh], will serve as the guiding framework for students, teachers, parents, and the entire school community. Here, education will go beyond just accumulating knowledge — it will be rooted in mindfulness, love, understanding, joy, peace, and collective awakening.
As Thầy has shown us, an authentic learning environment is also a home — one where students feel deeply loved and cared for, where the classroom is a family, and where genuine kinship flourishes.
Our aspiration is to create a community environment where learning, teaching, and practice extend beyond the classroom into daily life. Teaching at the school will be done in the spirit of service, embodiment of the practice, and community living, rather than as a career path or a 9-to-5 job.
Conclusion
Capitalism thrives on co-dependence: I depend on the market and the market depends on me, but in a globalized marketplace, we have no holistic relationship. Alternatives to capitalism, which were the norm prior to our era, thrive on interdependence. We’re going to need some serious prophetic witness to overcome the injustices of global capitalism. But if lovers of god can overcome slavery and teach third graders without a salary, is there any doubt that we can overcome capitalism?
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