Le Ly Hayslip
Le Ly Hayslip (pronounced Lay-Lee) was born in a rural village in Vietnam in 1950. Her efforts to help impoverished families in her homeland led her to create two non-profit organizations, write two books containing her memoirs (which have been made into a movie) and to the lifting of the trade embargo between the US and Vietnam.
After the war broke out, she was a freedom fighter by the age of 12. During the next 4 years, she was imprisoned, raped and tortured, and gave birth to a son. Le Lay Hayslip, along with her son, immigrated to the US as the wife of an American civilian, where she was widowed within two years, remarried and widowed again. She worked numerous jobs to raise three sons on her own.
In 1987, a year after visiting Vietnam for the first time since leaving, she founded the nonprofit group EAST meets WEST to provide medical and educational facilities for the children of Vietnam. Le Ly Hayslip's efforts in Washington led to lifting the trade embargo and normalized relations between the US and Vietnam. To raise money for her non-profit, she wrote two books, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, and Child of War, Woman of Peace, which were later made into the movie Heaven and Earth by Oliver Stone. In the early 1990s she created another nonprofit organization, The Global Village Foundation, modeled on the Peace Corps. In reading her books in preparation for the interview, Margaret Wolff shares, "I come away from my reading realizing that she is a woman who has lived fully in two very different worlds."
The passages and questions below are offered as a starting point for discussion, and are simply listed in sequential order as they appear in the book.
- Page 126 "They [the ancestors] taught us by the simplicity and dedication of their lives to live honorably, and we revere them for that. We pray to them for guidance. We follow their way. We breathe the same air they once breathed. We breathe in and out with them in every moment, with those who have come before us and with those who will come after we are gone. Our ancestors - past and future - embrace us every second of our lives. Each generation has an obligation to those who come after them to live honorably. I am the ancestor of my great-great-grandchildren, so it is also important that I live in a way they will take comfort in."
- Today's Western cultures are very focused on the now – 'how can I make the most of what I have now?' That perspective frequently shows up in our social, economic and political structures, with very little thought to the future. And yet, Le Ly Hayslip challenges us to an accountability that stretches across life spans. That's a huge concept for me to get my head around – to be accountable to someone who I will never meet. I find it both inspiring, and yet part of me cannot comprehend what that would mean. What do you think?
- What do you feel would be different in either the world or your personal life if we each shared her perspective?
- Page 128 [Wolff] Amidst all the insanities of war - the terror, the torture and rape, the homelessness, and the loss of your dearly loved brother and father - how did you make sense of it? Did you ever feel as if God had abandoned you? She is genuinely surprised by my question. [Hayslip] "How could god ever abandon me? god does not tell us to fight or to kill each other. War is man-made. You have to separate yourself from what happens to you if you are to survive. When bad things happened to me, I just watched what was going on as if I was observing something on the beach. Buddha helped me through this. Like a loving parent, he guided me back to the root of love, to god."
- In Hayslip's spiritual perspective: god is love; good and bad events happen during a person's life due to karmic laws; and we as humans have a choice in how we react to those events. This is a very different perspective on god than is offered by Judeo-Christian denominations, where God determines what happens in one's life. What is your spiritual perspective on why good/bad things happen?
- Page 128-129 [Wolff] Did you find value in your suffering? [Hayslip] "Suffering always changes me. It makes me stronger, wiser. It creates compassion for others. It helps me grow spiritually so I can better help others. It motivates me to change my thoughts and then change my actions so I can move out of a karmic cycle that is self-destructive. As a result of these difficult experiences, I understand people better. I also understand myself better. I know who I am and how to live my life. I have a deeper understanding of karmic law, of universal law, of spiritual law. Suffering has been a good teacher. Today I lecture before an audience of a thousand people and receive an ovation, not because of anything I learned at university, but because of what my life has taught me."
- The concept of pain and suffering as a teacher was also offered by Alma Flor Ada on page 61. By incorporating the law of karma, Le Ly Hayslip transforms her life's events into life choices – since event is the result of karma, or something she did in the past, she now has an opportunity to choose how she will react, with the awareness that her reaction is the seed for the future. What is your reaction to her perspective on choice? What is your own?
- I particularly love the last sentence in the quote because so often I find myself undervaluing my own experience and perspective in the face of scholarship or research. Le Ly Hayslip offers that what we accumulate in experiences does have value to others. What was your reaction to that sentence?
- Was there a particular passage that made you stop and either consider or appreciate?