On Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and The Hai Houc (Comedian) Phuc Nguyen

The story below was written way back in 2018, in the good old pre-overwhelm days, when I had time to better craft these posts. Sometimes I like to fantasize that the days suffering over not enough going on at The Higher Haven were better than suffering with way, way too much going on. “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.” according to Ecclesiastes 7:10. We’ll take that advice, and along with the good news, are pleased to report that this post’s preamble of sorts is being written from Krong Siem Reap, Cambodia, 8,525 miles from South Haven, Michigan USA. Regarding betterment, happiness, and transformation, it seems that the healing provided by dất nước Việt Nam vĩ đại - the great land of Vietnam - about a year ago has been wonderfully, joyfully confirmed. Now, while another great reset settles, let me introduce you to one of the forces of light I discovered in this far, far-away land, on exactly the other side of the world, high noon in Vietnam being Michigan’s midnight. The Secret King of the modern day people of Vietnam I like to call him, the honorable Nguyen Ba Phuc, my Ban, good friend and Kola, who pointed the way to this promised, healing land when he opened up the world of southeast Asia to me almost twenty years ago.

Behold morning at the Cái Râng Floating Market in Cân Tho, center of the Mekong Delta, 200 kilometers outside Saigon city, Vietnam. Cái Râng translates to Teeth of the Crocodile per the mighty Phuc Nguyen, the dude on the right leveling a shot off the bow of that boat like Quint the shark killer. Mr. French Indo-China circa 1954 is one of his many monikers, a nickname I find très apropos, as it references the time his Viet ancestors sent their French colonizers packing at the battle of Din Bin Pho. Phuc (pronounced Fook) Nguyen (pronounced Win) is a name akin to John Smith in the states. But in this case, it’s the common name of a very uncommon man. Over ten years ago our paths crossed in a hotel lobby in Ho Chi Minh City, the modern name for Saigon honoring the country’s iconic leader. And while the entire span of our friendship consists of hanging out for a maybe now six months total, some of the best days of my life have been in Vietnam with Phuc as my right arm. He’s my Nguoi an hem tinh thân, My Brother in the Spirit. After reconnecting excitedly at HCMC’s airport back in 2018, after not seeing one another for eight years, we jumped in the car and took in each other. “Hmmm Paul, the last time I saw you, it seemed you were in the desert, crossing this great desert. But now, it appears that you have… found the water.” 

That’s one of one thousand dien (crazy) cool Phuc Nguyen-isms. Check my Facebook photos around 2008 and you’ll see a picture of Phuc on the machine-gun range at the tunnels of Cu Chi, a section of the immense network of tunnels that underlie much of Vietnam. My private guide that day, he recounted some incredible, and incredibly dark, history from the American War, the name VN people dub the conflict. The caption to the photo reads: This is when I realized Phuc was a Genius. As soon as we were together in the car on Wednesday, the jokes flew, prompting me to ask: “Phuc how do you say Comedian in Vietnamese?” He laughed – hi hi hi is the way they script laughter in VN– informing me that, “Haì Huõć is like the professional comedian. But Vui Ve is the funny man.” Being so Pro and at the same time so demure, Phuc embodies both. “Paul, you have no idea how many times I have heard the tourist call to the home and say, ‘We have a Vietnamese comedian for a chaperon’”. The language being totally tonal, he speaks in a croaky, sing-song voice that escalates musically. and lends itself to funny interpretation.. Phuc doesn’t say “Ok Ok”once or twice when he understands what you’re trying to convey; he says it seventeen times, “Ok, ok, ok, ok, ok, ok, ok (etc.). When I start echoing him and we get going, it rises into a chorus of OK’s and laughter, a concurring wellspring of joy that fills the South China Sea. 

