The Thunderous Resonance of Bodhisattva True Great Sound

“I don’t live in fear of dystopia. I am not triggered by the apocalypse. I am urgently committed to a successful birth of a new world for all of us humans and nonhumans alike.” –Reverend Dr. Larry Ward

Upon receiving news that Rev. Dr. Larry Ward had passed away on August 19, I was flooded with both grief at this loss and endless gratitude for his life. I reached out to his wife, Dr. Peggy Rowe Ward, and fellow teachers, authors, and dharma friends who shared their heartfelt tributes to his life, work, and profound influence. This article offers just a small sample of their contributions.

“Dr. Larry Ward, senior dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition, was and remains a light, a beacon for peace, creativity, and solidity in the Plum Village community and beyond,” writes fellow Plum Village dharma teacher Valerie Brown. “A poet, Buddhist teacher, sangha builder, community leader, educator, activist, and friend to countless people, Larry’s creative presence gently reminds us that love, justice, and compassion never die, that love and light live on.”  

“He lived a life of remarkable depth and purpose,” writes Dr. Valerie Vimalasara Mason-John. “I was fortunate to be present when he shared poignant stories from his journey: surviving the Jim Crow era, enduring the assassination of MLK and subsequent death threats. . . . Yet he always rose. He could have been a wealthy entrepreneur but chose instead to go for refuge, dedicating his life to inspiring others.”

Dr. Ward’s profound understanding of America’s racial karma emerged not only from his rigorous scholarship and dedicated Buddhist practice but also from his life experience. He transmuted the sufferings of racism to lead us all toward developing Beloved Community. When he was 11 years old, he was shot by a white police officer for playing baseball in the “wrong place,” and years later, the home he shared with his wife, Peggy, was bombed by white supremacists. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 ignited in him a lifelong commitment to nonviolence and systemic change. That same year, he joined the Ecumenical Institute (which later became the Chicago-based Institute of Cultural Affairs, or ICA), with a pioneering global network dedicated to grassroots development, leadership training, social change, and community and spiritual renewal. Larry spent more than two decades with the ICA and often described this period as formative to his path as a spiritual activist and global citizen, cultivating his unshakable conviction that true transformation requires both inner awakening and structural change.

Blase Sands, friend and former coworker at the Ecumenical Institute/ICA, shared how Rev. Dr. Ward lived and worked in more than twenty countries, often in communities grappling with poverty, systemic inequities, and social unrest. Rising to the role of international director, he facilitated leadership development and socioeconomic programs across thirty-five countries, supporting villages and cities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America. From training village leaders in India, to consulting throughout Southeast Asia, to directing programs in Hong Kong, Larry gave his heart to building communities of justice and possibility. His work included training local leaders, facilitating participatory planning, and nurturing self-reliant development projects that respected both cultural traditions and human dignity.

First ordained as a Christian minister in 1972, he received the dharma name “True Great Sound” from renowned Zen Buddhist master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh in 1994. Thich Nhat Hanh also ordained Rev. Dr. Ward as a dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition of Engaged Buddhism in 2000. Committed to deepening his understanding of the enlightenment, Rev. Dr. Ward also earned his PhD in religious studies, with an emphasis on Buddhism and the neuroscience of meditation. 

“Larry Ward has been a powerful presence of love and care in my life since before I was born,” writes fellow Plum Village senior teacher and author Kaira Jewel Lingo. “He and my parents worked together in the Ecumenical Institute. Because the children in our community were cared for collectively, Larry cared for me as a baby. He was among the first Black leaders in both the Ecumenical Institute/ICA and the Plum Village Order of Interbeing, where he was a gifted teacher, bringing wisdom, courage, and compassion to every space he entered.”

Larry and his wife were married by Thich Nhat Hanh at Plum Village in 1994, “and we married him and the community,” muses Peggy. Larry and Peggy also coauthored Love’s Garden: A Guide To Mindful Relationships.

“Larry and I, as partners in teaching, are all about the bodhisattva vow,” says Peggy. Together they cofounded the Lotus Institute, an educational nonprofit dedicated to healing trauma and inspiring social change. “We have seen our teaching and calling directed to this end, to help all of us to identify this vow in our own being. There is that line in the Lotus Sutra about the earth not needing the Buddha, as we have so many bodhisattvas in this very moment, rising from the ground. This has been our work and will continue to be mine: to help us all remember and recognize that we are smack dab in the middle of our holy life . . . and to help awaken the call to serve and to bend history in the direction of love and justice.” 

“Reverend Dr. Ward was both a Baptist minister and a Buddhist dharma teacher, a combination that for him never posed a conflict,” says Lingo. “He felt that Jesus and Thich Nhat Hanh were deeply aligned, and his life reflected the way these two traditions could harmonize. At times, his voice carried the power and fire of a Baptist preacher, and at others, the gentleness and clarity of a Buddhist teacher—blending seamlessly into something uniquely his own.”

