(Aka beloved cousin whom I adore the most)
This morning on the last day of autumn in the Pig Year (2019), I have just received an invitation to write a few words on the commemorative collected book for the 40th anniversary of the monastic ordination of Venerable Bhikkhuni Giới Hương (my dearest dharma sister).
Forty years have passed. I remember the first day of renunciation and the bhikkhuni ordination. I (the youngest) was always with Venerable Bhikkhuni Giới Hương (aka Thanh Hương, the oldest) and Hồng Phúc (the middle one) to form a group of three (we are even born in the same year, 1963). After receiving the full precepts, our Master Hải Triều Âm chose Venerable Bhikkhuni Giới Hương (aka Thanh Hương) and nineteen other excellent nuns (from one hundred nuns in the temple) to join a strictly returning hearing nature (of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva) retreat and to subsequently go to Vĩnh Nghiêm Pagoda to present Dharma practice to the highest sangha member, Thích Đức Nhuận (who came from the North in 1983).
At that time, Bhikkhuni Giới Hương was very young and serious (she laughed and talked less); therefore, she was elected to the dignified position of Buddhist lawyer of Liên Hoa Temple. I often wandered, talked, and smiled while socializing with others, so I was elected as a medical nurse (to provide medicine, scrape poison winds from patients, take care of the nuns’ sicknesses, and take them to see the doctor). Bhikkhuni Giới Hương and the other nuns detached themselves from the six worldly objects to sincerely and strictly practice the whole time and enter the penetrated hearing nature. How holy all of the nuns looked! From that cause, over the next twenty years, Bhikkhuni Giới Hương has now attained insight in dharma and has become a skilled professor, Dharma lecturer, and master. According to Avalokitesvara’s virtue, listening to the sound of beings, Bhikkhuni Giới Hương has done a lot for the sake of many.
My name is Thanh Đức, and I am both a cousin and a dharma sister of Bhikkhuni Giới Hương. I greatly admire her. She always studied the Buddhist scriptures and sincerely followed them. She is very bright and intelligent in the field of education. She has written many bilingual Buddhist books in English-Vietnamese, taught Dharma at many places, built two temples to ordain nuns, and so on. Today, writing these words, I sincerely bow my hands to celebrate the merit from Sister Giới Hương, who followed the the Buddha and ancestors to share the Tathagata’s teaching so that sentient beings can attain wisdom on the right path. I prefer to earn merit (rather than study like my sister) by giving alms and taking care of patients and poor people according to Samantabhadra Bodhisattva. Thus, we are cousin sisters (I am the daughter of the sixth sibling while Thanh Đức is the daughter of the tenth sibling) and dharma sisters (under the same Master Hải Triều Âm). We have sowed the seeds of WISDOM and MERIT, so we complement each other to fulfill two wings.
Linh Quang Temple, October 30, 2019
Respectfully
Bhikkhuni Thanh Đức
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Ven. Giới Hương (stand) and Ven. Thanh Đức (sit)
at Dinh Mount, Long Hải, 1994
Bhikkhuni Thanh Đức (yellow robe and second from right)
Bhikkhuni Thanh Đức (second kneeling down behind Venerable Giới Hương)
Please read all articles and view all photos:3.12.My_beloved_Dharma_sister___Bhikkhuni_Thanh_Duc.pdf
