Apr 2007

Today is my last day in Vietnam. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am eager to see my husband and my dogs. I have carried them with me in my heart these last weeks, thinking of them so often. When it was hard to fall asleep at night, I would think about what they were doing back home in Connecticut, and that would soothe me to sleep. On the other hand, I love this country and am sad to leave it. Vietnam has woven her way into my spirit. Not everything has been easy or peaceful or happy, but the whole web of life here is entrancing.

I have no agenda for the day, so I have been wandering, mostly in the Old Quarter. I started my day with a visit to a pagoda just south of the Old Quarter, Quan Su. I've read that it's one of the busiest pagodas in Hanoi. ("Pagoda" is a word used only for Buddhist temples in Vietnam. There are many other kinds of temples, but only Buddhist temples are "pagodas.") Indeed, there were a number of people chanting, praying, and doing prostrations. Not for the first time, I noted that most of them were women.

Then I slowly walked back to the shores of Hoan Kiem Lake. It was late morning and it's a hot day, so I treated myself to a small cone of green rice ice cream. (My friends and family know that in the U.S., I follow a vegan diet. I have found it challenging to do that while travelling and still stay healthy, so while I am in Vietnam, I am enjoying a vegetarian--but not vegan--diet!)

Then I did some shopping. A friend asked me to bring her a water puppet, so I stopped into several stores until I found one I liked. I hope she likes it, too! The same shop sold items made by some of the indigenous people of Vietnam, and I fell in love with two jackets made by the Hmong people. So those found their way into the bargaining...

For the third time during my stays in Hanoi, I ate at the Hanoi Garden restaurant. It is next door to my hotel, so it's convenient, but it's also lovely and quiet, and the food is good. I chatted with a couple from New Zealand and made notes in my journal. Then I walked to a lovely cafe/restaurant, Moca, near the main cathedral in Hanoi, and sipped what will probably be my last cup of Vietnamese coffee here.

Finally, I walked up to the north end of the Old Quarter to Baguette and Chocolate, a cafe that employs and trains Hanoi street children. They have a delectable selection of French pastries. I had one very small pear tart and wished I had room to sample something else. Now I am back in my lovely hotel, the Hong Ngoc Hotel on Hong Manh street, settled into a cool suite five stories above the horns and motorcycles. (See a few new photos, including one of Hong Ngoc, at the end of my photo album at http://tinyurl.com/2sbdac.)

I'll return to the U.S. with a few items to remind me of this beautiful country, with many photos, and a journal full of memories. It is, however, the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and the wisdom of the many Dharma friends I met and travelled with that will stay with me the longest. I read an article on the Internet that said over 2,000 people turned out for the Great Requiem ceremony in Hanoi this past weekend. That is such wonderful news! During one of his Dharma talks, Thay said:

"The seeds of Buddhism have sprouted green and fresh in the soil of the West. Practice there is very different than it is in Vietnam. People do not offer fruit and incense. Buddhism in the West is not for devotion but for concrete methods of practice to unravel difficulties. Donation and devotion [as practiced in Vietnam] can help us relieve suffering, but Buddhism isn't only a religion. It is a source of wisdom that can help us and help us to help others."

Integrating traditional Vietnamese Buddhism with the practices of mindfulness that Thich Nhat Hanh has taught so successfully in the West will be an ongoing effort. I have appreciated the soothing effects of devotional Buddhism here, feeling at peace in the incense smoke and dark, cool interiors of the temples. But I also know personally the great benefits of mindfulness practice and wish for all Vietnamese Buddhists that they will find a way to incorporate these beautiful practices into their existing traditions. And I thank them for all that they have taught me during my time as a guest here. Nam mô A-di-đà Phật

My friends and I travelled to Malacca yesterday, about 100 km from Kuala Lumpur, to experience Malaysian history. On the way, we stopped at an outdoor history museum where we visited traditional homes from across Malaysia. It was interesting to see the commonalities and differences between these buildings and those I saw just a couple of days ago at the Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. The Malaysian homes, except those from Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo, use a lot more wood and less bamboo and natural grasses than the Vietnamese.

Malacca is a beautiful town with a rich history. A seaport, it has been home to Chinese, Indians, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, and British. Each group has left its mark to some extent. Ivy said that the city had changed a lot since she was last there in the early/mid 1990s. The four or five museums we visited were all new, and there were a couple of new shopping malls. ("Malaysians love to shop," Ivy tells me.)