“I’m recalling his 2019 dharma talk at The Gathering at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in San Rafael, California,” writes author, dharma teacher, and community organizer Pamela Ayo Yetunde. “As he gave his talk, Rachel Bagby, with her vocalese and walking stick, set an African rhythm and sound that brought down the dharma house of 300 African-American practitioners and released our ancestral knowings into polyvocal expressions of release and utter joy. Larry knew how and when to bring the Black Baptist preacher to the forefront to hold Black pain and promise interdependently.”

Buddhist studies Professor Emerita and author Jan Willis also connected with Dr. Ward at The Gathering in 2019. “Being older, we often ended up sitting next to each other, in the circle but in chairs. I was immediately taken by his deep bass voice as well as by his gentle presence and his graciousness. He possessed, I thought, the perfect tools of a Southern Black preacher, making him a perfect pastor as well as a Buddhist leader of beings. Larry did not boast. He was unobtrusive but exuded a type of quiet confidence and humor.”

When he spoke, his voice resounded: a direct transmission from that portal of power from which so many Black leaders of faith beckon us to live justly and wisely.

Indeed, Reverend Dr. Ward’s serene strength was compelling; I’d find myself drawing nearer to him each time we were in a room together, because just being in his orbit was as soothing as it was empowering. And when he spoke, his voice resounded: a direct transmission from that portal of power from which so many Black leaders of faith beckon us to live justly and wisely. Reverend Dr. Ward’s voice transports us to the home in our souls, the place sung into being—into our beings—by centuries of Black baritones in cadences that embody justice’s rhythm and the power of peace-building. 

Having primarily practiced Buddhism in the Nichiren tradition with the SGI, I was deeply moved by Dr. Ward’s inclusivity, generosity of spirit, and vast knowledge as he discussed the breadth of the Buddha’s teachings. He deepened my capacity to practice and share the dharma across Buddhist lineages. I will never forget how simultaneously erudite and curious he was about the ways the Mahayana lineages are practiced throughout the world; how he was never caught in the snares of “sangha supremacy” that can entrap us when we forget to honor all the Buddhas’ teachings and all lineages of faith. Reverend Dr. Ward’s embodiment of the paramis, the qualities of awakened being, inspired me to study them more deeply to further cultivate and embody a powerful, peaceful presence such as his. 

“Listening to Larry was like being in the eye of a quiet storm,” writes Pamela Ayo Yetunde. “He was indeed a master of sound,” says Kaira Jewel Lingo. “He soothed, uplifted, and gave confidence through his soulful songs; through the way he recited a poem from the depths of his being; and through the way he directed us in his teachings to listen to the sounds of the world—both the suffering and the joy—and to respond wholeheartedly.”

Dr. Rima Vesely-Flad writes, “I first met Larry while researching a book on Black Buddhists. I still remember his tenderness and tenacity, and the ways in which he embraced peoples and cultures from all over the world. Together with his life partner, Peggy Ward, he traveled and taught a way of being, a depth of healing, that continues to resonate with all of us who embrace dharma teachings as a way forward.”

“I had the privilege to learn from Larry as a student/mentee and through the Lotus Institute that he and Peggy steward,” shared chaplain and spiritual care practitioner Kristine Hyun Kyong Chong. “It has felt like a lifetime with True Great Sound, and my life has changed, is changing, by his clear and compassionate wisdom. At our last meeting, he asked me: What kind of ancestor do you want to be? What baton do you want to pass? Little did I know he would transition to the ancestor realm shortly after. I realize that Larry has been teaching me how to be a good ancestor.”

Reverend Dr. Ward’s timeless teachings remind us that justice is embodied in powerful self-expression that invites everyone into liberation and joy. We can enter this realm of insight through reading his books and listening to his sacred recordings, which quake with the thunder of his cry for justice and overflow with peaceful dharma rain. His new book of poetry, Morning Night, is the bomb and a balm: Each poem is medicine for the maladies of all time. Perfectly aligned with the sacred texts of diverse spiritual traditions that offer wisdom through parable, story, and verse, Rev. Dr. Ward delivers dharma and divine wisdom from many lineages in poetic odes to life itself.

Sister Peace, senior monastic in the Plum Village community, reflected, “When contemplating my dear friend, teacher, and mentor, only one thing comes to mind: Great teachers bend light so that others might see.”

“Dr. Ward was and remains a vast ocean of wisdom, and a blazing fire in the dark,” writes Dr. Ralph H. Craig III, Buddhist Studies scholar. “He lit the way for so many of us. I had the good fortune to meet him, as many did, first through his words. And what words they were. I finally only met him in person just this past April, during the Race, Caste, and the Challenge of Karma conference at Princeton University for which he was the keynote speaker. During his keynote, Dr. Ward spoke extemporaneously from the heart, drawing directly from that vast ocean and sharing precious droplets with us. I am deeply grateful for what I learned on that occasion, and through his many writings. Now, may he journey on into the great beyond!”

Great teachers bend light so that others might see.

