Beautiful Herbs and a Day of Mindfulness: Sister Chan Khong

            Sister Chan Khong was a colleague of Thich Nhat Hahn from their early days in Vietnam and a co-founder of engaged Buddhism. Much of her youth was defined by dictators, regime changes, and wars. She writes in unsparing detail about waves of repression and violence. She co-created the School of Youth for Social Services that went to remote villages to bring food or medical supplies, bury war dead, set up schools in war zones. During the persecution of Buddhists by Catholic dictator Ngo Dinh Diem, many of her colleagues, friends, and teachers were under arrest or killed or in torture chambers. She writes that she wanted to scream, to go to jail, to immolate herself. Instead, she took charge of the newly minted student organizing group and continued their work for human rights. A colleague asked her how she could remain so indefatigably energetic and even cheerful. She reflected that her “fuel” was her mindfulness practice. No matter how dire the circumstances, she returned to her breath. She envisioned those who caused so much harm as “difficult future Buddhas.” She withdrew once a week to dedicate herself to a day of mindfulness - retreating to someplace of natural beauty to walk, chant, eat simply with members of her community - returning refreshed and grounded. 

            Thich Nhat Hahn remembers a time during the wars in Vietnam when he was so cast down by the suffering he could hardly eat. “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 fine herbs also … That encounter … allowed me to recover the balance I needed so badly.” (Thich Nhat Hahn, Forward, Learning True Love, Sister Chan Khong)

            Sister Chan Khong is a good teacher to us because she does not teach us mindfulness as the fruit of long practice in the serenity of a dharma hall – though such teachers are to be admired, too. She learned her practice in the killing fields and through the destruction of her beloved homeland. She shows us what she did. As her heart breaks over abandoned orphans or incarcerated activists and poets, she walks. She refused to abandon her mindfulness days. When Vietnam fell she was so broken she did little but mindful walking for weeks and months on end. And she figured out alternative methods for sending food and medicine to orphans. And co-founded Plum Village. And taught the dharma to new generations of poets, activists, monastics, home-makers.

            “But what can I do?” This question haunts and inspires us. It is not a question that comes from nothing – as if we had been obliviously eating bonbons and playing golf these last years. The desperation of this question is that we have been doing a great deal – and yet here we are.

            Sister Chan Khong reminds us that the body and the spirit must be tended. Sister Chan Khong, as the bombs fell, as her comrades were carted off to prison, as villagers starved and orphans wept – kept a day of mindfulness. Walking. Preparing a meal. She kept her day of mindfulness as if it were a spar to keep from sinking into the sea. She sorted herbs on a beautiful plate as if the world depended on it.

            The world is so achingly beautiful. The sun, in its setting, caresses the tips of still-bare trees with hints of red and gold. Our time with those dear to us, colleagues, congregants, students, friends – is ordinary as bread and sacred as eucharist or Shabbat. I may find myself in a situation when the memory that I ever felt this way has become as remote as the most distant star. The powers of tyranny are so much more extensive than the ability to kill the body. But if there is a moment when I have lost this memory - it is still true. The goodness deep down things can never be undone and holds us up even when we recant our love of it. It will find us again. And now, while we can still rejoice in the beauty and tenderness of beings, let us walk mindfully. Let us be faithful to practices that preserve our heart. Let us feed on beautiful herbs even – especially - when our hearts quail.