Jane Duong's Articles on Lions Roar

Six women from the Order of Interbeing and Deer Park Monastery reflect on the impact of their beloved teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, following his death. The Miracle of the Practice. By Juliet Hwang, True Emerald Ocean. My father brought me to the practice. I grew up in a house shattered by violence, addiction, and mental illness. I felt sad and alone and often hid under my blanket in fear of the next outburst of violence. Growing up in a Catholic household, I felt guilty for the anger I felt towards my father and was told to recite Hail Marys and Our Fathers as penance for my sins. As I got older, that anger festered and I stopped talking to my father. I channeled my energy into activism. I protested against the war in Iraq, US military occupation in Korea, and police brutality in New York City while going to medical school. I wanted to learn how to heal myself, my patients, and my community. Thay became the gentle, unconditionally loving father figure I had always wanted. In medical school and residency, I learned how broken the health care system was and the limits of physicians. I witnessed the lack of resources for communities of color, especially in El Barrio in East Harlem and Elmhurst, Queens. I witnessed the impact of poverty, racism, and trauma in the bodies of our children and how the medical system never addressed the root causes of these issues. I saw how the trauma manifested as disease and cancer in children. It was under these conditions that my friend recommended I join her for a retreat in California. I am so thankful for her and the conditions that allowed me to fly across the country and meet the sangha for the first time. I first met Thay at the first People of Color Retreat, "Colors of Compassion," at Deer Park Monastery in March of 2004. I had read several of Thay’s books but it wasn’t until I actually practiced with the sangha that I deeply felt the impact of the miracle of mindfulness on my body. That first night during the orientation talk in the Ocean of Peace Meditation Hall, I don’t remember exactly what Thay said, but I remember how my body felt. I heard him talking about how to hold our suffering. Perhaps it was the gentle tone in his voice, or the compassion from his heart, but my body melted and I started to sob. My suffering had finally surfaced and flowed out of my body in the first place I had felt safe and held. That night, I knew I had found my teacher and my path, and I have stayed with the sangha over the past 18 years. Thay became the gentle, unconditionally loving father figure I had always wanted. I learned that I needed to heal the suffering in my heart before I could heal others. And I could not heal without the energy of support of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. I like to say I grew up in the sangha. And I am so proud to say that my two children love Deer Park as much as I do and are growing up embraced by the mountains as well. I couldn’t have done it without my supportive and loving husband. Over the past 18 years, the anger towards my father has ebbs and flowed and has transformed at different times. The practice helped me cradle my suffering, look deeply, and hold myself and that little girl in compassion. It has also helped me look at my father with the eyes of compassion. The past few years, I have learned more about trauma-informed practices and the neurobiology of trauma. I have learned to see my father who was also suffered as a young child and was the vessel of intergenerational trauma from my ancestors and colonization. He didn’t know how to take care of that suffering. His nervous system was too overwhelmed. He was unskillful. He didn’t have the resources that I did to learn how to hold and transform it. During the past three years of the pandemic, lots of old suffering has surfaced and I have returned to the many resilience practices I have developed over the years. My family and I have gone camping many times to return to the loving energy of Mother Earth. I have written poetry and painted with my children. We have made up countless songs and had dance parties in the living room. I have realized all my resilience practices, I learned from my father. He took us camping every summer. He took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time in third grade and sparked my love for art. He played Schubert’s Trout Quintet in the house all the time and I fell in love with music. The sangha has watered the seeds of bodhicitta over these decades. I am finally able to see my father for who he is and who he was. Doing his best as an immigrant physician facing racism and raising a family in a country where he didn’t speak the language. Before my lamp transmission ceremony in October of 2021 to become a dharma teacher in Thay’s lineage, I reached out to my father and wrote him a letter, thanking him for all he has taught me. I invited him to my ceremony, and he appeared on Zoom. My sisters and mother were surprised. Since then, we have exchanged