Being aware of others needs is the first step towards oneness
[Music]
[Applause]
good evening everyone
and thank you so much for the organizer
inviting me here
to talk with you
i found my shelter because my
mind means tomorrow the new lawn
and with the heart the heart
of new norm of tomorrow
the meaning of the house of new dorm
means the house of hope of the new
beginning
because in 2005
i found many children
were abandoned in hospital on the street
because of hiv and aids
and i learned the experience of
providing care
for people dying with aids in bangkok
in india when i was a nurse and also
in thailand when i worked at the hospice
and i was surprised to see that so many
children and mothers who are around them
at that time
rejected our fear stigma
discrimination and so they were
considered
not part of the family they were
even considered morally unacceptable
because the family the people
thought that they committed
sin so they were rejected even
the newborn children with hiv
however since 2005 until now
more than 16 years working with them
what i discovered is that i learned more
from their wisdom rather than i could do
something
for them and one of the
touching story that i remember
it was around 2006 when i was called
by a social worker who worked with three
children
in the park in ho chi minh city
and the social worker asked me to come
to assist and help a lady
a mother and her child were left
abandoned
in a corner of the park and she was very
sick
and the social worker called me to go
over there to look
if i could help them so i didn’t know
where
was she in the park i arrived and were
walking around
along the public park and while
walking and looking for them
there was a car passed by a kind of
museum
near new world hotel very rich
very beautiful stop right in front of me
and beside the car the window slowed
down
and inside the car i heard the voice of
a lady
at her daughter i told you
don’t eat these things it’s not good for
you and she drew out from the window
a piece of cake around like this and
that the piece of cake was running
along the road so i was about to
go to work that piece of cake to put in
a trash can
and suddenly in front of me the girl
around three
three and a half years old run over and
pick up
the cake and run so i thought that she
was
she would eat the dirty things so i
chased her
to get back to retrieve the cake however
while following her she run towards
a lady who online and
who was in pain and that
little girl handed that piece of came
to her mother and that was
the mother and the child i was looking
for
three years and a half
all of us at that age
what did we do maybe we were just
asking for food maybe we didn’t know
what to do
we were learning to talk
but how come a little girl like that
and for sure she was hungry because i
bought food for her
and i buried her mother and i knew that
time she was very hungry
but she was able to give up
the food she picked up but give to her
mother
who was dying and that
touched me to my arm until i
couldn’t forget that incident
so today i want to share with you a few
talks
about this wisdom
many people think that wisdom
means you have something to tell to
others
what to do with something you have
something that others can learn from you
yes that’s right but correct
but many of us know that many people
know a lot of things
but never do anything for anyone
wisdom forming is the capacity
to love and
the real love is the capacity to
give oneself for someone
and that little girl three and a half
and she’s now studying in high school
stay in our shelter she had that wisdom
that many of our children or our youth
today
could not have the capacity to
realize to be aware of the need
of someone and let go my own need
for that person to bring life really
and how do we have that i think
and i believe each of us have
that wisdom built innate in our heart
and that was the awakening
in us when our mother
our father our parents touched us
did something for us when we grow up
when we just cry out the crying the
voice
of human life when we move on
we will secure we have praise and we
realize that
this world is worth trusting
however what is so unfortunate
for our society today at large
we are living in a deep polarized
society
either good or bad either black
or white either you are with me or not
with me
either you have my left alright and so
if you have something
that worth my sharing
my being with you i accept you if you
don’t have that
if you don’t have that which i like i
love
i don’t live and so this is why
so many children unfortunately
in our society today even in vietnam
until children would be abandoned
left abandoned in the hospital in the
trash can
on the street because
many were thinking that they were not
right for them
they wouldn’t be bringing something good
for them they don’t have anything that
they can be proud of
or be some even feel ashamed
to have them so reject them
i think many of us grew up
with the experience that if you don’t do
something
good or to prove that you are good you
will not be accepted
so something as failure as mistake
and error we will not be accepted
so we try to go over to make up
to live in the minds of our own
insecurity
wisdom really is the awareness
of myself of each of us
has our own strength and weakness
we all have it we all have dedication
but we all have our strength but further
than that
not only being aware but accepting
awareness have to come with acceptance
but acceptance is not enough
for me in my own tradition in my own
learning
from different field in my
service to the people who are dying
the acceptance go further
with self-giving
we have our self-awareness is what
we are asking each of us today
we try to raise ourselves self-awareness
today
but further than that
from awareness we must accept who we are
even upset the bad things we have with
us but only when upset
with acceptance that’s something
that we feel ashamed of or we don’t want
to answer
from being received to control us
and from that sentence we can share
ourselves to others
further oneness
as our organizers want to tell
us today come from the wisdom
that awareness of who we are is not
enough
but awareness of how we
each and every one of us is connected to
each other
we myself is not alone
we are committed
and that connection tells us how
important it is for us to recognize
the dignity the present orders in front
of us
and reach out to others
the government 19 make us
realize this important aspect of our
life
we are interconnected
how terrible it is when we are being
isolated when our friends our relatives
that used to be close to us now we
cannot see
but fortunately or unfortunately
the reason typhoon storm
in the center of vietnam and also the
outbreak of kofi
proved to us something so important
that we still have the capacity
to recognize the need to share and
to reach out we can regain
our wonders of humanity
we can regain our oneness with nature
with creature
we can regain our oneness
with the suffering and pain of others
and recognize that we can share them
we can handle that together
so i would like to end
this little talk today and invite
each of you to rethink the moment
that we are touched with love
unconditionally by someone in our life
a way of being touched telling us that
we are connected we are loved
we are important because of someone
and so that we can live with someone
and we can even die for someone
thank you