Three things define Phuc Nguyen, three things that, in my mind, define most Vietnamese people: humor, humility and class. On my second visit, he asked, “Mr. Paul (the respectful name he used for me prior to our friendship), I have the question for you: Why is it the Westerners all come here looking like such slobs? You are well-to-do people, so why can’t you put on a collared shirt?” I looked down, considered my ripped-up Replacements T-shirt, Adidas shorts and flip flops and replied, “Let me give that thought”. We enjoyed a visit to a wonderful, peaceful farm after the floating market where the owner-family often finds petrified bombs in their surrounding fields. Phuc’s spontaneous bit — one of many that has me never underestimating the caliber of his creative contributions — had me holding one of the disarmed shells while he interrogates me, asking, “So your people dropped the bombs on us, and yet here we are this afternoon serving you a nice lunch.” His other routine had me hoisting old weapons from the American conflict, while he joked, “no matter how great your arsenal, against the Vietnamese con gai (girl) you will lose, you will surely meet defeat” Leave it to a seasoned Vietnamese funny man like Phuc to turn total tragedy into pure comedy, a stand-up man in every way. 

Beneath the constant laughter, Phuc’s understanding of Vietnamese history, culture and spirituality played a big part in my personal transformation and ongoing quest for spiritual liberation. The first time I witnessed a funeral, on Vietnam’s central coast, it Blew. Me. Away. A slow parade of family and friends dressed in white rather than black follow the hearse, an ornately decorated, golden vehicle covered in dragons and other mythical creatures, all followed up by a New Orleans-like jazz band of drums, trombones, and trumpets blaring out unharmonious, happy tunes. Phuc observed my wide-eyed take of the scene and said, “Ah, the Paradise Car.” “Do they call it the Paradise Car?” I asked “That’s so cool.” “No, no no (etc.), they don’t it the Paradise Car,” he replied. “I call it the Paradise car.” After visiting temples and introducing me to the country’s colorful 54 tribal groups along with their myriad of religions, offering alms and releasing small birds from cages as a gesture toward liberation, I asked, “Phuc, tell me: What do you believe?” I still hear his deep, croaky, well-considered reply. “Mr. Paul, I believe it all.”

As to the spiritual source of my connection to Vietnam, God only knows. I jokingly like to think that having been born April 8th, 1967 at 3:12 pm, in Detroit, Michigan, USA, perhaps nine months earlier a village idiot met his demise in the mountains near Sapa, Vietnam. This story was finished at a café in Ha noi, after a visit to pay my respects to the great Ho Chi Minh, lying in state at Lăng Chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh, the marble mausoleum serving as the revolutionary leaders final resting place. Well protected by a military honor guard, hundreds of adults and school children line up for hours, with cameras and photos strictly prohibited. While a solemn, honorable, contemplative endeavor, the creator in me couldn’t help being inspired by a line artistically etched into the entranceway. Unable to take a pic, I made it a mantra as I quietly filed through with the rest of the good Vietnamese people paying homage to Uncle Ho. Upon passing through the exit way, I texted Phuc.

Me: Khong co gi quy hon doc lap tu - what does it mean.? 

Phuc: Who says this to you!? Who?

 Me: Uncle Ho, Uncle Ho tells me! (I text this but as I do I’m laughing, imitating Phuc’s sing-song intonation)

Phuc: Nothing Is More Precious than Freedom

"The Storm Knows My Name"

We were walloped with a perfect winter storm this week, waylaid by over a foot of Wá, Snow in Lakota, as in Wá Wá, aka serious Pow Pow. Then temperatures plummeted to 4L/12H, making for the arrival of the super light, fluffy variety, perhaps kanevvluk or ‘fine snow’ in the Eskimo-Aleut snow lexemes. That sequestered us happily in the house for days and days, to work out our new website, while fulfilling on the promise to expand this spot with some new and old stories. The following by Kiowa writer-poet Navarre Scott Momaday was originally posted in August, 2019, back when we had a little more time to dive deeper into books, time and tales we are revisiting during this year’s serene season.

In Words From A Bear, a celebration of his life and works, the author speaks of The Story of Man-Kai-Ee, or The Storm Spirit. “The storm will pass over me,” he declares, “Because it speaks my language.” This is a statement, a spirit, of both awareness and protection, an emotional reaction to the elemental experience of being, one that springs forth from Native American myth, ritual and storytelling. “These rites enabled our people to have an existence in the world beyond the senses to perceive,” Momaday explains, “An expression of the truest response to being.” He goes on to reference a Franz Kafka quote on the power of art and reading, on choosing to be disturbed by books “‘That affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone… a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.’”

