Chenxing Han: Buddhist Perspectives on Grief and Renewal

Our transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human editors. We do our best to achieve accuracy, but they may contain errors. If it is an option for you, we strongly encourage you to listen to the podcast audio, which includes additional emotion and emphasis not conveyed through transcription.

Jun Wang: Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for being here with us in this evening. And thank you, Chenxing, such a great pleasure and honor to be in a conversation with you. I just finished this book, One Long Listening. And I think we can just dive in the conversation. We have several questions. I think this is a personal memoir and also an experience of your personal experience as a hospital chaplain in the Bay Area and also training in Buddhist chaplain in Cambodia and Taiwan. So I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in Buddhism and chaplain.

Chenxing Han: Sure. Thank you so much, June. It's just such a delight to be in conversation with you this evening. I also just want to thank everyone who's here in the room today. Thank you for making it out on this sunny day in San Francisco. And I want to thank everyone at CIIS who's making this event possible. Our audience who's joining online future podcast listeners, thank you for making this event possible. So, gosh, there's so many threads, right?

So where to begin. Maybe for some context, it's helpful to say I was born in Shanghai, China.

I came to the US when I was four years old. I lived in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, and then later in the Seattle, Washington area. And then I've been out here in the Bay Area since college with some forays in Cambodia and Thailand. It's been a lot of moving. And I wasn't raised Buddhist, which I think is fairly common for children of immigrants, Chinese immigrants who lived through the Cultural Revolution. But as I talk about kind of in this book, and also in my first book, Be the Refuge, I took a gap year between high school and college. And during that time, I had a chance to live in China, and also to spend time in Thailand and Nepal and Tibet. And so seeing Buddhist people, cultures, languages, the art, the architecture of these countries just was very inspiring. And coming here in the Bay Area for college, it's actually such an extraordinarily diverse Buddhist area that we live in. So many different streams of Buddhism are here. And it took many years for me to start to connect with more of them. I've hardly encountered all of them. But I can say that over time, I think we kind of connect the dots in retrospect when we look back on our lives. Just one curiosity led to another. So that kind of heart opening experience in East Asia, South East Asia, led to me wanting to learn more. And then also, I think my own grief and moments of suffering, I think, was also another doorway into Buddhism. And so I just started reading books. And actually, I was in South Africa, studying abroad at that time, junior year, and I had this big stack of Buddhism books. And then I wanted to visit living communities. So then I was in South Africa visiting different Buddhist communities thinking, wow, there's even all of these Buddhist communities in this unexpected place. What about in my home? You know, what about in my backyard when I go home? And so whether that was at first as a college student, going to convert Buddhist communities in the insight or Zen traditions, or going to local Chinese and Vietnamese, Cambodian, and other temples, kind of over time, just meeting Buddhists, and I like to say like Buddhists are part of this vast family tree that share these common roots. And I continue to sort of meet more members of the family, explore more branches of this tree. And I always learn so much from every step of this journey. And then I think you also asked about chaplaincy, right?

Wang: Just one question. Were you a major in college Buddhist studies?

Han: It wasn't actually, it was a very interdisciplinary major, it was kind of all over the place. It was called science, technology and society. And I minored in cultural and social anthropology. Sometimes I think I just chose the majors with the longest names. But in my very last quarter at college, I took a class on Buddhism and death. And that was also just really eye opening to make me want to learn more. And so eventually, I got a master's in Buddhist studies. So there were a few years between undergrad and grad school.

Wang: I see.

Han: Yeah. And so those years were when I started to explore more in chaplaincy. So my partner, Trent Walker, who's a scholar of Southeast Asian Buddhism, had spent a lot of time in Cambodia. And he met Reverend Beth Goldring, an American Zen priest, who started a Buddhist chaplaincy program there in Cambodia, serving people in hospitals and prisons, predominantly people with HIV. And many of the staff themselves were also HIV positive. And I realized, you know, I didn't know very much about Buddhist chaplaincy or spiritual care. And so I had an opportunity to spend a summer with them, really just shadowing and apprenticing with them. I don't speak Khmer. My Khmer is really not very good. And so it was very humbling to be by the bedside of people who are very sick or dying, which honestly is kind of a truth of life that at points in our lives, we're all sick, we'll all die at some point. And it was just so humbling to realize nothing I'd learned up to that point had prepared me to be with people in that truth of when we encounter the ends of our lives. And I was both terrified and also just wanting to learn more. It was also very, what sometimes very heartbreaking, but also very heart opening experience. And I think that was really the beginning of this journey into Buddhist chaplaincy.

