Tea with Sister Dinh Nghiem

Dear NorCal sangha friend,

You are warmly invited to a Zoom tea time with Sr. Định Nghiêm from New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

She has been spending some time in the Bay Area with family and would love to meet our Northern California sangha over a cup of tea.

Bring your tea and come ready to enjoy a casual get-together. Sr. Dinh Nghiem will guide us in tea meditation, and then we will open up the space for Q&A.

We look forward to seeing you!

Day and time: Thursday, March 6, 7-8:30pm

For the Zoom link, please see the NorCal email list, or contact Isabelle (Yen Chi), at isabellechappuis@yahoo.com.

Note: The Zoom can accommodate 100 people. If we have more than that, we will try to make a recording and share it later.

About Sister Định Nghiêm:

Born in Vietnam, Sister Dinh Nghiem came to France in 1983.

She had most of her education in France, started college in Paris and continued at UC Berkeley in California. She was ordained as a nun by Thay in Plum Village in 1993. She received the monastic training directly from Thay and 6 years later, received the lamp transmission from him in 1999.

She became the acting abbess of the New Hamlet of Plum Village in 2000, the youngest acting-abbess at that time, and thus opened the path for the tradition of Plum Village to name young acting-abbesses and acting-abbots. After several requests to Thay to renounce acting-abbesshood in order to devote more time to her passion which is translating and publishing Thay’s work, he finally accepted in 2007.

Sister Dinh Nghiem played a central role in the publishing of the most recent book on Thay’s long biography in Vietnamese (Encountering with Spring) and of numerous of Thay’s books in French such as Call Me By My True Name, Chanting from the Heart, Ceremonies from the Heart, Intimate Conversation with the Buddha, Peace at every Breath, Inside the Now, and the revised edition of The Blooming of the Lotus.

During her entire monastic life, Sister Dinh Nghiem was a close attendant of Thay’s and had the privilege to travel with him on his tours all over the world since 1995.

Since 2014, Sister Dinh Nghiem was one of Thay’s main attendants and remained by his side until his last day. After Thay became a cloud in 2022, she returned to the New Hamlet to profound happiness in dedicating herself to continuing Thay’s work, sharing the practice and building lay and monastic sanghas, especially the francophone sanghas. She is currently offering an online Sutra Study course to francophone speakers.

Here is an article by Sr. Dinh Nghiem, part 1 of 3, recounting the seven years after Thay’s stroke (in French).

Sister Dinh Nghiem (Sr. Định Nghiêm)

Sister Chan Khong, with Sister Dinh Nghiem (left)

Thích Nghat Hạnh (front row, center), surrounded by other monastics, including Sister Dinh Nghiem (front row, right).