Learning to Die Each Day

One morning, I was walking toward the meditation hall for our morning meditation when a flower bud fell from an oleander branch. I had seen flowers fall many times before, but this time, as I walked peacefully and mindfully, the falling bud registered deeply in my mind. A flower doesn’t have to be fully bloomed or withered in order to fall, I remembered. Even a bud—barely opened—can be shaken loose if a strong wind comes along. A flower can fall at any stage of its life. With deep awareness, though, the simple fact of life’s inherent impermanence can be a transformative insight that changes how you look at yourself, how you view your circumstances, and how you respond to them—to life itself. Remembrance of our inevitable dying need not be a surrender to despair. It can be a reason to step more fully into the astonishing beauty of being here at all.

The Path Chose Me

I encountered death more than once in my young life—my mother disappeared when I was 12, and my grandmother, who had held me through that loss, also passed away. Yet the full weight of impermanence did not reveal itself to me until the sudden death of someone I loved deeply. 

Before becoming a nun, I was a young doctor who functioned well on the surface, even as depression and old wounds quietly shaped my days. One afternoon at the HIV clinic, an attending doctor casually mentioned a retreat Thich Nhat Hanh would be leading in a few weeks. We had never spoken about Buddhism, yet he handed me a pamphlet that would change the course of my life. The decision to go seemed to make itself. I submitted a request for five days off, fully expecting it to be denied. Instead, permission came the very next day. I went to Parallax Press, the Plum Village publishing house in Berkeley, to ask for financial assistance, and was told I could help with tasks to reduce the cost. Everything fell into place as though it had been prearranged.

My partner, John, drove me to the airport. Our relationship was strained—not because of anything he had done, but because my emotional landscape had grown dim. It was an old pattern of withdrawal I didn’t yet understand. He had asked if he should join the retreat, but I told him I needed to go alone. “This retreat will decide the direction of my life,” I said without fully understanding why.

At the retreat, I followed the schedule diligently. I had read Peace Is Every Step, one of Thay’s most popular books, on John’s bookshelf, but I had never practiced meditation before. Listening to Thay speak, his gentle presence reminded me of my grandmother. I cried through his dharma talks. When Thay taught the four noble truths, I realized for the first time that although I had been a victim of abuse, I had also become a participant in my own suffering—through my thoughts, speech, and habitual ways of running and fighting. Wherever I went, there I was.

Walking meditation along the sea was breathtaking. On the first walk, I found myself behind Thay. A thought flashed—“I can walk like him!”—a familiar impulse to measure myself against others. But the peace in his steps was its own teaching. My heart opened and I followed Thay’s footsteps with humility and gratitude. On the last day, I received the five mindfulness trainings and the lineage name Joyful Service of the Heart.

When I returned home, my love for John resurfaced clearly and tenderly. Yet I also felt bound by the third mindfulness training, which asks us to be utterly certain of long-term commitment before engaging in sexual intimacy. I told John I could not share the same bed and moved my pillow to the couch. He was confused and hurt. The gulf between us widened, and my old habits—rigidity, righteousness, depression—rushed in to fill it. Within two weeks, despite all I had learned, I was once again slipping away from myself and into depression. 

My birthday was approaching. John wanted us to celebrate, but I told him I was on call the night before and unsure if I could see him. As I drove to Oakland through golden sunlight and crisp air that morning, I felt our love again and promised myself I’d see him the next day. When I reached Oakland, thick fog swallowed everything. It struck me that life was like this too: suddenly unclear, even though the sun still shone somewhere above the clouds. 

That night in the emergency room, my pager went off. It was my best friend, Jennifer. The moment I heard her voice, I knew. She told me John had gone swimming at Half Moon Bay and never came back. His clothes were on the beach, and his car remained in the parking lot. The Coast Guard had searched but found nothing. 

I drove to the ocean, calling for John, weeping, howling into the dark. The waves crashed hard. I felt impossibly small. All I could do was pray. In my heart, I knew I would not see him again. 

