sovaldi 'serif'; color: #660033;">Invitation letter from Sr. Chan Khong to Plum Village’s friends
to join Plum Village’s Teaching Trip in Japan, check April 27 – May 13, 2015
December 28, 2014
Dear friends,
We wish to be able to invite you to join the trip to Japan with THAY without his physical presence but totally with his spiritual presence. You have a lot of Thay’s spirit, that's the reason we particularly invite you and your family to come to bring the spirit of Thay into the practice for our Japanese friends. Japan is a dear country to Thay. He had visited Japan several times, and each time the visit was marked by something special to him.*
We invited you because you have been with Thay in several retreats! Your presence always bring joy and steadiness in the practice. So we wish your presence this time could bring the same energy to our Japanese friends.
Japan is a very beautiful country, but the living costs is quite expensive, much more than in the US or in Europe. The organizing team hires a tourist agency , who charges a minimal overhead fees, to organize the tour for the lay delegation .
Please bring your friends and family’s members to give support to the trip. We are going to the trip as if Thay is on the trip with us.
With love and trust
Sr. Chan Khong
* The first trip was in 1957 where he served as translator for the Vietnamese Buddhist Delegation to attend an International Conference, then remained there for one month to treat some illness. During that trip, on Mother Day, he was so moved to receive a white carnation because he just lost his mother in 1956. Thay told this story in the booklet "A Rose for Your Pocket “, written in 1962, to a group of university students in Saigon, among them Sr. Chan Khong. It was Thay’s first teaching on dwelling in the present moment, using the presence of our mother as a reminder that something sweet and beautiful are there for us, but we often ignore it. The booklet became one of the most popular books in Vietnam.
* The second trip was in 1970 when he was invited by World Conference on Religions and Peace (WCRP) and was elected a vice-president of WCRP. In this conference, High Venerables Thich Thien Minh and Thich Huyen Quang of the UBC of Vietnam’s delegation, who had been quite conservative, reconnected with Thay and saw the values in Thay’s progressive works. They had since cooperated closely with Thay and his work in Vietnam and abroad.
* The 3rd trip was in 1995, Thay’s first teaching trip in Japan. Thay really care to share the simple-yet-profound practices to the people of Japan, which had a beautiful heritage of Buddhism. After this trip, many Buddhist lay groups wished to invite Thay to teach more Mindfulness to Japanese people . Thay determined that WE MUST COME BACK to share the practice in Japan. Even in 1995, he gave quite a few teachings in many public lectures in Kyoto, Tokyo and led 2 retreats and 2 Days of Mindfulness: one for lay people and one for monastics in Tokyo.