letters and texts. When I heard about the news about Thay’s passing, I went down to Deer Park to be with the sangha and grieve together. Tuesday afternoon, I was laying in my hammock, looking up at the oak tree in the campground. Suddenly, I got a text alert. “I heard about the passing of your teacher. How are you dear Hyun Jung? You must be in deep sorrow.” I saw his words and I instantly started sobbing, rocking the hammock, back and forth. My body started shaking and I let it shake. At one point, my chest started to rise. My heart cracked wide open and love just overflowed. Nothing mattered anymore. When my sobs calmed down, I picked up my phone and called my father. I heard his voice: “I was camping and just came back and heard the news about Thay.” I sobbed immediately. “Thank you for reaching out.” I couldn’t stop crying. “Saranghae ahbah. Love you. That’s it. I love you.” I cried for a few more minutes. His voice was shaky, “Time heals everything. It’s OK,” he said. We cried together. “I want to come and visit you in the spring and see the desert flowers bloom.” “I love you ahbah. I’ll see you soon,” I replied, and we said goodbye. I wailed some more, allowing my body to release everything inside. Thay had brought my father back to me. Now that Thay had passed, my father was there to help hold me for the first time. I had witnessed the miracle of the practice. I know Thay is breathing and walking with me. I will take Thay with me when we see the desert cacti bloom this spring, as all of nature sings and stretches in gratitude. Expect Nothing Short of Whatever Arises. By Jacqueline Kim, True Beautiful Garden. The day after Thay ceased manifesting on a physical plane, I drove myself to Deer Park Monastery, a beloved place and community I have been a part of for over 20 years. Two years into the COVID pandemic, I hadn’t visited in quite a while. I was also experiencing some heart arrhythmia, and having no nuclear family of my own, had suffered from the all-too-brief periods of connection being in a pod could afford. Deer Park Monastery sits nestled in hundreds of acres of dry, desert mountain. To go anywhere, you ascend or descend a steeply raked earth, which reminds you to go slowly, and every bit of the land — the trees, the rocks, plants, animals, and ground — feels and emits love. It was in the midst of this that I discovered what I was actually lonely for: an undeniable connection to something vast. As time on this mountain will prove, the earth is not only a setting. It plays an active part in our intelligence. Thay expected nothing short of whatever would arise. At a lunch in the meditation hall, Thay Phap Dung, one of the most senior monks, told us that one of the last things Thầy was teaching was synchronicity — he wanted the nuns and monks to learn to breathe together. This happens naturally when the bell rings, and when we sing, which both occur often at the monastery. And after a few days, when one’s conditions for suffering loosen, and one can merge with the rhythm of the sangha, more things start to happen. I’ll see someone I was just thinking about, a dish at the lunch table will appear that I was hoping to eat, an insight arrives about something I wasn’t focusing on. This effortless way at arriving at and between things nourishes me on a deep level, affirming that connections are there — many of them — we just might not see them. I think this was why Thay could speak with pauses that were truly empty. He expected nothing short of whatever would arise. How I will miss this, and will seek to place it in the center of my aspirations. I am deeply grateful to the incredibly dedicated monastic sangha for cultivating and protecting this material and energetic world where transformations can sprout and manifest. The Beauty of Thay’s Teachings. by Jane Duong, True Joyous Peace. The evening at 00:00 hour Pacific Time, the crossing over between Thursday January 20th and Friday January 21st, 2022, I could not sleep and the following words came out of my heart, not knowing of the near imminent future of Thay’s body departure from this world: “If one day the impermanence shall come upon us, let us continue to breathe and enjoy the breathing, continue to walk and enjoy the walking, under the beautiful brightness of the moonlight and during its absence. The moon is always here for us.” In 2009, during a question & answer session at the Winter Retreat at Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, California, the question was asked: “How can I practice better at the times when I get very deeply depressed and lonely, no matter how much I practice mindful moments to be happy?” It is important to accept your suffering as it is to accept your non-suffering. This question resonated with me. I, too, was struggling with the everyday life challenges. There was my work as a professional female health clinician, and life, with motherhood to my children, daughterhood to my aging mother, partnership with a man whose heart is...

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