We enjoyed dinner last night at what we Westerners would call an outdoor food court, a style of eating I'd experienced before in Malaysia. But this food court was in a beautiful new building with a historic feel. It isn't easy being a vegetarian in Malaysia, but I got to sample some Indonesian specialties, including cassava greens and bamboo shoots! And I washed it all down with the juice of a fragrant coconut.

The museums we visited were quite interesting. I was as taken by the buildings as I was by some of the exhibits. The city has done a lovely job of adaptive reuse of some of the historic structures. The streets in the downtown area are quite narrow. Small shops and homes line the streets behind shaded walkways. Some of the buildings are painted a deep, rich brick red, and many have tile roofs. We returned to K.L. this afternoon, and I enjoyed a home-cooked meal and got to eat my first fresh durian. YUM!!

(See recent photos at http://tinyurl.com/32g6hw.)

I continue to think about the rich teachings from Thay. Malaysia celebrates 50 years of independence this year. Like many countries, their independence was hard won, although independence here seems to have been marked by less violence than in other areas. The primary reason for Thay's visit to Vietnam was to conduct three Great Requiem Ceremonies to help heal the wounds of war in his native land. Here are some of the words from the ceremony, which certainly are a powerful invocation for Vietnam, but are equally meaningful in many other situations marked by conflict:

"We vow that from now on we will not let the country be separated again, not even one more time. From now on, when there are internal difficulties, we will not request the help of any foreign power to intervene with weapons and troops in our country. From now on, we will not start a way for any ideology. From now on, we will not use foreign weapons to kill each other. From now on we will use our best efforts to build a society with real democracy, to be able to resolve all kinds of disagreements by peaceful democratic methods, and we will not resort to violence against fellow countrymen and countrywomen.

We vow...to build a brotherhood/sisterhood and mutual love of fellow countrymen and countrywomen. We will remember that pumpkin vines and squash vines can share a single frame, that chickens from the same mother will never fight each other. This insight from our ancestors will shine out its light for us, now and forever."

On 19 April, I took a late night flight from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur to visit my friend Ivy Wong and her family. A Malaysian woman who sat across the aisle from me on the plane saw the two Thich Nhat Hanh books that I was reading and asked to borrow one. She hadn't heard of him but was interested in the Dharma. She enjoyed looking at the book and wrote the title so she could try to find it in Malaysia. We had a wonderful conversation about simple living and religious practices.

This is my first visit to peninsular Malaysia. I travelled to Sarawak, on Borneo, with my husband over a decade ago. That was when I met Ivy Wong, the friend I am visiting here, and got to know her when she was a university student. She's now married, has two beautiful daughters, and has a position with the World Wildlife Federation-Malaysia.

Today, I spent the day today touring KL, which is a beautiful city, and sampling some of the wonderful foods that Malaysia has to offer. Malaysia is a tantalizing mixture of ethnicities. There are many, many indigenous peoples, plus communities of Chinese and Indians. Today, we had a fabulous Indian lunch and a delicious Chinese dinner, with a foamy cup of cappuccino in between! No suffering on the food front here... We also saw an interesting photojournalism exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Malaysian independence.

K.L. is also a bit of culture shock after Vietnam. Although K.L. is only a three-hour flight and one time zone away from Hanoi, in many respects, the two countries are worlds apart. Peninsular Malaysia is predominantly Muslim, while most Hanoi residents are Buddhist. This part of Malaysia is also quite prosperous compared to Vietnam. I see late-model cars everywhere (which leads to late-model traffic jams...), and there are numerous huge shopping malls with all the latest fashions. Prices are also a big contrast. Vietnam is extremely affordable by Western standards. A room at a 5-star hotel can be had for $100 a night. Here, prices are much closer to U.S. standards.

Tomorrow, we are heading for Malacca, a historic town on the west coast. I'm sure I'll learn a lot of Malaysian history!

On the Dharma front, I am missing my friends from the delegation, most of whom have returned to the many corners of the earth they call home. When I feel their absence most acutely, I try to remember the many nourishing practices we enjoyed together.

mindful eating
reciting the Five Contemplations before meals
sitting meditation
walking meditation
Noble Silence
sharing in Dharma families
chanting
singing Dharma songs
Dharma talks
touching the earth
paying mindful attention to my Second Body (a wonderful Aussie named Perrie)
the Five Mindfulness Trainings
full body relaxation
the bell

Since we have been in Hanoi, there have not been many official activities for the delegation. Yesterday, Sandra and I met our friend in Hanoi, Hiep Pham, for a day's outing. We traveled via city bus to Bat Trang, a village near Hanoi that is famous for its ceramics. Open-air ceramics shops are clustered around a small square. The shops are filled with beautiful ceramics and, increasingly, porcelain, produced for export to other areas of Vietnam and abroad. We browsed for a couple of hours, enjoying the quiet and the cool morning temperatures. Pham helped us negotiate prices for the items we bought. It's usually the case that there is a price for Vietnamese and a price for foreigners. In this instance, it hardly mattered. An exquisite teacup was $.40 for Vietnamese and $.75 for foreigners. Still, we were happy to have Pham save us a few dong, which we then happily spent on a delightful lunch! Pham is great at ordering super vegetarian meals for us, even in non-vegetarian restaurants. We joked that, after a few more days with us, he'd be a vegetarian himself.

