Before she became a Buddhist nun in the tradition of Thich
Nhat Hanh, Sister Dang Nghiem was a doctor. She’d traveled far in her
43 years. Born during the Tet Offensive and part of the amnesty for
Amerasian children of the late 1970s, Dang Nghiem arrived in this
country virtually penniless and with no home. She lived with three
foster families, but graduated high school with honors, earned two
undergraduate degrees, and became a doctor. When the man she thought
she’d spend her life with suddenly drowned, Sister Dang Nghiem left
medicine and joined the monastic community of Thich Nhat Hanh.
It is from this vantage point that Dang Nghiem writes
about her journey of healing. Devastated by the diagnosis and symptoms
of Lyme, she realized that she was also reliving many of the unresolved
traumas from earlier in her life. She applied both her medical knowledge
and her advanced understanding and practice of mindfulness to healing.
Through meditation she finally came to understand what it means to
“master” suffering.
In Mindfulness as Medicine, Sister Dang Nghiem
leads readers through her profound journey of healing and shares
step-by-step directions for the techniques she used to embrace and
transform her suffering.
346 pages. Paperback.