Wang: In this book, you have so many great stories from your chaplaincy experience. But I just want to ask, I'm deeply moved by the friendship you have with your dear friend. And you talk about listening. After your friend's death and you feel like you're continuing to have a conversation with her. And can you tell us how the friendship is defined by listening?

Han: Yeah, that's a beautiful question. So this book is dedicated to Amy Fronmire Wynn. And I also want to name that I am so grateful that my friend Dawn Kwan is here with her sister Nikki. Dawn is really, I think, the person who introduced you to Amy at the very beginning of our college years since you all lived in the same dorm. And Amy was just this really extraordinary person. She had a rare genetic illness called Fanconi anemia that two of her sisters had died of. People with the illness seldom live past young adulthood. And it's something that she knew she had from a very young age. So she knew kind of this truth that applies to all of us, I would say, but she lived it deeply in her life, which is that we never know how long we have actually. And meeting her, you know, I read about meeting her in this book, and just sometimes you meet people and they just kind of, I don't know, call them heart friends, or they kind of just light up your life or open your life or open this road of possibility. She felt so much like a bodhisattva to me, which I wouldn't have used that language when I met her because I wouldn't have had that language at first. But a bodhisattva is someone who listens to the cries of suffering in the world and vows to alleviate them, someone who delays their own enlightenment for the sake of others, although Amy always felt kind of enlightened in her joyful way of the way that she lived so fully. And she was an extraordinary listener. She just had that ability to make everyone she met feel so heard and so seen. And I think to really see the best in everyone. And that's something that I really deeply needed with my own anxieties and fears and self doubts and always feeling like it wasn't enough. But being with her, she created this place of incredible refuge. And then when I took that encounter, that teaching, you know, and started to wonder what does it look like to create that in the hospital or on the streets or in the prisons or in these spaces that I've been able to go to or move through. Yeah, I think really good friends just that aspect of listening is has always felt so foundational to me. And I think we it's a lifelong apprenticeship, that practice of listening, there's always this way of it being able to deepen in my experience. And so when she died in 2016, after, you know, I think we only maybe had a few months to process the diagnosis, and she had a bone marrow transplant, but it wasn't successful. And she died at the age of 29. And of course, I was so bereft at the time I was living in Cambodia, though, we had been able to fly back to Oregon to be with her at her bedside when she passed. And part of this book, we came from just wondering, how do I continue being in conversation with this dear, dear friend? How do I continue listening? And there were times I felt like she's still listening to me. And I think our dearest friends sometimes invite us to, as Nicole Furlong, a scholar and teacher and thinker I really admire, says, kind of listen to the lower registers, putting your ear to the ground and listening to that deep humming within ourselves and within our communities within our loved ones. I think she was my first teacher of that. And this book, I hope, is a way to continue that legacy, give that gift, you know, she just said, I just want to she's such a compassionate person. And that's what she wanted to do just to offer that compassion to the world.

Wang: That's so beautiful, and I just can't help but read this quote from your book when you write this, if you allow me to read this. At first, you said, “She would ask me, how is the grieving? I would tell her, sometimes I feel so angry at listening bereft words that it hurts me to talk to anyone who isn't you.” And then you realize that you wrote later, you said, “I realized today that our friendship has been one long listening. I'm still listening. It feels like you are too. I love you. I miss you.” That's very moving. I think listening is not only a gift of friendship, but it's also the foundation for all relationships, and including the relationship with ourselves. And so I feel this book is also a way you are listening to yourself. I think we need to ask a question, have I listened to my true self? I feel like you talk about when you are a child moved from Shanghai to America at only four years old, and then you cannot express the sadness or grieve to the loss, actually. One day you realize you lost your language and you have been almost like hide your sadness and grief. And then you say writing and writing this book is give yourself back to yourself. I love that. I really admire your courage. And can you say more about this experience?

