September 7, 2026
When Buddhists talk about emptiness, we don’t mean nothingness, but rather an unlimited potential for anything to appear, change, or disappear.”
Mingyur Rinpoche
Dear Friends,
How have you been? I took a summer sabbatical from writing this newsletter. It’s been a rich summer of travel, growth, and deepening relationships.
It’s hard to describe all that happened. As the Buddhist teaching reminds us, life is made up of a mosaic of experiences—ten thousand joys and sorrows, with each experience changing as our perception and memory of it evolve. Who we were, who we are, and who we are becoming are constantly in flux. This lack of inherent solidity can be ungrounding at times, but it can also open us to possibility and a rich life. Emptiness is potentiality.
Amidst demanding work pressure, I made time to travel—went to two transformative retreats, took my son to chess camps and tournaments around the country, and traveled to Norway to see the fjords.
In June, I attended the fourth training retreat of Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leadership program. Our cohort is the most diverse in the program’s history, with 72 people bringing perspectives and experiences across race, gender, class, and geography. We read suttas, swam in the Hudson River, and had heart-opening conversations over meals and during practice.
What has stayed with me most is the spirit of mutual respect, solidarity, and cohesion within such a diverse group. In a polarized world where our differences are often magnified into division, it is inspiring to see how they can instead become the ground for common purpose. With each retreat, our friendships and collaboration deepen. It gives me faith and hope that our society, too, can find this kind of common ground when we each tend to our own healing while extending empathy to one another’s pain. This emerging generation of dharma leaders inspires me as they bring the practices to underserved corners—from prisons to state legislatures, from Alaska to South Africa.
In July, I drove up to Barre to join Chenxing Han’s Roots and Refuge retreat for Asian American Buddhist writers, a retreat that my dear friend Sebene alerted me to last summer. I knew I needed to attend, and still, I wasn’t fully prepared for its impact – a sense of “becoming whole.” It uniquely brought together disparate parts of myself: Asian American, Buddhist, and writer (a dormant inheritance from my father that was rediscovered).
For the first time, I felt completely at home with a group of people who also held these different parts, and our conversations went deep into my soul. Amid an ancestor altar, Cambodian and Chinese chants, readings of Asian American experiences, it felt like a reintegration—a gathering of the scattered and suppressed pieces of myself that reconnect as a whole as a first-generation Chinese American immigrant. I am still processing this experience, and hope to share in the future.
Interwoven into this summer’s travel and mosaic was watching my son grow as a competitive chess player. He has only been competing in national tournaments since last December, and in less than a year I have watched him grow tremendously—not only as a player, but as a person.
I have watched him navigate grueling tournament schedules, devastating losses, and unexpected wins. I have watched him rebuild his confidence and persevere when performance stalled for months, and then slowly and steadily surpass players who intimidated him a year ago.
But perhaps the greater lesson has been mine.
I am learning how to support without controlling. To give him space to process his emotions and find his own grounding. To stand beside him rather than hold him or nag him. To let him know that I am here whenever he needs me, while trusting that he can find his own way.
Along the way, we have had many conversations about hopes and dreams, values, and life lessons. I cherish these moments. In a few years, he will be an adult, charting his own journey. These experiences will become part of our shared memory—and hopefully a reservoir of love he can return to again and again.
And then, just last week, yet another piece of the mosaic appeared.
My mother fell on the street and was taken to the ER. She was found to have Covid and ended up staying in the hospital for a week. As it turned out, the fall may have saved her life. Because she was already in the ER, doctors discovered that her oxygen and blood pressure were low and were able to give her the treatment she needed. Without the fall, she might have simply thought she had a cold, and things could have turned out very differently.
There is a Chinese saying: “Fortune and misfortune are interdependent.” How true.
As it happens, Amber from our Midlife community reminded us of a joy practice: to focus on the “pennies of joy” rather than the “$100 bills of joy.” So I began looking for my pennies:
I am grateful that her Covid was discovered early and that she received the care she needed. I enjoyed making congee for her each evening after coming home from the hospital, allowing myself to exhale with the smell of homemade comfort food. On my morning walk to the hospital, I paused to take in the morning air and the sparkle of the trees in the light. I am grateful that she is still here with me, especially after losing my father to Covid six years ago. In the afternoon, I ordered a bubble tea as a small treat.
I marveled at the translation services now available in hospitals, grateful that my mother can communicate with the medical staff whenever she needs to. This was not true 20 years ago, when I was the only one translating on her behalf.
This is not about glossing over life’s difficulties, but recognizing that life is a mosaic. We cannot always choose the pieces we are given. Perhaps our practice is simply to be present enough to experience each piece fully, while also stepping back to see the larger picture changing as we grow.
May you journey well into the fall, gathering the abundance of summer and learning to let go.
Blessings,
Lin
What nourished my spirit in the past few months:
- Which Side Are You On? A Novel by Ryan Lee Wong
- one long listening: a memoir of grief, friendship, and spiritual care by Chenxing Han
- Writing as Radical Refusal, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses the first anthology of writing by Vietnamese diasporic authors – Tricycle Podcast
- Menopausal Years, the Wise Woman Way: Alternative Approaches for Women 30-90 by Susan S. Weed
Photos: Sunset at Stegastein Viewpoint, Norway – August, 2026
GoFundMe: 2025 -2027 Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leadership Training
Pay it forward: I’ll be joining the next Community Dharma Leadership (CDL7) training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. This program includes five retreats over two years and costs ~$14,000. Your contribution will help me cover these expenses. No contribution is too small—every donation is deeply appreciated. Thank you for your support!