Sister Chan Khong - Learning True Love: Practicing Buddhism in a Time of War

Learning True Love

Learning True Love

Practicing Buddhism in a Time of War

A Nuns Journey from Vietnam to France and the History of Thich Nhat Hanhs Buddhist Community

SISTER CHAN KHONG

Cao Ngoc Phuong

PARALLAX PRESS
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

PARALLAX PRESS
P.o. Box 7355
Berkeley, CA 94707
www.parallax.org

Parallax Press is the publishing division of Unified Buddhist Church, Inc.

original edition copyright 1993 by Unified Buddhist Church.

This edition 2007 by Unified Buddhist Church.

All rights reserved.

Printed in Canada on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any other information storage and retrieval system or technologies now know or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover and text design by Jess Morphew.

All photographs courtesy of Chan Khong and Chau Yoder.

The author and publisher would like to thank Therese Fitzgerald and Arnold Kotler, without whom this book would not be possible.

ABOUT THE USAGE OF NAMES

Sister Chan Khongs birth name, Cao Ngoc Phuong, is used throughout much of Learning True Love. Cao is her family name and Phuong her given name. Chan Khong (True Emptiness) is her Dharma name.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chan Khong, Sister.
Learning true love : practicing Buddhism in a time of war :
a nuns journey from Vietnam to France and the history of Thich Nhat Hanhs Buddhist community / Sister Chan Khong (Cao Ngoc Phuong). -- [Rev. ed.].

p. cm.

Previously published: c1993.
ISBN 978-1-888375-67-1

1. Cao, Ngoc Phuong. 2. Buddhist nuns--Vietnam--Biography. 3. Village des pruniers (Buddhist community)--History. I. Nhat Hanh, Thich. II. Title.

BQ944.02A3 2007

294.3092--dc22

[B]

2007004574

2 3 4 5 6 / 11 10 09 08 07

My students are also my teachers. I learn so much from them. Sister Chan Khong (whose name means True Emptiness) is among the foremost of these. Please allow me to tell you one of the important lessons she taught me. It was in 1966, when the war in Vietnam had become unbearable, and I was so absorbed in working to end the war it was hard for me to swallow my food. One day, Chan Khong was preparing a basket of fresh, fragrant herbs to serve with rice noodles, and she asked me, Thay, can you identify these fines herbes? Looking at her displaying the herbs with care and beauty on a large plate, I became enlightened. She had the ability to keep her attention on the herbs, and I realized I had to stop dwelling only on the war and learn to concentrate on the fines herbes also. We spent ten minutes discussing the herbs that could be found in the south of Vietnam and the ones in the central regions, and that encounter took my mind off the war, allowing me to recover the balance I needed so badly. In 1968, when I was in the south of France, I sought out the fines herbes of Provence with my full attention and interest.

Years later, a friend from America asked me, Thay, why do you waste your time planting lettuce? Wouldnt it be better to use the time to write poems? Anyone can plant lettuce, but few people can write such beautiful poetry. I smiled and said, My dear friend, if I do not plant this lettuce, I will not be able to write poetry. I did not reveal that my answer came from the encounter twelve years earlier with Sister True Emptiness. Even today when I read the manuscript handed to me by Chan Khong, I continue to learn from her. A teacher should always be at the same time a student, and a student must always be at the same time a teacher. When we remember this, we benefit from each other.

Sister True Emptiness has a great capacity for joy and happiness. That is what I appreciate most in her life. Her unwavering faith in the Dharma is strengthened each day as she continues to enjoy the fruit of transformation and healing born from the practice. Her stability, joy, and happiness are wonderful supports for many of us in Plum Village and in the circle of the greater sangha. Working for social change and helping people are sources of joy for her. The love and concern that underlie her work are deep. True Emptiness is also true love. Her story is more than just the words. Her whole life is a Dharma talk.

I regret that this book is still too short and that her words could not convey all the depth and reality of her path. Sister True Emptiness could have written a book ten times longer, because she has so much to tell. But she is more an activist than a writer, and for now we must be satisfied with the present work. If you have the opportunity to be with her, please ask her to tell you more about her experiences. You can learn a lot from her. She is a true bodhisattva.

Lately, Ive been despairing over the deaths and fewness of teachers. The idea of peace has hardly been thought, and its methods difficult to convey. The most famous teachers of peace, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. Our President, and in fact most people whether or not they are politicians, believe that the way to stop future war is to kill enemies. I have tried to untangle that logic. War is not the way to peace. Peace is the way to peace. But argument is not the way to peace either, nor the way to teach.

Reading Sister Chan Khongs autobiography, I learned exacting truths: The pacifist makes peace moment by moment all her lifetime, existentially becomingbeingpeace, being Buddhist, being human. Peacefully, lovingly, in the midst of war in Vietnam, Sister Chan Khong built communes, pioneer villages, started schools and taught in them, nursed the wounded and sick, fed the hungry, buried the dead, all the while organizing people to raise funds and to do work that changes the warring world. Most specially, she writes about giving the children a moon festival, and so teaching them a joyful rite of celebration. And all these deeds, all this life were tested in the worst of circumstances, the long, escalating civil war in Vietnam. Sister Chan Khong, Thich Nhat Hanh, and twelve other monks and nuns established and held a position that was neither nationalist nor communist, neither North nor South. They were a means and a hope for enemies to communicate and to end the war. This miraculous, strong pacifism did not die though its practitioners were jailed, tortured, murdered.

I am amazed and grateful that Sister Chan Khong teaches us how to access strength from the invisible. The Buddhists, trained in non-duality, were able to see that there are not two sides to Vietnam, and thus act wholeheartedly, a vision of the entire country in mind. Another sustenance is poetry. Sister Chan Khong gathers and interweaves through this book poems that Thich Nhat Hanh wrote at crucial events. Here are poemsprayers for peacewritten in devastated villages and at the Peace Conference in Paris. Here is the poem honoring a monk killed while being interrogated by the police. And Prayer for Land, a talisman carried by each of 566 boat people on a planned expedition to Australia led by Sister Chan Khong. Here are many poems of transition, for journeys and exile, a birthday poem, an ordination poem. And in the context of her life, Sister Chan Khong gives us Fourteen Precepts of Buddhism, which state the values that nourish the pacifistor social worker, as Sister Chan Khong calls herselfand keep her effective and heroic in the real world. With holy words as well as the example of her own life, Sister Chan Khong, Cao Ngoc Phuong, heartens and inspires the reader in need of being strong in peace.