[1] Modern engaged Buddhism emerged in Vietnam in the 1950s, from the teachings of Thiền Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh.
[9] Nhất Hạnh was inspired by the humanistic Buddhism reform movement in China led by Taixu and Yinshun and later propagated in Taiwan by Cheng Yen and Hsing Yun.
During the Vietnam War, he and his sangha (spiritual community) responded to the suffering around them, in part by adopting the nonviolence activism techniques of Mahatma Gandhi in India and of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States.
[2] As early as 1946, Walpola Rahula identified an explicit social ethos present in the earliest recorded Buddhist teachings.
[15] Ambedkar's principles surrounded[clarification needed] the commitment to Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, which stemmed from the Buddha's philosophy.
Ambedkar warns that if we spend too much time in personal meditation practice, in retreat from social relationships, we will be irresponsible to our community.
[editorializing] This is a collectivist notion of sangha as people working together for a society of justice, wherein Buddhist practice becomes the engaged activity of social change.
[4][22] Prominent figures in the movement include Robert Aitken Roshi,[23] Joanna Macy,[23] Gary Snyder,[24] Alan Senauke,[25] Sulak Sivaraksa,[26] Daisaku Ikeda, Maha Ghosananda,[27] Sylvia Wetzel, Joan Halifax,[28] Tara Brach,[29] Taigen Dan Leighton,[30] Ken Jones,[31] Jan Willis,[32] Bhante Sujato,[33] Bhikkhu Bodhi,[34] and Ajahn Buddhadasa.