Today’s story unfolds in 14th-century Vietnam, where King Trần Nhân Tông (born 1258) abdicated in 1295 to become a monk on Yên Tử Mountain. In 1301 he walked barefoot to Champa to forge peace and promised his sixteen-year-old daughter, Princess Huyền Trân, in marriage to King Harjit Simhavarman. In 1305 a Cham delegation of one hundred arrived with gifts and offered two districts, Ô and Ri, for the princess. In 1306 she prepared by studying language and culture; in early 1307 she bore Prince Dayada but lost her husband months later. Saved from ritual cremation by her pregnancy, she was spirited back to Đại Việt in 1307, only to find her son left behind. Grieving, she sought refuge with her father’s compassion, became a nun named Hương Tràng on Hổ Sơn Mountain, and joined his Bamboo Forest Zen (Trúc Lâm) legacy of engaged peace-making.

Thay then invites us to become instruments of peace—bodhisattvas who heal both self and society. Drawing on “medicine of interbeing,” he shows how our body and mind are not separate entities but transmit ancestral and societal sickness. By cultivating mindfulness we create “islands of safety” for ourselves, our families, and our communities. A true Sangha embodies this resistance to violence and feeds collective well-being.

To practice healing, we work with:

1. The five elements that compose a person—beginning with Form (the body) and ending with Consciousness, each containing the others.
2. Two complementary actions—śamatha (calming, resting, healing) and vipaśyanā (looking deeply into true nature).
3. Mindful techniques—walking, breathing, total relaxation and the traditional scanning of thirty-six body parts with in- and out-breaths, embracing each with compassion.
   Through these practices we awaken the energy of mindfulness within and radiate peace outward, offering genuine healing for ourselves and the world.