Reader's Guide for Ch. 3-5 for "Healing"

[Parallax Press]

Here's the reader's guide for Chapters 3-5 for Healing by Sister Dang Nghiem.

As always, the guide is also available:
http://www.parallax.org/blog/healing-...



Remember that our Reading Peace book club members get 25% off on our monthly picks for the duration of the month, so order your copy of Healing with the code PEACE2.

Reflections
1) While Sister D was in medical school, she had the opportunity to help various kinds of people — incarcerated youth from diverse backgrounds as well as people with terminal illnesses such as Mr. Lamphere.

Interestingly, Sister D notes throughout Chapter 3 how she learned more from them than the other way around.

Notice how each person’s life she touched also transformed her own in some way.Whose lives have you touched and how have they transformed you?

2) Learning to deal with grief is a major part of being alive. In Sister D’s case, for example, it sparked her transformation from medical student to nun, thus in a roundabout way fulfilling her grandmother’s wish that she become a nun to liberate all beings.

Loss —from death or through some other means— is an end, but also a continuation.

3) Chapter 5 is about Sister D’s transition to monastic life at Plum Village Monastery in France. She wanted to begin anew, but this is easier said than done. As she wrote, she was constantly reminded of her multiple past traumas and “now I had to face my own mind.”

Think about a time you wanted a fresh start for yourself. Did it ever happen? Why or why not?


Food for Thought

“My life is the life of all beings, immersed in the sea of suffering. Because of ignorance, we cause suffering for each other and for ourselves.” p. 33

“When the doctors opened his abdomen, they saw that the cancer had spread to all the adjacent organs. There was nothing they could do except to sew him back up immediately. That night I came to visit him at his hospital bed. ‘It’s funny!’ he said. ‘Now I feel more at ease even though I know I will die.’ I just sat quietly and let him talk. ‘Isn’t it strange?’ he said. ‘I have been in pain all day long, and I haven’t felt any pain at all since you came to see me. I wish I had become someone like you. Instead, I became a bitter and cynical person.’ It was two o’clock in the morning. The other patient in his room was already sleeping. All was quiet. The lights were off, and there was only some faint light coming from the hallway. In that half dark and half light, Mr. Lamphere and I quietly held each other’s hands, with beaming smiles.” p. 39

“Some time in my first or second year of medical school, I found a book by the Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. I never finished the book, but I particularly liked a story he told about a man who was in a mental hospital because he believed he was a kernel of corn. Every time he saw a chicken, he would run for his life.

A doctor came to talk to the man and told him, ‘You are a human being. You shouldn’t be afraid of chickens.’ The man began to understand. The doctor told him to repeat to himself five hundred times a day that he was a human being and not a kernel of corn. After a month, the doctor came back to check on him. The nurses reported that this man had been practicing very diligently. He would stay in his room and every day he would repeat his mantra, ‘I am a human being.’ He was making great progress. So the doctor said, ‘I will release you. Walk with me to the office.’

They walked to the office to do the paperwork. On the way to the office, the man saw some chickens—this was a mental hospital in Vietnam, where there are chickens roaming around—and he ran for his life. When the doctor caught up with the patient, he asked, ‘Why did you run away?’ And the man said, ‘Well, I know I’m not a kernel of corn. But does the chicken know that?'” p.46-7

“I vow to bring awareness
into my dreams tonight,
to dispel all fear,
see desires as empty,
and find ways with mindfulness and
to know what is true and what is unreal.” p. 61

“Outwardly, perhaps the two worlds in which you and I live in seem dramatically different. I am in a monastery, and you are in a state prison. Upon deeper looking, perhaps we are going through experiences that are more similar than we’ve realized. It’s the minimal, simple living style that we both have… I’ve begun to come back to myself, to listen more deeply, and to understand what is really there.” p. 62

“When I missed the physical body of my partner, I meditated on its parts, tossed by the waves, torn, dispersed, and deteriorated. When memories of our lives together became acute and intense, I breathed.

I breathed through each wave of yearning, of regret, of guilt, of what-could-havebeen. Every time I asked him, ‘Where are you?’ A quiet voice immediately responded, ‘I am here. I have never left you.’ I did not only lose a partner.

I lost my childhood all over again. I lost my soul mate. I lost the accepting father and the gentle mother that he was to me. I lost the dream of a ‘normal life,’ which I had tried so hard to achieve.

Now I had to face my own mind.” p. 63

[Tim]

can't help but feel very inspired to do more volunteer work in my own community. I tutor at the local community college, and it is extremely rewarding to help the students, to help them learn and succeed. but they also help me by giving me opportunities to practice compassion and lovingkindness, and I learn so much about myself when I interact with each of them who are so different yet the same. I stopped tutoring local low-literacy adults over a year ago because they were inconsistent with showing up for our meetings. I will reenlist for this opportunity.

[[deleted user]]

"Loss —from death or through some other means— is an end, but also a continuation.
Think about a time you wanted a fresh start for yourself. Did it ever happen? Why or why not?"

