Healing Within

Born in Central Vietnam at the height of the Vietnam War, Sister Dang Nghiem grew up singing made-up songs to comfort herself. After moving to the United States, she began writing poetry at the encouragement of an English teacher, and eventually ordained as a nun in the Plum Village tradition following the sudden death of her partner. Her latest book, The River in Me: Verses of Transformation, brings together over three decades of her poetry, charting her own journey from turmoil and loss to tranquility and compassion.

In a recent episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sat down with Sister D to discuss how writing has helped her process the violence she witnessed, why she hopes her poetry can offer not just a description of suffering but also a way out of it, and how gathas, or verses, can transform mundane activities into moments of awareness.

Could you tell us a bit about your childhood? What was it that first drew you to poetry? I was born in Vietnam in 1968 during a very intense period of the Vietnam War, or what the Vietnamese people would call the Khang chien chong My, the War Against the Americans. I was born as a result of the war: I had a Vietnamese mother and an American father, so my birth and then subsequently my brother’s birth were not very welcomed. It was a turbulent time. My mother was not married, and she wasn’t there to raise me or my brother, so my grandmother raised us. I also experienced sexual abuse as a child, and then my mother disappeared when I was 12. There was a lot of unspoken suffering and searing pain inside me as a child. But who could I communicate that to? There was nobody around to be my friend or my mentor, not even my own mother, so I started to make up songs about my daily life and what I was feeling, and that was cathartic for me. Writing songs and poetry was a dear friend to me, a soulmate to me, at a very young age.

You write that it was your grandmother who first encouraged you to become a nun. How did this influence your life path? Well, Grandmother was very spiritual and wise. Before I left Vietnam for the US, at the age of 16, Grandmother reiterated her wishes to me: First, she wanted me to help raise my brother to become a good person. Second, she wanted me to strive for higher education. And third, she wanted me to become a nun—she told me that was the way to freedom.

I diligently carried out my grandmother’s wishes: My brother is a wonderful, loving, hardworking person; I graduated from college and medical school; but the third one I never really understood. Why would you become a nun when you have achieved so much? It didn’t make sense in modern times.

But when my partner, John, passed away, I understood. I had achieved everything I worked hard for, but when he died, I saw very clearly that my worldly success did not bring me true happiness. I was still drowned in my sorrow.

Thankfully, I had met our teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, only three weeks before John passed away, and so I saw there was another possibility: Instead of committing suicide, I could choose a life of peace. My grandmother had chosen that life since I was a child, and the image of her sitting peacefully on a plank bed chanting and doing the rosary was very strong in me. For many years, when I was going through episodes of depression, I would see that image of her. Even in my dreams, I would dream of Grandmother, and her presence would soothe me so that in the morning I could get up and continue. I feel that I have been so blessed with Grandmother, and then with John and then with Thay.

You say that while writing has played a role in your healing, writing in itself won’t change your life; mindfulness will. So how has mindfulness changed your life? Writing started as a means for me to express my thoughts and feelings. But it was the practice of mindfulness that actually helped me to process and transform and heal that suffering. Every mindful moment is a lived poem. Through mindfulness, I’ve learned to live in the present moment and to see my suffering not just through the lens of the past but as it’s manifesting right here and right now.

The way we think, the way we speak, the way we behave—it’s like we are a wounded child, even though we have an adult body. With mindfulness, I’m able to recognize that and make that discernment. So I breathe, I smile, and I send love and attention and care to that wounded child. In that moment, it’s like a wave beginning to build up to a tsunami. With awareness, I can soothe that wave so that it can go back to its original seed of despair, confusion, and helplessness, and it can be embraced. That builds confidence and faith in myself that I can care for my inner child bit by bit, moment by moment.

Writing is important in the sense that we can express our loss, despair, and confusion, but if we also realize transformation and healing in our daily life, it will naturally be expressed in our writing. That can inspire hope and confidence in others.

In the Plum Village tradition, you write insight gathas, or verses, that convey your deepest aspirations and point the way toward happiness. So what is a gatha, and what have you learned from reading and writing these verses? When monks and nuns achieved enlightenment, they would leave behind poems that we call gathas. Many Zen masters throughout the centuries also wrote poems of liberation, and our teacher, Thay, continued that: When we became dharma teachers, we wrote an insight gatha to present to Thay and to the community, and Thay would respond with a gatha called a transmission gatha.

I have an insight gatha in this poetry collection that I presented to Thay and the community in 2008. One day, I was walking to the meditation hall, and I passed by an oleander tree. As I walked by, a flower bud dropped right in front of me. Of course, I had seen flower buds falling many times before, but in that moment, because I was mindful and truly present, I bent down, picked up that bud, and looked at it, and I saw that a flower can fall at any stage—not only when it’s fully bloomed or wilted but as a bud as well. That was a moment of enlightenment for me.

Of course, I had that knowledge for many years, but the moment when you are truly present, and you touch something so deeply, the truth of it shakes. It’s like the image that when the Buddha became enlightened, the earth quaked seven times. In that moment, the earth shook seven times in me in the sense that I saw that John’s life is like that, too, and my mother’s life is like that—many lives die young, and that is a part of nature. But how do we live in such a way that life can continue? The Buddha passed away two thousand six hundred years ago, but the Buddha is very much alive in us, in our practice, and in the teachings. That was my insight gatha.

This excerpt has been edited for length and clarity. Visit tricycle.org/podcast for more.

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Insight Gatha

A flower falls, thousands continuing.
A song fades, birds singing out of space.
The heart of love illuminates in the sea of fire,
Fulfilling its vow with the ancient moon.

Reproduced from The River in Me (August 2024) by Sister Dang Nghiem, with the permission of Parallax Press.