Han: Sure, so this book kind of officially began in 2016, that fall when, no, sorry, my dates are mixed up. I think it was 2014 in the fall when I began a year long residency in hospital chaplaincy in Oakland. So for those who've done clinical pastoral education or CPE, it's kind of based on this model of action and reflection. It's not just that you're on the units offering spiritual care to people, but a very important part of the education and training is reflecting with your supervisors, with your peers, also with your fears, actually, reflecting theologically or spiritually or Buddhologically, in my case. And I found that to be difficult. It was easier to get lost in other people's stories, in their suffering, in their grief, and to process my own. I was very burnt out after the end of that year in chaplaincy on an oncology ward. I was also often paged to Mandarin speaking patients on different units, ICU and elsewhere in the hospital. And actually that year helped me realize that there was a lot of unprocessed pain and grief, trauma in my own life. And writing has always been a way for me to deepen my intimacy into questions that feel urgent or important. And I think a question that came up at that time was, you know, why was it that certain patients afterwards, I would just cry and cry because they reminded me of my uncle who died of lung cancer when I was 18. And my family didn't want me to be by his bedside because they wanted to protect me from that, or why was it that, you know, someone who reminded me of my grandmother who passed away living with us in California, there were these moments that I realized in becoming, I guess, what's the word, so deeply intimately connected to strangers who felt like kin, it made me see some of the gulfs that I had with my own family, with my own parents, and want to understand that more, want to have some more compassion and care around that. Yeah, so in a way, this book has felt a bit like a chaplain to me. And it's kind of, it was offering the spiritual care that I needed. Our supervisors always said, chaplains need chaplains too. And so for me, part of chaplaining was this long act. As you know, it took nine years from the beginning of my CPE to publication, but this long journey of reflecting on some of these stories again and again, reflecting on the grief, the loss, but then also the gifts that came from immigrating from that break, for that I was out of my control actually from the losing of family, language, culture, but the gaining of another one.

Wang: I feel like many people may be now so familiar with chaplaincy and traditionally, it gives people feeling that chaplaincy is a person who takes care of people who are dying. But from your book, I feel like it's much wider actually. You really have a spiritual care for people, not only people who are dying, but suffering. For me, that's a job for bodhisattvas, not for common person that can be trained to do this kind of work. What do you think? What do you think about this?

Han: I think everybody is a bodhisattva, so I think it's a work that all of us can do. But truly, I think that we're all offering spiritual care in small ways and big ways. And sometimes we don't even know the impact we have on other people, whether just the smile you gave someone. And they'll never be able to tell you that that smile really helped them through a really tough time in their life. I remember after Amy died being Cambodia, and I would just go to this yoga class on the waterfront with Dui. And I don't think anyone in that class knew how much I needed those classes, how much they were my bodhisattvas, even if we didn't always share the same language. But I think there's, yes, there's this passage in this book, right, where one of my interviewees for my first project really helped me understand. She said, every time we ask for help, and that request for help is answered, it's kind of like your prayer has been answered. And it's kind of like a bodhisattva has just responded to your prayer. Sometimes I think the harder thing is to ask for help, is to allow ourselves to receive, I think, especially for people who tend to give a lot, or do a lot, the harder thing can be actually to receive that help to allow someone else to be a bodhisattva for you. But I really do, I'm really interested in expanding what we mean by chaplaincy or spiritual care. I think the profession itself is thinking a lot about this, what does it look like to diversify the ranks of chaplaincy in this country, which remains still a predominantly white and Christian, but of course, the people who receive spiritual care is, you know, vast and diverse, as diverse and colorful and myriad as this country itself. And so in whatever small way if this book can help show kind of more sides of what spiritual care and chaplaincy can be. And I think that's so fitting for a place like the CIIS, which is so full of creative possibility in a way, we're looking at that place where creativity and spiritual care meet. And I think actually those are inextricably woven. And for me writing as spiritual practice, as spiritual care, as chaplaincy, those all form this kind of braid or this kind of river. And it's a wonderful river to be in, float in, paddleboard on, sit in, sometimes swim against the stream and whatever the metaphor is. But there is just, I think there are as many ways to do chaplaincy as there are chaplains in the world.