Hoping to swing said axe or two during our vacation, particularly House Made of Dawn, we’ll be on our own retreat, doing our own transformative work. Seva is cool but our Sadhana, the work we do on ourselves for ourselves, is that grope and hope for an opening, the reach for a sea change within. Reconfiguration, renewal, upheaval, and transformation are what our retreats are often all about, as we work for permanent shifts in consciousness. “The Higher Haven is a hidden Sanctuary”, reports a recent visitor from Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. “I met up with a friend there for an overnight stay complete with an ancient purification Ceremony. The space and property are absolutely gorgeous, tranquil and idyllic. Leading up to the experience, I was anxious about participating. But I shared it all with Paul and he walked me through the entire process so that my anxiety left me, and I was able to completely enjoy the experience. I felt renewed and replenished after the weekend. I definitely plan on returning.” Learn how storms speak and you’ll enhance your ability to observe your own ever-changing, internal patterns, riding out and even rising up on life’s psycho-spiritual squalls.

Chúng Ta Tin Vào Chúa (In God We Trust) & Chuc Mung Nam Moi (HNY!)

The People with the Money are the People with the Power - Uncle Ho’s Homemade Currency Post Din Bin Phu 1954.

I’ve emerged from my beloved Teacher Shinzen Young’s brilliant annual New Year’s retreat. Chuc Mung Nam Moi! Happy New Year 2024! As always, there’s the usual mix of aftershock and afterglow, acclimatizations to states that are less fixated and progressively more attenuated. We’ve talked about it all before, visited in Shinny’s final dharma talk from the last residential retreat in 2019 as well as from the first online Zoom retreat during the pandemic. “You either become the ocean,” said Shin’s buddy the great Leonard Cohen, cited in his talk The Source of The Longest River from the same retreat, “Or you’re seasick everyday. “ Watch for a few killer upcoming posts on talks from this most recent retreat.

On the subject of a mix of both positive and negative, I’ve had the realization that the busyness of our business has devolved this blog into people’s testimonials, which are cool, and hurriedly written stories, which are not cool. As previously promised, let’s recreate this space to be a place of engaging stories and notes from the road, beginning with this former tale on our first dollar earned as a bonafide business. We’re offering our Signature Meditation + Mindfulness 101 class on Saturday, January 20th, to kick off the new year, and will be back soon with new and more engaging stories. As always, we appreciate your interest and look forward to seeing you.

You’re familiar with the notion of a business framing their first earned dollar bill, right? In dry cleaners, pizzerias, restaurants, bars, and countless other enterprises, wide recognition is given to the idea of an establishment enshrining their first greenback. Putting that pioneering note on the wall says the medium of exchange is on the move, a visible token of a venture’s intended success. That first dollar of profit also commemorates the prep work, the hard times, of getting up and running. And for anyone whose built up an entrepreneurial endeavor, you know it’s a 24-7 commitment, not quitting until you’ve moved Heaven and Earth.

Traveling through Vietnam a few years back, I noticed almost every business had a version of the framed first dollar, or dòng, Vietnam’s currency (currently equaling .000044 US dollars). There, the custom took the form of small, ornate altars. Coins, bills, food offerings, incense and family photos as well as burning paper effigies and plaques honoring holy spirits crowded the daises. Vietnamese culture celebrates the Kitchen God or Stove God from Chinese folk religion, the most important of a colorful team of domestic gods that protect hearth and family. On the twenty third day of the twelfth lunar month, just before Chinese New Year and Tet Holiday, the Kitchen God returns skyward to deliver an annual report on each households’ doings. The Jade Emperor of the heavens then doles out punishment or reward. Back in the day, families were often classified accordingly to the stove they possessed, indicating the “soul” and signifying a family’s fate. An old story says, “When a Shaman informed one family that ants were in their stove, they destroyed the stove and threw the bricks in the river.” A neighbor explained, “There was nothing else they could do. A family will never have peace if they don’t have a good stove.” The association is thus one of God and family, the relationship being essentially bureaucratic; the family is the smallest societal corporate unit, and the Stove God the lowest ranking member of a supernatural bureaucracy.

