Healing Diary
Whenever I visit Plum Village Hong Kong , I can always witness the “carrying capacity” of this place. Brothers and sisters have the affinity, power of mindfulness and smile, which enables the entire monastic community, including us, to carry together the various flows, changes, laughter and tears of different lives. It also allows people to see more clearly, to see others, to see themselves, and to see the beauty between breaths.
This kind of power gives people the courage to touch the depths of their hearts, to speak out their inner entanglements and distress, and to stop over-analyzing with their brains, so that their hearts will no longer be overwhelmed by these filth.
「No coming, no going,
no after, no before.
I hold you close to me.
I release you to be so free,
Because I am in you and you are in me.」
At the end of the Retreat, we sang this song hand in hand, tears streaming down unconsciously, feeling that this place presented me like a utopian worldview, one without distinction, without boundaries, without you and me, without duality The world is so lovely, rare, precious and beautiful
Although I have no chance to meet Thay personally, I am very grateful to Thay Thich Nhat Hanh for sowing the seeds of mindfulness to the world, to the hearts of different people, and to my heart.
“Please call me by my true name” — from the book of “Please Call Me By My True Name” Thich Nhat Hanh
Do not say that I‘ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive,
in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is
the birth and death of all that are alive.
…
My joy is like spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
And so the door of my heart
could be left open
The door of compassion.
January 13, 2025