Wang: Great. Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate the phrase, one of the Buddhist teaching you brought in the practice of chaplaincy is, bu zhi zui qing qi. It's a less known Buddhist teaching. So I'm curious, where does this, actually this means not knowing is most intimate. So you have the Chinese phrase there and then the English. So do you want to talk about where's the contact of this phrase and what does it mean to you?

Han: Sure. So it came to me first through the English, because I heard it a lot in different Zen communities, not knowing is most intimate. So in a way this feels like a very American Buddhist moment, right? Many people have read the book, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by Suzuki Roshi, who's had such a powerful impact here in San Francisco and with the San Francisco Zen Center as its founding teacher. And I think those two phrases are very interconnected. And then I got curious, oh, what is the Chinese? Bu zhi zui qing qi. It's kind of a, if you just read, if you don't read a lot of Buddhist texts, it's kind of an unusual phrase, right? It's not something you would say just in everyday speech. But entering into it in both the English and the Chinese, Chinese being my first language, made it feel, it was just such an intriguing idea. I think especially for someone who tends to be a perfectionist and who tends to want to control things and have things turn out the way my mind wants them to turn out. There's a kind of letting go and a kind of permission, but then a kind of like openness to an infinitude of possibilities, like Suzuki Roshi always said, in the beginner's mind, and paraphrasing, in the beginner's mind, there are infinite possibilities.

Wang: It's interesting, I have to admit, actually, as a Chinese, also Buddhist student myself, I never heard about this phrase before I read your book. Actually, it's not very common, even in Chinese. So my feeling is Bu Zhi Zui Qing Qi, I first saw this phrase, I think about Taoist teaching, actually, Lao Zi would say, now knowing also Zhuangzi, I think maybe the Chan Buddhism derived this idea of now knowing from Taoism, from Lao Zi's Tao Te Ching, there's a chapter talk about if you can rule the country by no knowledge. And also Zhuangzi talk a lot about the attitude or the doing without action. So that's similar with the Bu Zhi, but the Bu Zhi is very familiar for many people, but why Zui Qing Qi, why is intimate? So that's the part I hope you can elaborate.

Han: And maybe I have to offer, and I don't know, but I would like to learn more to ask textual scholars, which I am not a textual scholar of Buddhism, but I think that's really interesting. And you're linking it to Wu Wei, I think, in Taoism. And to me, it's like that stream or that kind of reverse stream of Japanese Zen Buddhism based on Chinese Chan Buddhism. And it's very interesting, I think, what different cultural contexts pick up. And I totally agree with you, Bu Zhi Qi, it's not a phrase I encounter in other Buddhist texts. And so I couldn't answer as a textual scholar, what does that part mean? I could answer as a contemporary Buddhist, I guess, just that it's fascinating to me, like what kind of, because I'm sure what intimacy meant in the context many centuries ago is different than how we think about it now, I think, but so much too of chaplaincy and spiritual care, I think, is this looking back into history, into sacred texts that are passed on to us from translations that have gone through many cultures sometimes, as is the case in Buddhism, and then interpreting it for ourselves, right? And so I don't know if there's a right way to interpret it, I'm sure scholars could debate and find different contexts or look for it in different texts. But I guess when I was thinking about it, it had to do in the case of writing this book with that kind of enormity of grief and like all the things it throws us into all the uncertainty, and also just like chaplaincy visits before walking into a room, I would have no idea what to expect on the other end. And that was both completely terrifying, and also kind of completely liberating. There was something about really meeting the moment, really meeting the circumstances, and having to kind of, I guess, rest in this sense of I am enough, they are enough, we are enough, and hopefully something in this encounter will be transformative or healing or reduce the suffering or increase the joy or whatever it is, you know, I think hopefully something will happen in that moment. And sometimes it doesn't work out many moments in this book are when those visits went poorly, but even then, I think there's a teaching there.