On the drive home, I told Jennifer, “I’m not going back to medicine.” Something in me had broken open. I saw clearly that no amount of success or love could fill the cavern of unresolved suffering inside me. My grandmother’s old wish for me to become a nun—a wish I had long dismissed—surfaced with startling clarity. I realized it might be the only path left other than death.

When I arrived back at the apartment, it felt warm and tender, as if John had left a final blessing. He had done the laundry and folded my clothes. I lit incense and knelt before the altar with photos of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion; my grandmother; and my mother. My mind was strangely calm. When the incense burned out, I stood and looked out over the city. Morning sunlight reflected off windows in the distance, forming a giant anatomical heart. I cried out, “I see you, John!”

We returned to the beach the next morning—my birthday. A foil balloon drifted across the water and landed near me. It read “Happy Birthday,” as if John had sent a final message.

His mother and sister came soon after. I asked for nothing but his poncho and sleeping bag. When I finally slept, I dreamed of floating on a vast, silent ocean—peaceful and infinite. I felt certain John had let go peacefully too. He had always said he wished to die at sea.

Finding the Way Home

In the two months after John’s death, I began preparing to leave for Plum Village. I gave away almost everything I owned. Those weeks felt like walking through a corridor between two lives. I slept on the floor of the bare apartment, wrapped in John’s sleeping bag. I wasn’t afraid of ghosts—I felt like a ghost myself. Grief hollowed me, emptied me, and I moved through the days as though my body kept living while my spirit lagged far behind. 

For days the despair was so strong I drove along Highway 1, staring at the cliffs and the crashing waves below. How beautiful and full of promise that road had once seemed to us, the many times John and I explored its sweeping vistas and hidden beaches. Now, all I saw were the places where everything could end in an instant if I just turned the steering wheel a few inches. And yet something in me held. I couldn’t bear the thought of my brother finding out I had given up. So instead of driving off the edge, I would turn around, return to the apartment, curl into John’s sleeping bag, and cry until morning. I could never remember if I had eaten. Raw despair was my fuel. 

One morning, I drove to the hospital to resign from my medical residency. The hospital administrators and my colleagues were empathetic and kind, though they did not understand. One asked, “Will you really shave off your beautiful hair?” Another asked, “What if you realize you made the wrong decision?” I said I would give monastic life five years, but inside I knew: This wasn’t a career change. This was self-preservation. 

Life became strangely perilous during that time. Strangers sensed my vulnerability—some with kindness, others with predatory certainty. I found myself in situations that could have ended disastrously. A man drove me down a deserted road; a mechanic tried to pressure me into going away with him; colleagues professed their love for me. Each time, some small current—courage, intuition, protection—carried me through and kept me steady. All I wanted was true peace. 

Eventually, the only thing left was to leave. My brother Sonny flew to San Francisco to be with me on the forty-ninth day after John’s passing, a day on which Buddhist ceremonies would be performed for him. Unable to accept my decision to become a nun, Sonny sat alone in his car outside the temple during John’s ceremonies. Although we had lost our parents young, I had always been a stable presence for my brother. Now he feared he was losing me, too.

I carried only what I could fit into a backpack: a few sets of clothes, John’s sleeping bag and poncho, the pair of Teva sandals he had given me as his first gift. When I arrived in Plum Village, I was raw and jagged with grief, stripped of direction. The quiet there was unsettling and consoling at the same time. The monks and nuns walked slowly, each step placed carefully on the earth. I wrote a letter to Thay asking to become a nun, pouring everything onto the page—my despair, my near-suicidal drives along Highway 1, the nights wrapped in John’s sleeping bag, the hollow ache of losing every plan I had made for my life. Most of all, I wrote that I no longer knew how to live.

Thay did not answer with advice or explanations, but with his presence: the way he drank his tea, the way he smiled. The way the sangha breathed together in silence. It was as if the whole community whispered: “You are safe now. Stay. Breathe!” Little by little, my breath returned. Not without tears, but just one moment after the next.

