A Letter to Friends
Dear Friends,
In the summer of 2018, I wrote these lines: “For the past three years, both spirit and reason have guided and governed my life. Perhaps this path will continue for a long time to come. Music will follow only when conditions are right. If the causes and conditions are favorable—if there is an opening and the means—the music will again rise; if not, there will be… a rest.”
That rest has stretched all the way to the summer of 2025. Today, seven years have passed—swift as a passing breeze. And that rest will continue, for on my musical road no favorable conditions have appeared to let gentle melodies blossom again. Instead, what resounds is sutra and verse, the bell and the wooden mõ, sounding evenly from the first pale light of dawn until the sun slips from sight.
What I wish to share is this: my Spiritual Path has overtaken my path of Music. After ten years devoted to study and writing, keeping company with monks and nuns, dwelling in temples, practicing with assemblies, and walking alongside Dharma friends, I have truly become a Buddhist nun, with the Dharma name Thiện Bảo.
A different life. A new life. And I am determined to walk it to the very end, whole and entire. The expanse of Spirit and Happiness that has opened cannot be spoken in the narrow confines of language. I can only wish that all of you who, for so many years, cherished my songs may also discover a wondrous source of Happiness such as I have found beneath this spiritual sky.
I do not renounce Music. Music is helpful for human beings; it has its own worth, its own rightful place. I hold deep gratitude for the singers who lent their voices and breathed life into my songs, and for you who visited my humble page, read my essays and poems, and listened.
I have published seven CDs, two songbooks, and three volumes—a novel, essays on the Buddha’s teaching, and a collected book of poetry and prose—and I am fully content: no regrets, no further seeking. My only wish is to follow the Buddha’s words:
Those who are ever awake,
Day and night they diligently cultivate;
With single heart they turn toward Nirvāṇa,
Severing the knots of affliction.
Dhammapada
Dear Friends, though I no longer walk the musical road beside you and no longer offer the rise and fall of melody to the world, the spiritual road is also a path of offering, quiet and unseen. The Way and the world are never far apart. If Happiness is found in the Way, then let that Happiness be offered back to the world.
Warm greetings to you all, and may you be blessed with: peaceful days, peaceful nights—peace in every hour.
Thích Nữ Thiện Bảo