Looking with the Eyes of Continuation

In this article, we hear from Wake Up members, Elli Weisbaum and Nhu-Mai Nguyen, two of our tradition’s youngest lay Dharma teachers. Here they share openly about their journey nurturing the next generation of Order of Interbeing members and aspirants.

This month we are celebrating 60 years of the Order of Interbeing in our June Retreat in Plum Village France. This is our third weekly offering dedicated to the Order of Interbeing—past, present, and future. We hope that you are continuing to enjoy this journey with us.

This post features an excerpt taken from Elli and Nhu-Mai’s article originally published in the Mindfulness Bell, No. 97.

We’d like to share some of our experiences training new young OI aspirants/members, as a part of an innovative pilot initiative to mentor young Order of Interbeing (OI) aspirants across the Americas.

We invite you to look deeply at what is said and left unsaid. By looking deeply, we hope you can see how the story of our study group is an illustration of many forms of continuation. It is a story of practitioners raised in the tradition of Plum Village from childhood/young adulthood, who now find themselves stepping forward into the roles of OI mentors and mentees.

It reflects our aspirations to continue Thầy’s work to carry on the legacy of Buddhism in general and Vietnamese Buddhism more specifically which has for centuries invited both monastic and lay friends to be equal partners in studying and teaching the practice. Our study group also reflects Thầy’s approach of trusting young people to add their energy, perspectives and voices to keep our lineage fresh and applicable to “the language of our times.”

It is the story of those of us who attended the June 2024 Order of Interbeing two-week retreat in Plum Village Upper Hamlet, France, during which Shantum Seth (senior lay Dharma teacher) reminded everyone that 2026 would be the sixtieth anniversary of the Order of Interbeing. Shantum encouraged everyone to start thinking about celebration and continuation. This sparked a flame in the five of us who were under forty-five and OI members to think of how we could nourish and support more young practitioners to join the OI. 

Meeting each one of these incredible bodhisattvas who wishes to walk the path of The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings—to study, learn, practice, and play together—has been the deepest gift for our organizing team. Our own bodhicitta has been deeply watered. It has also been a beautiful opportunity to connect with our wider intergenerational mahasangha. We are deeply grateful for the monastic and lay Dharma teachers who have supported us all along this journey, giving their guidance.

In this article, we humbly present the steps and practical approaches to building a study group, in the hope that this will be of service to our wider sangha as we consider how to expand our trainings and make them accessible and inclusive. In this article, we have aimed to navigate with love and equanimity both the joys of the study group and the challenges and barriers that young people can face when aspiring to join the OI.

Our deepest aspiration is to collectively continue to nourish our joy and togetherness, and to listen and respond to the needs of our next generation, making these teachings accessible, available, and meaningful. We do this in the spirit of Thầy, who wanted to renew Buddhism and always be in the vanguard—innovating, cultivating, and iterating.

Thank you, Thầy, and thank you, sangha, for your love and trust. We hope we are worthy to receive it.

Challenges for Young OI Aspirants

We learned about some key barriers preventing young people from starting their OI aspirancy, including:

♦ Trouble finding an OI mentor

♦ Trouble finding a Dharma teacher

♦ Not enough time

♦ Not having spiritual friends on the path

♦ Not seeing themselves reflected in already-established members of the OI (e.g., BIPOC, queer, young)

♦ Not feeling “worthy” or “good enough” to belong to the OI

These barriers illustrate some key challenges faced by practitioners under forty-five who wish to learn, study, and practice The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings: juggling early-mid life responsibilities with time to practice (e.g., work and family obligations such as caring for children and elderly parents); monetary limitations that prevent them from taking time off work, traveling, and paying for retreats; and not feeling a sense of belonging in all-age sanghas, which in North America are often predominantly white and older.

Gathering at Deer Park

Brother Pháp Dung, senior monastic Dharma teacher at Deer Park Monastery, has been a mentor and supporter of our study group since its inception. He encouraged us to include an in-person gathering at Deer Park with our mentors and mentees during our study period. This gathering manifested in May 2025, with forty members of the study group in attendance.