Wang: Yeah, I agree. I think there's so many layers of now knowing and the intimacy in addition to like what you said in your book about now knowing before you enter the door, like as a chaplaincy, you don't really know what will happen, and the humility, but I also feel, I also read actually from your book about this now knowing from the counterpoint, you know, most time like our parents, for example, or teachers or people who are in a higher position, they think they know, you know, scientists, they think they know, the doctors in the hospital, they think they know, they even told the patient how long you can live, right? But this kind of knowing sometimes can be a violence. And I think Buddhism and Taoism share a similar view of the knowledge or knowing, like when we think we know, that's already ignorant. Do you agree with that? Because I read like several times you reverse the phrase, the question like, oh, when you're like, when your uncle's dying, like your relatives trying to protect you, not allow you to go to the best side of your uncle. And I think a lot of Chinese parents too, they think they know what's the best for their children. So they try to do things, right? And I feel like a lot of your memories about your childhood, you feel angry about that. It's exactly, I think is a kind of response to the kind of knowing the violence of knowing, of course you didn't say that explicitly, but I read it like that. And there's some other parts when you talk about some mainstream misunderstandings of Buddhism and they think they know what Buddhism should be like, right? So they feel like superior, like you should do this. You should do meditation for how many hours? That's the right Buddhism. That's what you should do. I think in the spirituality, a lot of people are trying to behave like, as if they know, but they didn't know. Actually, the more you know, the more you don't know, forget about the knowing come from not knowing. So I found that's a very profound phrase actually in your book. Although, I'm trying to also think about what the qin qi can translate into English, intimacy or qin because the qin and the xin is very similar in Chinese. The great learning in the Confucian is the great learning teaches every day you want to be qin, qin min, to love the people. So qin both have this, I think the meaning of renewal, renewal as well as intimate. Because qin and xin have the same root, radical. So I just feel this phrase, just five characters, but very, very profound.

Han: It's so powerful to hear you reflect on all of this, especially that piece around renewal, because I think when you speak of the violence of knowing, I think we've all been there when we were so certain about something or we were right and really attached that outcome. All the other possibilities we foreclosed, all of the other pathways we shut down, there was a kind of not allowing of renewal. And I think something about in Buddhist thought that I come back to again and again is this acceptance of impermanence, of change. And I think sometimes in the popular culture, it can seem very depressing or morbid or it's so focused on death. But I think over time, over the years, the more I reflect on that, the more I find it to be a very hopeful teaching, especially when I think also about teachings on karma, which at its root are just teachings about action, that every action of body, speech and mind has some kind of effect. And intention is an important part of this as well. And so for me, that kind of not knowing the outcome was both felt like the truth and felt like a gift when people don't know what's ahead and they're honest about it. Where is my mom now that she's dead? How can I answer it? Except to say, I really don't know. But I can sit with you here in asking that question. And let's talk about where you feel she is. Let's talk about where you'd like her to be. Let's talk about some of these different possibilities. And that same conversation could happen again, a day later, a week later, and maybe it would be a different conversation. I think something about that generative way of holding, not knowing feels like it's just at the root of so much that is good and so much that is loving.

Wang: I feel, as you said, the beginner's mind on not knowing is also open to so many possibilities when you remain not knowing. So that's what I feel like is so important for healthcare in the people, when the treatment is healing, and I think also in education, teachers should adopt this concept of not knowing Zui Qing Qi. So one of my favorite part is actually the way you use the Chengyu, the four Chinese characters, idioms, you really translate it as. And you use seven Chengyu as the title of your chapters. So I feel that they are very interesting and have deep implications. Do you mind to talk maybe one or two of them? Why you choose this Chengyu? And how do you see the connection between the Chengyu and the stories in your chapter? I think the one I like most is Bei Gong She Ying, Shadows and Snake. So do you want to talk about the story and more about your stories?

Han: Sure. And I should say, this book came about in such an interesting way, really fragments and pieces, and then it started to coalesce and then it sort of divided itself into these parts. And kind of belatedly, I realized there were certain themes or images that kept appearing. And for the Bei Gong She Ying chapter, I read about it in the book, but maybe I'll just summarize it here. It comes from this story about a man who goes to a party at his friends and he has a little goblet of wine and he's about to drink it. And then he sees there's a snake swimming in his goblet of wine. So he's very freaked out, but he also doesn't want to be a party pooper. So he just drinks the wine, but then he gets very sick. And his friend is like, dude, what happened to that guy? The actual story is probably not told this colloquially, but he's like, I'm kind of worried about him. And so he goes to find his friend who's like deathly ill in bed. And the friend finally confesses, yeah, I was at your place and I drank the wine with the snake in it. And then his friend, the host realizes there was a Gong, which if you see the Chinese character, it looks like a kind of very squiggly, almost like a snake.

