On May 4, three monastics from Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, CA, joined a local memorial ceremony for the AAPI community, along with dozens of monastics and teachers from other Buddhist lineages. They gathered 49 days after the passing of eight people in Atlanta, Georgia, including six Asian women.
As part of the ceremony, teachers across Buddhist traditions spoke to each of the six paramitas, which are trainings, or noble character qualities, that support us in our path to freedom. Sister Kinh Nghiem, a nun from Deer Park Monastery, shared about the paramita called “sila”: the practice of precepts, or the Mindfulness Trainings.
We spoke with Sister Kinh Nghiem about her experience attending this memorial ceremony and offering her reflections on sila to a diverse Buddhist audience.
Click here to watch a recording of the ceremony (see Sister Kinh’s Nghiem’s talk at minutes 35:48 - 41:31). Click here to read the transcript of her talk.
Steady Change
There is not much I hoped to get out of this, because it’s not a political thing we are doing. We are just raising awareness. As awareness increases, things will start to happen. We are just sowing and watering the seed of awareness. Once that awareness is strong enough, then things will start to move on their own.
We are not expecting a 180 degree shift in violence toward our Asian community (although that would be ideal). We want to bring awareness in a non-violent, compassionate way. That itself is enough. My bodhicitta that gave me the energy to go forth (ordain), simply put, was to help my friends see that there is a different way of dealing with our problems. It had nothing to do with finding comfort or running away from reality through meditation. In fact because I was so young (14) the idea of meditating for a “peace of mind” was foreign to me. Thay’s teachings at that time made sense, it was practical, and it directly dealt with the things I had been going through as a teenager.
This truth still stands for me. The daily practice of sitting, walking, eating in mindfulness gives us more space to nurture our awareness. In the beginning, it waters awareness in the daily conventional things, then gradually, awareness becomes deeper and deeper. Then one day we come to understand, without much effort, the nature of interbeing and interconnectedness.
From there, we become more aware of how our actions of body, speech and mind affect others, and ourselves. We can’t really expect a sudden drastic change in the world. The secret is in gradual growth of mindfulness, strength, understanding, and compassion. That’s what will make the deepest change, and become culture, rather than just a policy.
“I’ve Never Channeled Thay So Much.”
As a young Vietnamese woman and nun in America, I knew I was representing a lot of people - their dreams, their traditions, and their aspirations. Thay and the Sangha made it possible for me to do what I like doing and be who I am today. Before offering my three-minute Dharma talk, I went backstage to practice walking meditation. You can't work for peace, you can't fight for peace, you have to be peace. I knew that my message was not just in the content of the talk, but in how I said it, how I walked, how I used my hand gestures, how I bowed. Those speak greater volumes than the content of what I shared.
I had been Thay’s attendant in 2001, during the 911 attacks. He had a public talk at Riverside Church, just a couple weeks after the attacks. We arrived in New York City a couple days prior to the event. We were breathing, walking and generating the energy of mindfulness and compassion with him during those tense moments in the country. For this event honoring our AAPI community, I knew that a whole nation, and a whole ethnic group has been suffering. So I channeled Thay, and I channeled the Sangha. Walking mindfully in his footsteps, I knew this is exactly what he would have done.
Thay suffered so much, through so many wars, and was able to offer such immense support to the world. Now it is our turn, to hold that same space with our collective insight. I am grateful that I don't have to do this alone, that I have the whole community with me.
An Opportunity for Buddhists Traditions to Come Together
We should do this more often. This is the first time in a long time that all the Buddhist traditions have come together outside of a conference, or for Vesak (the Buddha’s birthday), or via a worldwide organization. This was a very local, very small, and very intimate event.
Going forward, I feel that it would be beneficial to us as different Buddhist communities to get together and have tea, to check in on how our monastic brothers and sisters are doing in other necks of the woods. This is what our ancestors did. In Vietnam, our spiritual ancestors went to visit other monasteries in other lineages, without having a particular reason, other than building kinship, or in other words, siblinghood. Coming together in the “just because” way allows us to learn from one another’s experience and challenges, get to know one another, and sit and enjoy tea in happiness. Then, when there is a reason, when something happens, the bond and the relationship is already there.
America’s Melting Pot Buddhism
I know that at least at our US monasteries, we have the absolute favorable conditions for an interrelationship with other Buddhist traditions to happen, because America is such a melting pot. We have all different traditions located in one place. We have all the conditions needed to learn how to make an “American Buddhist” rather than a “Plum Village Buddhist in America.”
Because the US is such a melting pot, we can't expect one single Buddhist tradition to take root. We can support American Buddhism to become American Buddhism, making it unique to this culture. Historically, Vietnam was the melting pot for Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists, and the International Plum Village tradition came from that. Thay once said: “Plum Village is just meditation. It is not Mahayana or Theravada.” The International Plum Village tradition emphasizes the original teachings of the Buddha, such as the Anapanasati Sutra (Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing) with the insight from Mahayana Buddhism. We already have the tools we need to make an American Buddhism. In order for that to weld together, we need to take a further step into (and this is not easy) making American Buddhism truly American.
Photographs by Rozette Rago