The gathering was a beautiful opportunity to cultivate love and understanding, not only amidst our study group members, but also with the monastic and lay community at Deer Park. As a key facet of our study group, we value learning how we can build safe, inclusive bridges between our lay and monastic communities. This includes looking into how we as lay practitioners can show up at a monastic practice center in a way that allows us to take refuge and also is supportive of our monastic siblings, who care for and live full-time in that space.

We invited everyone in our study group to be respectful and mindful that Deer Park Monastery is the monastics’ home, and that we are guests being graciously hosted. In this spirit, we joined the center’s daily working meditation, morning/evening sitting, and walking meditation—while also having our own activities such as Dharma talks with senior monastics and Dharma sharing. We invited the monastics to join our activities if they were interested. Flowing with the center’s schedule, as we engaged in our own activities, fostered a sense of mutual respect and care with the monastic community—resulting in many shared moments of joy, practice, and an invitation/intention to return for another gathering!

Reverence for Practice, Mixed with Wake Up Vibes!

During our gathering at Deer Park Monastery, we shared the practices typical of an OI retreat: sitting in silence with the rising sun, listening to Dharma talks offered by the monastics, and reflecting on the history of The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings and the Order of Interbeing. There was a clear earnestness to practice deeply, honor our tradition, and offer goodness to the world.

And yet, this gathering was also uniquely Wake Up. We howled with the coyotes, baked pizzas with monastic brothers for the sangha, and enjoyed a beach outing on “lazy day.” We sang Disney songs with abandon, played volleyball during downtime, and let crayons and construction paper reveal our deepest aspirations. In these moments of play, we touched the lightness of our inner child, reminding one another that joy, too, is a form of practice.

On the final morning, we stood hand in hand beneath the oak grove of Clarity Hamlet. One by one, we offered our collective aspiration—to transform our personal suffering and the suffering of the world. Nearby, a sign read, “I know you are there and I am very happy.” As we looked into each other’s bright eyes, the truth of those words came alive. Love, support, and a fierce tenderness moved between us, sealing our intention forevermore.

Intergenerational Nourishment: Sharing with Sister Chan Khong

In June 2025, about a month after our Deer Park gathering, Elli and her husband Rob (OI member, Wake Up facilitator, and study group pod leader) travelled to Plum Village, France, where she helped organize a science retreat with the Brothers and Sisters in Upper and Lower Hamlets. We printed photos from our Deer Park Wake Up OI study group gathering to share with Sister Chân Không and Sister Chân Đức (Sister Annabel).

A few days after the retreat, Elli and Rob were invited to visit with Sister Chân Không in New Hamlet. They sat with her, along with fellow Wake Uppers Nho (former monastic, current PhD candidate at Harvard University) and Suzzane (OI aspirant, medical student at University of Oslo Faculty of Medicine, Norway), Sister Định Nghiêm, and Sister Trai Nghiêm, for over forty-five minutes as she slowly and lovingly flipped through the photo album. As Sister Chân Không looked through the photos, a smile bloomed on her face. She gently pointed to each young person, asking to be told their story. Quietly and peacefully Elli and Rob shared about their lives and deep commitment to study and practice The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. They told her about Arvind, an amazing young PhD candidate in artificial intelligence in New York City and about the sangha house in Los Angeles, where many young, queer, fabulous practitioners are harmoniously living together.

Over and over, Sister Chân Không said how happy she was that all these young people were diligently practicing. She shared that hearing about them made her touch the impact of her life’s work. Toward the end of the visit, she asked if the organizers would bring all of the young ones to come play with her. We have planted the seeds for our study group mentors and mentees to attend the sixtieth anniversary of the Order of Interbeing in Plum Village in June 2026. What a beautiful, inter-generational family gathering that will be!

One of the most beautiful manifestations of organizing this study group has been experiencing precious moments of connection across generations of practitioners in our lineage. It is a true happiness and a gift to touch the love, support, and care of everyone flowing in this river of the Plum Village tradition. To the Dharma teachers, Wake Up OI members and aspirants, the wider mahasangha of monastic and lay practitioners: we know you are all there, and this makes us so happy.

Please support us in carrying this flame forward so that it may continue to bring understanding, compassion, and healing to all beings in the world.

With love and trust, Elli Weisbaum and Như-Mai Nguyễn

We invite you to read Elli Weisbaum and Nhu-Mai Nguyen‘s full article here.

You may also like to enjoy more articles from the Mindfulness Bell, No. 97.