By Lin Colavin

June 3, 2016: It was the first formal Dharma talk of the 21-Day Retreat, “Gathering at Vulture Peak.” Retreatants from all the hamlets gathered at Lower Hamlet. Sister Giac Nghiem (Sister Elizabeth) was teaching “To Develop, Cultivate, and Recharge our Energy of Mindfulness.” Her talk was lucid and clear. Thay could no longer give us Dharma talks, but I felt comforted and relieved to know that we were being well taught.  

Sometime during the talk, I stepped out the back of the hall to go to the bathroom. I was putting on my shoes when I looked up and saw Thay being pushed/carried in his wheelchair by six monks. I was quite amazed. I bowed and stayed where I was as they moved many pairs of shoes to make a path into the hall for the wheelchair. When I came back from the bathroom, Thay was sitting in the back of the hall with only one attendant and many Sangha members sitting all around him. Everyone was continuing on as if it were an everyday thing, even though it was the first time most of us had seen Thay.  

I tiptoed around the back of Thay’s chair and returned to my seat. I was sitting in the last chair of the row next to the side aisle. After about ten minutes, a friend from our Dharma sharing circle stood up and walked past me toward the back of the hall. Then all of a sudden, she hurried back to her seat. I thought to myself, Thay is coming.

I turned around and saw Thay being wheeled down the narrow aisle. In the high-back wheelchair, he looked small and vulnerable. Sangha members stood, their movement like an incoming wave. I stood. When Thay came parallel to me, I bowed and looked up. At that moment, Thay looked into my eyes. I had the experience of him seeing straight into the very essence of my being. It could have been a second or an hour. Time stopped for me. I was so full of emotion; tears ran down my cheeks. I was not crying in sadness but from the sheer intensity of what I was experiencing with Thay in that moment.  

The attendant pushed Thay to the front of the hall. He stayed to the side of the hall until Sister Elizabeth saw him and bowed with a big smile. Thay directed his attendant to wheel him to the middle of the hall. He sat in the very center for a long time, Sangha all around him. To me, it looked as if he was making eye contact with individual Sangha members as he sat looking out. 

Finally, unable to contain our happiness, we burst into song. “Dear Friends” rang out in English, French, Spanish, Vietnamese, Japanese, and other languages. We were finding our way, all of us coming to terms with the impact of Thay’s stroke for him and for all of us: its suffering and happiness. In this moment of joy, we knew we were all cells in this Sangha body.