Wang: Even the real Gong actually is like a snake. The shadow of the handle part of the bow, archery.

Han: And so that shadow had been cast into his cup. And in this chapter, which is part two of the book, I'd been exploring a lot around fear and feelings of inadequacy, like going into this year long chaplaincy program, feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing. And like, I am not an expert, you know, despite Suzuki Roshi's in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities in the expert's mind. There are a few, but I just felt so sometimes paralyzed by that fear. And then also thinking too about like the fears of childhood of not fitting in, of trying to, yeah, like there was so much fear, so much in my head. And it was kind of the perfect story because it's really a story about how the fears in our head actually have very real bodily consequences. And what I love too is that his friend didn't make, you know, the terrified man, the friend didn't make fun of him. He actually said, oh, like, let me show you actually what, you know, kind of the big picture and like to help you understand. And I think, yeah, and then like, and it was just funny because there were so many snakes, like literal snakes that were coming up while I was reading this section and none of that was really planned. It was just sort of coalesced. And so it's almost as if each part of the book chose its own, in a way.

Wang: Yeah, I feel this is a wonderful Chengyu in your book actually, because you talk about the delusion. Actually, it's not a snake, but people misunderstood it as a snake there. So they are fear and scared. Actually this person even got very, very sick. It's like traumatized, right? It's this fear, long-term fear, you know, and then until his friend told her, oh, it's not a snake. It's actually the bow actually on the wall. So at the moment, you know, when you realize it's just an illusion and it's like enlightenment, you wake up, you do not fear anymore. So I found that's both like a Buddhist teaching, right? Buddhist teaching is, you know, our suffering is all because of our ignorance, because we didn't see the true reality. Once you see the true reality, then your fears can go. So I think your chapter talk a lot about your fear, your own fear from childhood and also with the chaplaincy. And in another story, actually, you also talk about there's a kind of trauma with a spiritual teacher and you're stalked by this one. So I feel there's all connected with the fear and it's long-term fear. So I wonder how do you see the fear now?

Han: Yeah, that's a powerful question. I think, you know, fear, I guess it continues in my life. I think that's, it's a very human thing to feel fear in different ways. But there's maybe a bit more space around it or there's, it's like that, not, it's like, I mean, something that I love about the story that we've been discussing is it's quite humorous in a way. And I'm not trying to like trivialize moments of trauma or suffering, but I think like when there's a way around fear or trauma or suffering to make a little bit of space and maybe even make a little enough space to like have a moment of levity or a moment of humor. And I think being able to do that more, and sometimes that just happens sometimes with the passage of time, therapy, talking to friends, there's all sorts of modalities, I think, and doing things that are somatic are very helpful, whatever practice that looks like, I think that's been very helpful for me. Yeah, I guess, you know, it's hard to know because I'm not feeling fearful in this exact moment.

Wang: It's a hard question. I know it's very, very hard.

Han: Yeah, but I really appreciate that question. But yeah, humor is actually what kind of comes up because that's the feedback I get from some readers that, you know, grief is in the title of this book. In some ways, it can be a heavy book or grounding book, but there's a lot of moments of humor. And I think I wasn't expecting that going into like thinking Chaplaincy is so serious and I'm just going to go in and like pray for people. And there was just so much, I mean, people are people. So there are just so much delight in so many, so much laughter, I think. And so there's something about like, even laughter as a response to fear, even like smile as a response to fear or putting one's body into a state that is full of joy, like the opposite of fear. I think that, you know, for such, I find creatures of habit, both of our minds and then even of our bodies. And I think sometimes getting stuck in trauma and fear is the body getting so used to a particular shape or a particular response or a particular reaction. And sometimes it's what does it look like to change that? And just sometimes that can happen abruptly. Sometimes that can happen gradually. It depends. But what's helped me the most is friends, spiritual friends and teachers. I think through fear, through trauma, I could never get out of any of it alone. I think it's not created alone. And then so the way out of fear and trauma is also happens in community, in interrelationship.