Learning to Die Daily

John’s death opened a door in me that I could not, would not, close again. Once I arrived at Plum Village, Thay began teaching me how to look directly at death, not with despair, but with clarity. What I learned there has shaped every day of my life since. 

To face death is not only to face the moment the body stops breathing. It is to face the truth of impermanence in each breath, each step, each letting go. Learning to die daily is how we learn to live fully. Through practice we begin to see nothing can be grasped—not our bodies, not our thoughts, not the people we love. When we accept this, we live with a different kind of tenderness, no longer sacrificing our health to make excess money and then sacrificing our money to recuperate our health. When we see death, we see what a waste it is to be so anxious about the future that we can’t enjoy the present. If we stop living as if we will never die, then we will not die without having lived.

To face death is not only to face the moment the body stops breathing. It is to face the truth of impermanence in each breath, each step, each letting go. Learning to die daily is how we learn to live fully.

One way I practice dying each day is very simple: I keep my space in order. I place the lid back on my cup. I tidy my room and make my bed. Before traveling, I sort through my belongings to see what can be given away. Monastics do this before each three-month winter rains retreat. These small acts remind me nothing truly belongs to me; I could leave this body at any moment. When I go to sleep, I expect to wake—but I also know I might not. When I travel, I may or may not return. This awareness is not morbid. It is freeing. 

The Buddha taught that among all wholesome deeds, the greatest merit comes from the simple awareness of impermanence. Everything changes. Our joys, our sorrows, our youth, our strength—none of it stays. The earth itself is impermanent. When we forget this, we cling to what has already passed or chase after what has not yet come. When we remember impermanence, we stop waiting for life to begin. We recognize what is available to us right now: our breath, our health, our relationships, our community, our capacity to practice. Gratitude becomes a wellspring of energy and joy.

Many of us focus on our views and ambitions and forget to care for our bodies and minds. When life does not unfold the way we imagined, we collapse into despair and thoughts of worthlessness. We spend so much time fighting outward battles that when we finally turn inward, we feel estranged from ourselves. This is why daily practice matters.

With each breath, we touch the truth of life and death: To breathe in, we must release the out-breath; to breathe out, we must release the in-breath. Each breath is a small life and death. Mindfulness becomes a rehearsal for dying with dignity and without fear—a practice of letting go, of loosening our grasp, of opening the heart. In Buddhism, death is not simply the cessation of respiration. It is also the closing in of craving, fear, or despair. Death, in this deeper sense, is not only the end of the body. It is any moment when we lose the capacity to see clearly, to love, to be kind. Wrong views like craving, fear, and hatred are all forms of dying. Awareness, presence, and understanding are forms of birth.

When we remember impermanence, we stop waiting for life to begin. We recognize what is available to us right now: our breath, our health, our relationships, our community, our capacity to practice.

The Buddha once described people as being like “fresh young grass, cut and laid out in the sun to dry”—bright with potential, yet quickly withering when caught in regret for the past, fear of the future, and distraction in the present. Not long ago, a young man, strong and full of life, told me, “I feel like I am dying. I can’t live my life. I’m full of anxiety and unable to do anything!” He was like that fresh young grass—vibrant in form, yet already losing life because he was consumed by fear, longing, and restlessness. If you ever feel dimmed by a sense of bleakness or disconnection, try visualizing yourself as that young grass, freshly cut and laid out to dry. See how quickly life slips away when we are not rooted in the present moment. Then breathe, and gently return. 

The flower does not stop being when it withers. It becomes fragrance, compost, soil, nourishment for new seeds. When we look deeply, we see dying is not separate from living. It is another form of continuation. To live fully, we must learn to die in each moment—to let go of what no longer serves us, to soften our fixed ideas, to release our grasp on the people we love. Then life becomes real. Precious. Possible.

♦

Adapted from Live Beautifully, Die Beautifully: Field Notes from the Edge of Impermanence by Sister Dang Nghiem © 2026. Reprinted with permission from Parallax Press, parallax.org.