Meditation teacher Judi White described Dr. Ward as “both a spiritual revolutionary and a spiritual evolutionary, embodying the courage to challenge systems of suffering while also evolving our collective consciousness toward love and liberation.” Fellow Plum Village teacher Victoria Mausisa described how “Larry also encouraged us to wear or carry something with us that reminds us of who we are, our lineage, our ancestral heritage. Following Larry’s words, and as a Filipina born in America, I often wear a pendant symbolizing generativity from the Philippine Islands. And Larry often carried and showed us two photos—one of his mother and one of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion—before offering a dharma talk.” Grounded in his cultural and spiritual lineages as an African American and as a bodhisattva, he was able to encourage people in and from every part of the world.

In a letter written directly to Rev. Dr. Ward after his passing and shared with us, Thay Phap Niem, abbot of Thailand Plum Village (and the chanting voice on The Great Bell Chant), states, “We know that birth and death are but a game of hide and seek, and I believe you faced the impermanence of life with great solidity and fearlessness. Still, all of your brothers and sisters in the sangha feel profound sorrow in your absence. . . . I always felt you were a person of great strength and deep freedom. And beyond that, your love for others knew no bounds.

“You showed immense humility and wholehearted support for monastics. You always spoke up and took action when needed to protect and support the sangha. I remember during an international Order of Interbeing gathering at Plum Village—maybe in 1996 or 1997, in the presence of our teacher Thay—some people expressed grievances toward the monastic community. You and lay practitioner Jack Lawlor stood up courageously to defend the monks and nuns. I can still hear your voice, strong and powerful like a lion’s roar—so moving, so wise and full of compassion. At the time, I was serving as Thay’s attendant, and when we returned to the ‘Sitting Still Hut,’ Thay praised both you and Jack for your heartfelt sharing.

“Larry, you were a deeply rooted and solid lay practitioner in the Order of Interbeing, always seeking to bring people together. That, to me, is the most beautiful legacy you leave behind—your effort to build a Beloved Community. In doing so, you not only fulfilled the dreams of the Buddha and Thay but also continued the beautiful vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Dear Larry, how could someone like you ever truly die? You’ve always been a manifestation of the unborn and undying reality. You are a beautiful cloud that never dies! Wherever we are, the wondrous presence of your spirit can still be felt.”

Dr. Ayo Yetunde further intones, “When we think about Rev. Dr. Larry Ward, let’s remember he invited us to love (as Jesus taught), to awaken (as the Buddha did), to hear the cries of the world (as Avalokiteshvara exemplifies), to be strong and dignified people (as Malcolm X taught), to advocate for justice (as Martin Luther King, Jr. did), for the realization of our interdependence (as Thay taught), through the quake of thunder to rouse us from our slumber. This is what Rev. Dr. Larry Ward taught us to be and to do. Now, let’s go forth and do likewise.”

There is so much more to be said about the extraordinary life of Reverend Dr. Larry Ward yet we can close this tribute with words from physician scientist, public health expert, community activist, and Baltimore Plum Village teacher Marisela Gomez, who writes, “During the Buddha’s time, when one of the great disciples of the Buddha—Sariputra—passed, the Buddha taught that when the large and mighty branch at the top of a great tree fell, it was felt large and wide by the whole sangha.

“And so it is today with the recent passing of our beloved senior dharma teacher Dr. Larry Ward. As the Buddha taught, Larry often reminded us that all that is born must come to pass.

“Dr. Ward was a trailblazer in our Plum Village tradition. He represented to many, especially Black, Indigenous, and folks of color, that we were valued in the tradition. As we continue our healing from racialized and other forms of oppression, it is important to see ourselves in the community: He saw all of us. When we saw Dr. Ward, we knew that ‘every little thing is gonna be alright.’ He was a humble man who always reminded us of his beginnings, so we could also value and bring all our beginnings with us into the dharma. He will be missed, like the big branches of the great tree that provide much shade and comfort.

You are invited to send your energy for the peaceful transition of his energy and many prayers for his wife, Peggy, his son, Emanuel, and the many dear family and friends feeling this loss.”

“If you want to do something with your life, be a real human being. If you want to do something for your children, your grandchildren, be a real human being. If you want to do something for America, be a real human being. In everything you need to be a real human being. And it’s already inside of us; it’s in every cell of our body. However, we have to be trained to develop it, cultivate it, and to apply it. This is one of the Buddha’s fundamental insights—that one has to be trained to live life deeply. Most of us assume you have to be trained to be a doctor or a nurse or a pianist or a schoolteacher or a cabdriver or a cook. The idea that we have to be trained to live profoundly seems to have never crossed anybody’s mind! You have to be trained to live. It’s one of the Buddha’s fundamental insights, and that training is lifelong.”  

–Reverend Dr. Larry Ward

♦

A fund has been created in honor of Rev. Dr. Larry Ward to support the continuation of his teachings through the Lotus Institute. Contributions may be made here.