I was moved by the story of Jonh's death as my elder brother drowned 19 years ago aged 39 in front of his wife and three daughters when he was on holidays in Spain... This death was a great trauma to me, it took me years to recover from it, but it was afterwards when looking for life meaning and reading all kinds of spiritual stuff that I "met" Thay, first through an article in a magazine, then I began reading his books and practicing on my own. Only last April did I manage to go to Plum Village for the French retreat, at the end of which I received the five mindfulness trainings.

So yes, the death of my brother was an end, a brutal one, and also a continuation as it changed my life.

I didn't look for a fresh start but life gave it to me with my brother's death. It took years for this fresh start to take place, but it happened...

[Pixiepjp]

Notice how each person’s life she touched also transformed her own in some way.Whose lives have you touched and how have they transformed you?

I worked in a local cemetery/funeral home. I saw a lot of sorrow and grief .
Most times people just wanted a person to listen to them and maybe just to hug them . I hope that I was able to help them and ease their grief even for a short time. How did they transform me ? Without a doubt each person I came in contact with made me a better listener and a more compassionate person.

[Alison]

Pascale wrote: ""Loss —from death or through some other means— is an end, but also a continuation.
Think about a time you wanted a fresh start for yourself. Did it ever happen? Why or why not?"
I found your story very moving. What a blessing that you found Thay. I send you my blessings too.
Alison x
I was moved by the..."

[[deleted user]]

Alison wrote: "Pascale wrote: ""Loss —from death or through some other means— is an end, but also a continuation.
Think about a time you wanted a fresh start for yourself. Did it ever happen? Why or why not?"
I f..."

Thanks Alison :-)

[Alexa]

1) Whose lives have you touched and how have they transformed you?

I had an acquaintance in college send me a text asking for help. He was very distraught over a variety of things, and didn't feel like he could move. I went across campus (grabbing some food for him along the way), and sat with him for a few hours while he just told me everything that was going on and how he felt. He even cried (he told me he never does).

As we became closer friends, he taught me so much. About what it means to be a good friend/sibling, how to love myself unconditionally, how to never stop learning and aiming for improvement. As of today, we've been dating for a little over a year. =)

2) Loss —from death or through some other means— is an end, but also a continuation.

I love this. As much as it can hurt to lose something or someone, its loss can bring about so much positivity too. One way I can think of is the freedom it can grant someone in various ways.

3) Think about a time you wanted a fresh start for yourself. Did it ever happen? Why or why not?

This one made me shake my head at myself. I've tried giving myself a fresh start many times, but I've never felt it happen. Any "fresh starts" are quickly followed by me falling back into my own negative patterns, usually about how I perceive myself. So I've had moments of feeling truly free, but I've had difficulty sustaining them.

Another reason I've been loving this narration is because it gives me hope that I'm not hopeless because I haven't yet "gotten over" all these things that bother me - here we are, reading about a nun, who is still learning to deal with the things that haunt her! Prior to this book, I thought that nuns and monks had overcome these types of thoughts before becoming monastics. It's quite interesting to learn that they are still learning, just the same!

[Elaine]

Huong touched my heart as she worked so hard to get ahead of her suffering and make a normal life for herself. The force of her crying and screaming in the forest near the Lower Hamlet may have been in direct proportion to the heroic effort she expended trying to outrun her childhood.

The times I’ve wanted a fresh start I thought of it in terms of running away from a bad situation. But I have felt myself run into a wall and known I couldn’t continue on the same course. It was the day after a particularly horrific encounter with an abusive boss when I was wondering where to go from there that I found Thấy’s book “Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames.” As I read I began to calm down. That was my fresh start, a gift from Thấy.

I somehow found my way to volunteering for a local hospice. The patients and their families have taught me some pretty big lessons. The main one is that things are not always as they appear and that I just have to suspend judgment and meet people where they are unless there’s actual danger or abuse. We all cope in our own ways and no one can tell someone else how to grieve. All I can do is offer support and a calm presence.

[Eileen]

Last night, I was sitting (as a hospice volunteer)with an actively dying lady. Her grown grandson was next to her and I was in the background, breathing with and for both of them. To give them more time together, I moved further into the background and began reading the words of Sister D (since I'm reading it on Kindle, I just know that I'm at the 62% spot ;) "When the wave realizes that she is the water, she is free of all comparison. She has no need to try to return to the water. She can just be. She is free." This became my meditation, within my breath, for the next hour. I was the water, the dear patient and her family members were the water, all in the nursing home/the neighborhood/the city, the water. We were all flowing together. There was no beginning, to ending, no separation between us or between birth and death. I am so grateful for the unexpected grace that enters my life every day.

[Elaine]

Eileen wrote: "Last night, I was sitting (as a hospice volunteer)with an actively dying lady. Her grown grandson was next to her and I was in the background, breathing with and for both of them. To give them more..."

Oh, Eileen, I know that moment. That's my work, too, and I often read to patients from Thay's work and tell dying patients about the water and the wave. No coming, no going; no servant, no served. I enjoy all your posts but I really love this one.

[Ellen]

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Ellen

[Eileen]

Elaine, after I posted, I read your story about the path to hospice volunteering. Meeting people where they are - this is so important to learn throughout our days and nights... and it reminds me to do the same with myself (as Sister D did in her life)...meet myself where I am. Much metta to you, especially in your work with the dying.

[Eileen]

and thank you, Ellen.