We have a good wood-burning stove here, sans ants and other things. And I like to think of the Ceremonial fireplace as The Higher Haven’s hearth. As to an official rigidly devoted to the details of God’s administrative procedures, I’m not so sure our guys are all that letter of the law. We uphold and practice certain ancient traditions and rituals here, unconventional conventions and customs is how I think of them. And we get low and when we do we pray hard, strong believers in the power of prayer. Still, the primal nature of what we do offers an authenticity, an unbounded healing energy that many of the more corporate, institutional, and organized approaches - with group-think at times stifling individual growth - can’t. The self-expression of one’s individuality (namely my own hi hi) is what drove me to this road, the one that eventually left the pavement with a gravel crunch, taillights disappearing into the Michigan woods circa 2014.

The Higher Haven didn’t really commence until May 2016, after a year and a half of what felt like administrative and management tasks tedium ad infinitum. Given these tasks weren’t anything more than standard procedures required to establish any solid business foundation. But dealing with government agencies, subdivisions of county departments, permits, payments, codes and other knotty procedures often took me to the edge. At one point Allegan county wanted to change my address and couldn’t quite keep the 494 or 496 straight, leading to unspooled reels of red tape, confusing emails, frustrating phone tag and conversations that demanded severe tests of spiritual strength.

Now it may be business as usual, starting a limited liability company and depositing checks made out to The Higher Haven. At the same time, it’s all feeling so much more… certified? Sanctioned? Maybe Sanctified works better for us. But definitely Legit. And all authorized and approved of by none other than yours truly, our organization’s Chief Creative Officer (CCO), who, on a good day, couldn’t be prouder of what's being creating here. That’s the same poor bastard, me, who, a mere year ago, was forced to take on and transcend the once utterly frustrating worlds of Pay Pal, Stripe, and The Square. It’s no coincidence Square is slang for being rigidly conventional and out of touch with current trends (more me, not the electronic device). And although these were all necessary business connections needed to drive the deal, I couldn’t help to think: I just wanted to be a teacher and a writer. Not an accountant.

Back to that framed piece of dough on the wall, the upshot here is that there was an awful, awful lot (the pivotal word being awful) required in the form of mind-numbing tasks to get this place rolling, chores I didn’t exactly enjoy doing. And while I’ve earned a few dollars over the last few years at this endeavor, it’s certainly nothing to break the bank. But now, if I step back and take a good look around, after endless baby steps and sticking with it, things are appearing better than OK around here, if I do say so myself, as I just did. This place then being an expression and manifestation of one man’s dream, but a dream that includes the success of others, of all people, of all nations, of all time, we couldn’t just mount up the common US dollar bill. With all due respect to General Washington and the founding fathers, whose spirits pervade this land, The Higher Haven’s hope too include all people of all belief systems, in a bid to heal our species age-old rift of separation, called for an official, more exotic open-for-business emblem that would include all peeps.

The 100-dong note, a cool little piece acquired in a Ha noi art gallery, was created by the State of Vietnam in 1949 at the start of the first Indo China war. Bearing Ho Chi Minh’s likeness and crude but official watermarks, the currency displaced the French Union's Indochinese piastre, Vietnam's nod to The Benjamins. the people on the money being the people with the power. Five years later the Viets beat the Frenchies and booted them out at Dien Bien Phu, which has me wondering where we'll be in five years. To this day Uncle Ho is on the dong, the biggest player in Vietnam’s liberation and a hero country-wide. His gaze from my office wall reminds me of the spirit of this place, the spirit of the underdog, the spirit of upholding the warrior’s promise, even in the face of death. And the power and wisdom that only deservedly come to those who refuse to quit until they've overcome all obstacles. One heart, one mind, one voice, one Chanupa. Aho Matakuye O’yasin.