Wang: Thank you. Appreciate it. And myself, too, I think I'm still working on a lot of fears in my life. So it’s resonated with me when I read this story. I feel sometimes when we're just looking at the fear, like sometimes in meditation, you can just look at this fear. It helps, you know, it can help you. You just be with it. You don't have to assume it's a fear or just look at it to the center of the fear. And sometimes it's like a Bei Gong She Ying. You realize, oh, it's actually not what I thought. It's not like what I assume that is so fearful. I know even though it's an illusion, but the feeling is true. The fear is so true. But once you look at this fear, it directly to the center. Just be with it. Sometimes it has the same effects as the friend pointing to the bow. Another just very short question maybe about another 成語. 沧海桑田, it means big change. It means the Chinese Chengyu means like ocean become a field. Like how much change, you know, like Himalayan mountain before it's the ocean. Now it's the Himalayan mountain. So you use this Chengyu kind of maybe indicating some change. And you also talk about one of your spiritual friend or teacher told you, like after someone beloved, someone died in our life, so it's a chance to redefine ourselves. So I feel like the 沧海桑田 is a redefining process. So have you changed or what do you feel since 2016?

Han: I think I certainly have changed. You know, I don't know if I can say to the extent that an ocean becoming a mulberry field in that kind of geologic time. But, you know, I think I began this book in grief in some ways. And it really began when Amy died and just was starting to write letters to her and feeling like she'll never read these letters. I'll never be able to speak to her again. So began in grief and anger too. And then the more I wrote over the years, the more I felt like the book was just calling me into joy and laughter. At the end of her life, Amy was so funny, like wickedly funny. She was always funny. But like, for her to be have like intent, you know, really advanced leukemia that she was going to die from, and still be singing Taylor Swift's Bad Blood, things like that, I don't know, I think there was a way in which she embodied that for me. And I think she always said, this season after the passing of the loved one, is a time for us to redefine who we want to be in their absence. And that felt like such an invitation, a gift, it was a question that I get to keep asking. And I still ask that question, I still miss her, you know, and it's like one of my patients, one of the patients whom I met in the hospital told me about her daughter, who had died 20 years prior, and her husband was in the hospital, and he was dying. And she said, you know, sometimes it feels like my daughter, it was like, like her death was just yesterday, it hits that hard. And when she said that, it felt like the biggest gift to not have to make grief this linear thing that we have to get through and get over that some days, it's just gonna feel that way. And that kind of like fear, like grief, it's okay, like, in a culture that tends to want to push away these emotions, I think what does it look like to actually befriend them, to listen to them to and listen deeply, and listen into what they are inviting us into.

Wang: Thank you. Yeah. I think there are many, you know, misperceptions of Buddhism, and you mentioned one about meditation. So it's very humorous, actually, the way you write about your experience about meditation, do you want to share a little bit about that?

Han: Like, sure, I'm a terrible meditator, I tend to fall asleep. I read about that in the book. But I think to, you know, in the span of writing this book, watching mindfulness becoming this multi billion dollar industry, and just trying to, for me, like trying to hold that with both joy, because I think that helps so many people, but then also thinking about issues of appropriation or thinking through what does it mean to take something out of its context, which is a very rich context full of ritual community, there's so much there, and then to apply it as this technology in a way. I just I think about that a lot. I think these are open questions that we're thinking about more and for me, so much of what I've learned is about the diversity of different spiritual practices, particularly Buddhist practices, chanting, bowing, prostration, generosity, as a foundation of the Buddhist path. It's like that knowing thing, if we know the right way, it's just this one kind of seated meditation, what are we missing? Or what might we not be able to offer someone who might need something else? I mentioned Reverend Goldwing, when she went to Cambodia at first, she thought she would get people to do seated meditation. And she quickly realized people were so sick that what they needed was actually something much gentler and easier. So they got chanting by their bedside. They got Reiki actually, which they understood to be a meditation of the hands. They were just they were given, of course, food and medicine as well. But for her having to let go of this idea that they would all be sitting in perfect lotus position and following their breath, I think we have to meet people where they are. And there's so many people out there who we're not listening to or not thinking of. And I think a lot about that. I think a lot about Guanyin listening to the cries of the world and to try to embody that more. What does it mean? We return again, right, to listen to these lower registers to notice when we might fixate on one thing. And in so doing, maybe there are whole worlds that we are missing.