The bus ride was really enjoyable. Vietnamese people are quite friendly and are always eager to practice their English, even if it goes no farther than, “Where you from?” and “How old are you?” (We've decided these must be the first two questions that they learn in English class. I suppose no one has told them that, in most places in the English-speaking world, “How old are you?” is not the best opening line with strangers.) We chatted with a couple of students on the bus. One older woman, wearing a distinctive brown hat, eyed us a little warily during the ride out to Bat Trang. On the way back, she boarded the bus with a young man, did a double-take and then gave us the biggest smile. It was sweet to reconnect with her, even though our only relationship was exchanging glances on a bus.

That evening, we went to the Old Quarter to meet Pham for dinner. We arrived early, so we strolled up and down the streets. It's a dizzying bazaar of tiny shops spilling out onto the narrow sidewalks. The sidewalks are for everything but walking. There are displays of merchandise, small outdoor restaurant operations with tiny tables surrounded by Vietnamese having bowls of soup, hundreds—no, thousands—of motorcycles arrayed in lines. All crowded onto already narrow sidewalks.

The streets were traditionally organized around specific trades, and to a large extent, like stores still cluster together. Last night, we wandered around the street devoted to supplies for temples and home altars. The early evening darkness made it very dramatic—the red banners and lights, the gold altar acoutrements, the bright statues.

Today was Sandra's last day in Vietnam, so we planned our agenda around what she most wanted to do. We took a taxi to the largest market in Hanoi and browsed around. Then she suggested going to the Museum of Ethnology, which is very well known. We took a long (and over-priced) taxi ride there and spent several hours going through the museum. There was a special performance of the water puppets in an outdoor pool. Having already seen then in an indoor theatre in Hanoi, it was fun to see them in a more natural setting.

The museum has a large collection of buildings representative of the lifestyles of the many indigenous peoples of Vietnam. This was a side of the country that we missed on our big-city tour, so it was really enjoyable and educational for us.

Tonight, I enjoyed what will probably be my final temple meal. We returned to the Bo De Temple, where we ate yesterday, for a lovely meal. The temple has an orphanage that is home to 40 children, and many of them were running around this evening.

It isn't clear to most of us what the next few weeks in Hanoi will bring for Thay and the monastic and lay delegation. It seems, although no one has told us so, that officials here are not as enthusiastic about this visit as those in other areas of the country. Tomorrow, Thay is giving a Dharma talk at a temple about an hour outside the city, and it is likely that that is where the weekend ceremonies for the deceased will take place. The forthcoming celebrations of the reunification of the country and of May 1st will be an interesting juxtaposition to the Dharma that Thay is bringing to the Vietnamese people.

Tomorrow evening, I leave for Kuala Lumpur to visit my friend, Ivy Wong, and her family for a few days. It will be sad to leave my delegation friends, but our practice teaches us that we really are never separated from each other, so we will try to follow that practice as we say goodbye to each other.

[See new photos at http://www.dotphoto.com/go.asp?l=jumpalagi&P=&AID=4398711&CID=1948278&T=1&E=Y&ILD=3281253

Here are a few snapshot moments of my time in Vietnam...

sunrise over river boats...
people exercising at daybreak near lakes, sea, rivers...
Vietnamese laypeople fanning us at temple as we fanned young monks...
silent meal with 2000 people...
walking meditation with 2000 people...
beautiful 5-color Buddhist flags flying at temples...
tiny lizards in the bedroom...
bats flying at sunset...
cicadas singing...
sitting in a puddle of water listening to a Dharma talk...
standing in formal procession with sweat running down my spine...
listening to talks in Vietnamese and understanding only two phrases: Vietnam and Thich Nhat Hanh...
Vietnamese lady who sat in section reserved for Westerners and hit the guards when they tried to move her.

These are a few of the things I will remember about this trip, and memories that sustain me here when it is challenging to be here. What also sustains me is the mindful practice of the delegation and the love and messages from friends and family back home.