Wang: For me, I think meditation, there's many meanings of meditation, also depending on where your practice are. It is a major part in Buddhist practice. But it's mainly because there's many other religions also use meditation or many other practices in meditation. But I think meditation is really to be with yourself, to learn to be with yourself and observe the mind heart. So it doesn't mean you have to sit there. And also, I think sitting a long time meditation really need energy. As you said, in this Cambodia settings, many people are sick and weak. So if you force them to do meditation, that's just harmful. That's the opposite to compassion. So actually Bodhidharma, when the Zen patriarch come to China, he went to Shaolin temple and he saw many monks meditate and their body become very weak. So they teach them a yijingjing qigong practice. Actually we still practice today. And so it's accompanied with meditation. So I really like the way you talk about this misunderstandings. Another Buddhist teaching, maybe Buddhist way of understanding, just briefly, if you don't mind to talk about maybe about the Buddha told Ananda, friendship is the whole of the holy life. And then you also mentioned the yuanzhen, the karma. What do you think about this karma reincarnation? Even the rainbow signs, you saw the double rainbow when you send the ashes of your friend. So can you talk a little bit about that, this mystique?

Han: I feel like you've hit on the heart of the book and I know we're getting to the end of our conversation. So maybe I'll read just one page as a response to your question. I haven't been able to read this page. It's toward the end of the book in the yiqin and zanzhen, but maybe this will be a way to close. “It took grieving other people's stories to learn how to grieve my own. I think of the mercy in the Eritrean uncle's words. It won't be finished in a day. The final blessing for my CPE supervisors was the same benediction my patients had been giving me all year. Chaplaincy needs writers too. They spoke what I needed long before I dared to myself. I am a sparrow on the Prompend riverfront. The cages are gone. The birdseed too. Before and after me, infinite choices, intimate, not knowing. As a dear friend once wrote, there is nothing missing in the moments it takes for me to turn over each heirloom tomato at the farmer's market. Not just because I'm looking for one to buy, but also because each is unique and lumpy and bitten and unexpected. There's nothing missing in admiring the quirky college student making circles on her bike with a giant sunflower hanging out of her backpack. And there is only beauty in taking some time to wonder about the notes this precious old man in glasses across from me is writing in the margins of his book. There is no one there to witness or acknowledge those things, but they're absolutely precious, if only just to ourselves.” And this is Amy, of course. “There is nothing missing the day a dear friend invites me to a museum exhibit that ignites our pandemic dulled brains. There is only joy in the hours of outdoor conversation afterward, even if we are cold and masked and about to pee our pants. We are grappling with what it means to be Asian American Buddhist, and it feels like chasing that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And then we are laughing about the closure of no closure. And all I can think as she worries a London plane leaf between her fingers is we are the rainbow. We are golden.”

Wang: Thank you. Beautiful. Do you have anything to announce or…

Han: I just want to say thank you so much Jun for just being such a caring and thoughtful reader of this book and bringing so many insights that I hadn’t thought about to it. Your facility and depth with the Chinese, and with Buddhism and Daoism, and your own depth of practice. Just thank you for bringing that to the book. It’s been a huge gift for me. Like you said, it feels like extraordinary affinity that we were able to connect and meet through this.

Wang: Thank you. I look forward to read the other book Be the Refuge. I just highly recommend this book, One Long LIstening, and it is very unique structure, actually the way you wrote it. We didn’t have time to discuss, but I hope people can read it and such a pleasant way and it’s very unconventional structure. She’s using intertwined, it’s not linear memoir. That’s why it feels like a movie. It’s so emotional and so personal, but at the same time it’s also very profound, have Buddhist teaching and so many stories, not including herself, also the other people in your life. Met so many people’s stories, Amy’s, your friends, your family, your Nai Nai. Most moving is when you talk about your grandma, Nai Nai, to me. It resonates with my experience too. So, thank you so much and I hope everyone have a good evening. Thank you bye.

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, Nikki Roda, and Pele Shalev. CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.